Motives for clipped words in English and Spanish word-formation

This paper explores the origins of clipping, revealing a multifaceted phenomenon in which expressive or speaker-related motives are highly relevant. This study addresses the typology of such motives based on the communicative functions of language, in particular expressive and textual ones. Examples are taken from Spanish and English corpora and dictionaries to show how these functions might be significant in the two languages and how their common grounds might lead to universal patterns.