Abbreviations and acronyms in the english language abbreviation as a linguistic phenomenon

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1. ABBREVIATION AS A LINGUISTIC PHENOMENON
2. THE PLACE OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS IN THE WORD-FORMATION SYSTEM OF MODERN ENGLISH
3. TYPES OF ABBREVIATIONS IN MODERN ENGLISH
4. WAYS OF FORMING ACRONYMS IN ENGLISH
CONCLUSION
THE LIST OF USED LITERATURE


1. ABBREVIATION AS A LINGUISTIC PHENOMENON
The English language has a strong tendency to abbreviate words of various kinds. In the English vocabulary, short, one-syllable and two-syllable words occupy a large place, and longer ones are perceived as something foreign.
The desire of the English language for monosyllabism is noted by S. Bally : “... the English language, striving for monosyllabism, turns zoological garden in zoo ..., popular concerts in pops ... » .
This, apparently, is one of the important reasons for the wide spread and constantly growing number of all kinds of lexical abbreviations in modern English.
It is very important that numerous abbreviations do not remain on the periphery of the vocabulary, but become the property of the entire language community, reflect important social concepts, are used to refer to objects of reality in everyday life, politics, science, economics, etc.
A significant part of the abbreviations is not denied at all, but, on the contrary, is approved in works on the style of the English language. Yes , in book "The ABC of Style" Rudolf Flash writes : “...don't hesitate to use a shortened word like ad that is used and understood by everyone. And when you do use it, don't apologize for it with quotation marks, as in: Bring this "ad" (better: bring this ad)" . IN friend place this same books read : “Don't be afraid of using shortened words like ad, bra, exams, gas, gym, lab, phone, pro, rhino, vet. All these and many more are now standard English. They should be used freely without either quotation marks or apostrophes " .
Under the general name of "abbreviations" are hidden numerous, and very different processes and results, the common thing for which is that the word is somehow reduced, becomes shorter in comparison with its prototype.
One of the first to address the issue of abbreviation was the Swedish linguist K. Sunden in his work “Materials for the Study of Elliptic Words in Modern English”. Considering the general reasons for the appearance of abbreviated lexical units, K. Sunden singles out: a) a functional, or semological , factor that is associated with the need to convey the emotional intention of the speaker; b) the practical use factor associated with the transmission of the message in the most economical way possible. In addition, Sunden notes the role of analogy in relation to the adaptation of foreign words.
The presence of an extremely large number of abbreviated lexical units of various kinds is one of the characteristic features of modern English military vocabulary in various fields. Abbreviations are widely used both in oral speech and in various written documents. In separate documents, only proper names, including geographical names, are given in unabbreviated form.
For a deeper understanding of the problem of the development of abbreviations, it is necessary to pay attention to some specific features of speech. First of all, one should keep in mind the linearity of the speech flow (and, accordingly, writing). Linearity means that in the speech stream all elements (with the exception of some so-called prosodic elements, for example, intonation) follow each other in a strictly defined sequence. The linearity of the language limits its communication capabilities, if only because of the existence of "technical" (physiological) limits on the speed of movement of the speech organs or the bandwidth of the visual channels of perception.
In the literature devoted to the problems of abbreviation, considerable attention is paid to the issue of the origin of abbreviations. However, in the overwhelming majority of works, consideration of this issue is reduced to consideration of the reasons for the occurrence of contractions. The second side of the question - how (according to what laws) the formation of abbreviated lexical units - as a rule, remains outside the field of view of researchers. However, it is this second side of the question that is of particular interest from a linguistic point of view.
Let us first of all turn to the question of the causes and conditions for the formation of abbreviations.
The question of the causes and conditions for the formation of abbreviations is very important because, having correctly defined them, one can more accurately imagine the possibilities of abbreviation and the likely trends in its development.
First of all, there are three main groups of reasons for the formation of abbreviations, which were pointed out by a number of authors.
Many researchers put forward such phenomena as the reasons for the formation of abbreviations in various specific languages, such as wars, revolutions, the progress of science and technology, the development of the telegraph, the emergence of joint-stock and trusted enterprises, the trade union movement, etc., up to the development of sports societies and parliamentary forms of government.
