Proceedings

The root-like nature of words with truncated stems

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Abstract

The phonotactics of monomorphemic and polymorphemic words often differ in natural languages. This is the case in Hungarian, too. Yet a set of words, nominal diminutives derived by truncative morphology, exhibit patterns that characterise monomorphemic words, despite being polymorphemic (stem+diminutive suffix). We show that vowel patterns in these words belong to a larger set than vowel patterns in other polymorphemic words, and that the harmonic properties of diminutives (the selection of harmonically alternating suffixes after them) is also like after roots and not after ordinarily suffixed words. Various other properties of diminutive forms (their length, their readiness to gain a lexicalised meaning, their consonantal phonotactics) also likens them to monomorphemic words, that is, roots.

Keywords: phonotactics, morphological complexity, truncation, diminutives, vowel harmony, Hungarian

How to Cite:

Rebrus, P., Szigetvári, P. & Törkenczy, M., (2026) “The root-like nature of words with truncated stems”, Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology 2(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/amphonology.3670