Why Clipped Forms Should Be Accepted As Nouns

This paper is about the status of clipped forms. It turns out clipping rules are not completely regular, but the resulting forms must show a transparent relation to the source word, where transparency includes semantic recoverability and phonological resemblance. Furthermore clipped forms have a special stylistic or pragmatic character when compared to the original form. However, the most important conclusion is that clipped forms should not be considered as an arbitrary part of the original word form and therefore seen as having no independent grammatical status, but should be described as nouns in their own right. Arguments for this conclusion come from blend formation. Also Zabrocki’s theory of diacrisis is used to describe the phenomena under discussion.