Premodification and Reduction in English

Abstract

This paper is about "reduction" in form often associated with premodification, i.e. about the premodifier tending to prefer the shorter of two equivalent cognate forms. Motivated by light(ened) semantic content, this reduction is effected by using the shorter of two equivalent cognate forms already available or by "clipping" a portion of a given form, normally the least significant part thereof such as a function word or an affix. The premodifier here is such that it may occur in front of nouns, adjectives or adverbs, or even verbs.