Earticle

This study deals with hypocoristic names in English, which are sometimes referred to pet names, nicknames. or terms of endearment. As a morphological process, they have been grouped into a class by means of clipping or truncation. Usually hypocoristic names consist of a heavy syllable and optionally diminutive suffix, -ie or -y in English and have the characteristic of doublet or multiple forms. However, there are so many variations depending on their stress or position. They prefer the first position to other ones, and stressed syllable to unstressed one. Accordingly it can be considered a prosodic constraint such as mora, syllable, or foot. It can be analyzed by means of prosodic constraints and Output-Output theory in OT. Of course, they are output-oriented theory and are important in ranking hierarchy. First, the former could deal with a heavy syllable case very well. However, it cannot explain the case of multiple forms, that is, Elizabeth, and two syllable cases, Alex and Isa. Output-Output theory is well suited to capture the generalization of related forms by output constraints and recursion. But it cannot solve the problem of disparity of segments between the original name and clipped form. Also, it is not applicable to the multiple forms and two syllable cases. In conclusion, OT has advantage to capture general forms but cannot fully explain the multiple forms and non-identical forms.