It is easy to see that in all these and many other similar cases, we are talking about extralinguistic (external in relation to the language) factors. The influence of extralinguistic factors on the development of a language is a large and complex problem that has long attracted the attention of linguists. The most significant in this problem is the nature of the mechanism by which language, as an instrument of communication, on the basis of its internal laws of development, using the possibilities inherent in it, responds to the changing needs of society, due to its progress. It is quite obvious that the emergence of separate new concepts requires the appearance of separate new lexical units; however, one can speak about changes in the lexical system of the language only with the massive and regular use of lexical units of a new type.
Other researchers sought to find out the conditions for the formation of various abbreviated units in the language, and by "conditions" they meant, first of all, the conditions of the linguistic order. These included, for example, the context, the commonality of the language skills of the speakers, the language habit, the frequency of use in speech, the "stereotyping" of the generating unit.
Most often, the emergence of various abbreviated lexical units is explained by the “principle of least effort” or “the law of economy of speech means”.
Quite a lot has been written about the principle of economy of speech both in Russian and Soviet, and in foreign linguistic literature (I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay , L. V. Shcherba, E. D. Polivanov, A. Martin, T. Paul and others. ).
A. Martinet believes that the economy of effort in general lies at the basis of the evolution of the language. “The constant contradiction between the needs of human communication and his desire to minimize his mental and physical efforts can be seen as the driving force of language change. Here, as in a number of other cases, human behavior is subject to the law of least effort, according to which a person spends his strength only to the extent necessary to achieve a certain goal .
In addition to the above most frequently discussed groups of reasons, other very diverse factors have been put forward as reasons for the formation of contractions.
I.V. Arnold argues that “in the English language, abbreviations are distributed mainly as a form of assimilation of borrowed words, due to which these foreign words approach native English in their sound appearance with their characteristic monosyllabicity ".
L. A. Shelyakhovskaya believes that "one of the main reasons for the emergence of abbreviations is the redundancy of information ".
One of the first to address the issue of abbreviation was the Swedish linguist K. Sunden in his work “Materials for the Study of Elliptic Words in Modern English”. Considering the general reasons for the appearance of abbreviated lexical units, K. Sunden singles out: a) a functional, or semological , factor that is associated with the need to convey the emotional intention of the speaker; b) the practical use factor associated with the transmission of the message in the most economical way possible. In addition, Sunden notes the role of analogy in connection with the adaptation of foreign words1.
G. Stern in his book "Meaning and Change in Meaning" among the reasons for the formation of abbreviations indicated the following:
1) phonetic reasons ( phonetic causes ); as a result of the action of phonetic reasons, for example, shun from attention is formed ;
2) graphic reasons ( graphic causes ); the action of these causes appears in the cases gent from gentleman , ad from advertisement , sov from sovereign ;
3) functional reasons ( functional causes ). Stern believes that among the functional causes, the most important place is occupied by the euphemistic contraction ( euphemistic shortening ), however, in general, he writes very vaguely about functional reasons, without confirming his remarks with examples;
4) reasons associated with saving efforts ( economic causes ). As an example of the action of these reasons, the word fall is formed, according to Stern, by reducing the phrase fall of the leaf .
Thus, even a brief review of existing points of view on the problem of the causes and conditions for the formation of abbreviations sufficiently indicates that in this regard there is no single and fully reasoned concept on this issue.
Thus, linguistic and non-linguistic (extra-linguistic) factors, or internal and external factors (in relation to the language) are distinguished.
It is important to emphasize the dynamic relationship between the development of society and the development of the language that serves it - changes in the life of a given society dictate certain changes in a given language. For modern society, the most characteristic is the rapidly passing scientific and technological revolution, with an ever-accelerating pace, which has an exceptionally deep impact on all aspects of society: the economy, politics, culture, etc. There is no doubt that it cannot but have an impact as well as language development.
When analyzing the influence of the modern progress of society on the development of the language, a sharp increase in the need for naming a huge number of newly emerging concepts, mostly special ones, is especially noticeable. It is important to emphasize that modern scientific and technological progress is characterized by the so-called “ technological breakthroughs” occurring in one or another industry. breaks-through ) are major scientific discoveries leading to dramatic changes in production. Such "technological breakthroughs" give rise to a large number of new interrelated concepts that need to be nominated.
