An apocope is a metaplasm.
Apocope is a term that comes from the Latin word apocŏpe , although its most distant etymological roots are found in the Greek language. The concept is used in phonetics with reference to the elimination of certain sounds at the end of a word .
It is important to keep in mind that, according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ), apócope is a feminine noun : therefore it should be said “la apócope” or “una apócope” . The apocope, on the other hand, is part of the figure known as metaplasm , which implies an alteration of the pronunciation or writing of the terms without changing their meaning.
In the specific case of this metaplasm, a cut occurs at the end of the word. If the change takes place at the beginning, it is an apheresis , while if the modification appears in the middle, the metaplasm is called syncopation .
Examples of apocope
We can find apocopes in different types of words. The word “auto” , for example, is an abbreviation of “automobile” . The two terms refer to the same thing: a motor vehicle intended for the transportation of passengers that can move without the use of lanes or tracks.
Apocopes also appear between adjectives ( “first” instead of “first” ), adverbs ( “tan” for “both” ) and even proper names ( “Juli” as a replacement for “Julián” ). The choice of the apocope or the complete word may be a matter of style or context. In some cases, the phenomenon results in the use of words that are not part of the RAE dictionary .
The apocope consists of the elimination of certain sounds at the end of a word.
The case of unstressed -e
Spanish has gone through numerous changes throughout its development and evolution, a process that has been in motion for many centuries and is not yet over. One of the most striking phenomena in its history is the apocope of final unstressed -e , a phonetic alteration that began to be noticed in our language since the 6th century and that identified it with others, also from Western Romania .
It is worth mentioning that in the case of Spanish, this omission was only carried out in an extreme way during a period of approximately two centuries, from the middle of the 11th century, unlike what happened with Catalan and French, where it persisted.
For words ending in le, re, se, ne, de or ze , the apocope of final unstressed -e began to take place from the 6th century . This can be seen, for example, in the term "Leonese" , which until then was written "Leonese" . Given the instability and irregularity of this movement, the apocope was not used definitively from that moment on, and that is why we find both versions of the word in documents and articles from subsequent centuries.
Until the first half of the 11th century , there was a marked tendency to maintain the final vowel in these words, and it is believed that the application of the apocope could have a pejorative connotation . However, from about 1050 until about 1250 , the permanent elimination of final -e was put into practice, even in terms that did not end in the aforementioned syllables. In this way, alterations such as the following were obtained: the words "monte", "nine", "forward" and "part" , became "mont", "nuef", "adelant" and "part" , respectively.
This was followed by the restitution of the final unstressed -e vowel, already in the second half of the 13th century , although not for long: five decades later, the apocope becomes extreme once again. Over time, the language began to acquire a less rigid form, applying this measure only in certain cases, many of which have survived to our era.