Hypocorization as a non-concatenative process of word formation in Portuguese: the morphology-phonology interface

• Autor(a) principal: Lima, Bruno Cavalcanti
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Domínios de Lingu@gem
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufu.br/index.php/dominiosdelinguagem/article/view/37301
• topic: Hipocorização; Morfologia; Fonologia; Teoria da Otimalidade; Hypocorization; Morphology; Phonology; Optimality Theory

In this paper, I analyze the pattern of hypocorization of compound anthroponyms, which occurs, for instance, in ‘Malu’ (‘Maria Luíza’). The analysis is based on Correspondence Theory (McCarthy & Prince, 1995), which follows the Classical Optimality principles, established in Prince & Smolensky (1993), being, this way, equally optimalist and paralelist (Gonçalves, 2004). The hypocoristic should coin the shortest word possible in a given language and, thus, should not have more than one foot with two syllables. So, one of the aims of this work is to prove that constraints of size, in the phenomenon of hypocorization, are higher in the hierarchy, overtopping those of markedness and faithfulness. As a corpus, I use data which have been collected in tests and data which are found in the dictionary of hypocoristics by Monteiro (1999). In order to establish positive evidence of more general patterns, tests of acceptability of forms have been run. For each form proposed in the tests, I have checked which one stood out in relation to others. That form would be, therefore, the optimum output.