Thus, the development of society at the present stage puts forward the need for a mass nomination, which the language must satisfy with the help of the means of word formation at its disposal. As academician V. V. Vinogradov noted, “no language would be able to express each specific idea with an independent word or root element. The concreteness of experience is boundless, while the resources of the richest language are severely limited . Indeed, each language has a limited number of root elements and affixes. That is why at the present stage, along with the traditional methods of word formation - word production and word composition (which ultimately have limited capabilities) - such methods of replenishing the vocabulary as semantic word formation, borrowing and abbreviation begin to play an increasing role. In this regard, abbreviation has a particular advantage over other methods of replenishing the vocabulary, since it makes it possible to form new root words and root elements . At the same time, it should be emphasized that abbreviation coexists and interacts with other ways of replenishing the vocabulary and that the language resorts to abbreviation in cases where it is linguistically more appropriate than other ways.
The increase in the flow of information, the widespread spread of literacy and the rise of mass culture, as well as the development of mass media, have led to a marked shift towards written communication. Written communication has become not only the most important form of communication along with oral speech, but also has an ever-increasing influence on the latter. The development of written communication, in particular, contributed to the widespread use of so-called graphic abbreviations and various methods of graphic symbolism, which made even more indefinite the already fuzzy boundary usually drawn between language and graphic sign systems.
It can be noted in passing that the currently observed significant shift towards written communication, among other things, has a solid psychological basis: according to psychologists, about 80% of information about the world around a person receives through the organs of vision.
Increasing the role of written communication, in particular, increases the possibility of conscious, purposeful activity to improve the language as a means of communication. The very act or process of transforming an unwritten language into a written one, then into a literary one, is the result of the conscious actions of people, social groups. As for the abbreviations, in which the graphic form often prevails over the sound, then they are of particular interest in relation to their normalization and standardization.
The following methods can be used to transmit English abbreviations in Russian:
1. Full borrowing of the English abbreviation, that is, its inclusion in the Russian text in the form in which it is used in English. For example, the abbreviation WS weapon system "weapon system" can also be rendered in Russian in Latin letters WS.
2. Transliteration of the English abbreviation into Russian letters. For example, the widely used English abbreviation NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization "North Atlantic Alliance" is usually rendered in Russian as NATO. This technique is most often used when transmitting acronyms in Russian.
3. When transmitting in Russian many acronyms, especially acronyms that coincide in letter composition with commonly used words, transcription is widely used. For example, the acronym EAGLE Elevation Angle Guidance Landing Equipment is transmitted in Russian as "Eagle", that is, in this case, not the literal composition of the abbreviation is transmitted, but its pronunciation, which coincides with the pronunciation of the English word eagle .
4. Translation of the transcript of the English abbreviation. So, abbreviation SHAPE Supreme Headquarters , Allied Powers , Europe is translated in Russian as "the headquarters of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armed Forces of NATO in Europe."
5. Translation of the transcript of the English abbreviation and creation of the Russian abbreviation based on the translation. In this way, for example, the abbreviation USA (United States of America) was formed in Russian, created on the basis of a translation of the decoding of the English abbreviation USA United States of America.
6. In very rare cases, a transcription of the letter-by-letter pronunciation of the abbreviation in English is used. Such cases include, for example, writing in Russian letters - BBC - the pronunciation of the English abbreviation BBC British Broadcasting Corporation "British Broadcasting Corporation", CIC - CIC Counterintelligence Corps "counterintelligence service" and some others .
The above features of abbreviations indicate that they represent a specific language material that differs in many respects from ordinary lexical units. When working with abbreviations, deciphering and translating them, these features should be taken into account, in particular, the fact that the so-called "decoding" (that is, the full form) does not always reveal the true meaning of the abbreviation.
So, all of the above shows that abbreviation is not a random phenomenon, that it is not some kind of “spoilage of the language”, a whim of individuals, but is an objective and natural process due to changes in the needs of communication in connection with the development of society and the internal laws of language development. .
The emergence and development of abbreviation - as a word-formation method - is only one of the elements of the systemic set of transformations that the English language is undergoing at the present stage of its development.