Input- Truncatum Faithfulness in English Hypocoristic Names

Truncated forms (truncata) in English hypocoristic words have been argued to be faithful to their bases. This means that “ ... the base of truncation is an output form"”(Benua 1995:6,12). For example, in some non-rhotic dialects where syllable-final [r]s are deleted, the [r]s of truncated names such as Gar [gær] (truncated form of Garry [gæri]) are not deleted although they are syllable-final. This is an example of base-truncatum identity. That is, the syllable-final [r] is retained to make the truncatum more faithful to its base. However, there are many English hypocoristic names which are not faithful to their base forms. For example, Letty [equation omitted] (hypocoristic form of Latitia [equation omitted]) is not faithful to its base; the first vowel and the second consonant of the truncatum are not identical to the corresponding segments of the base. It will be argued, therefore, that some truncated forms are more faithful to the inputs than the bases. It will also be argued that McCarthy and Prince's (1995) Full Model is needed to deal successfully with all the phenomena related to truncation.