28. Shortening. Types of shortening

Shortening. Distinction should be made between shorten-” ing which results in new lexical items and a specific type of shortening proper only to written speech resulting in numerous graphical abbreviations which are only signs representing words and word-groups of high frequency of occurrence in various spheres of human activity as for instance, RD for Road and St for Street in addresses on envelopes and in letters; tu for tube, aer for aerial in Radio Engineering literature, etc. English graphical abbreviations include rather numerous shortened ‘ variants of Latin and French words and word-groups, e.g.: i.e. (L. id est) — ‘that is’; R.S.V.P. (Fr. — Repondez s'il vous plait) — ‘reply please’, etc.

Graphical abbreviations are restricted in use to written speech, occurring only in various kinds of texts, articles, books, advertisements, letters, etc. In reading, many of them are substituted by the words and phrases that they represent, e.g. Dr. = doctor, Mr.=mister, Oct.= October, etc.; the abbreviations of Latin and French words and phrases are usually read as their English equivalents. It follows that graphical abbreviations cannot be considered new lexical vocabulary units.

It is only natural that in the course of language development some graphical abbreviations should gradually penetrate into the sphere of oral intercourse and, as a result, turn into self-contained lexical units used both in oral and written speech. That is the case, for instance, with a.m. ['ei'em] — ‘in the morning, before noon’; p.m. ['pi:'em] — ‘in the afternoon’; S.O.S. ['es ‘ou ‘es] (=Save Our Souls) — ‘urgent call for help’, etc.

1. Transformations of word-groups into words involve different types of lexical shortening: ellipsis or substantivisation, initial letter or syllable abbreviations (also referred to as acronyms), blendings, etc.

29. Word composition. Types of compound words. Different criteria for classification

Word-composition (or compounding) is the type of word-formation, in which new words are produced by combining two or more Immediate Constituents (ICs), which are both derivational bases. Word-composition is one of the productive types of word-formation in Modern English. Compound words are inseparable vocabulary units. They are formally and semantically dependent on the constituent bases and the semantic relations between them, which mirror the relations between the motivating units.

The ICs compound words represent bases of three structural types:

1) bases that coincide with morphological stems: to day-dream, daydreamer;

2) bases that coincide with word-forms: wind-driven, paper-bound.

3) bases that coincide with word-groups: blue-eyed, long-fingered.

The bases built on stems may be of different degrees of complexity:

1) simple, for example, week-end, pen-friend;

2) derived, for example, letter-writer, office-management;

3) compound, for example, fancy-dress-maker, aircraft-carrier, etc.

However, this complexity of structure of bases is not typical of the bulk of Modern English compounds.

In this connection care should be taken not to confuse compound words with polymorphic words of secondary derivation, i.e. derivatives built according to an affixal pattern but on a compound stem for its base such as, for instance, school-mastership ([n+n]+suf), ex-housewife (prf+[n+n]), to weekend, to spotlight ([n+n]+conversion).

Closed compound words are formed when two unique words are joined together. They don’t have a space between them and they are the type that generally comes to mind when we think of compound words. For example:

Cannot	Baseball
Fireworks	Grandmother
Elsewhere	Upside
Together	Sunflower
Crosswalk	Become
Basketball	Moonlight

Open compound words have a space between the words but when they are read together a new meaning is formed:

Ice cream	Grand jury
Cave in	Post office
Real estate	Middle class
Full moon	Attorney general
Half sister

Hyphenated compound words are connected by a hyphen. To avoid confusion, modifying compounds are often hyphenated, especially when they precede a noun such as in the case of part-time teacher, high-speed chase, and fifty-yard dash. When they come after the noun they are open compounds: a chase that is high speed, a teacher that is part time, etc. Comparative and superlative adjectives are hyphenated when they are compounded with other modifiers: the highest-priced computer, the lower-priced car. Adverbs that end in –ly and compounded with another modifier are not modified: a highly rated restaurant, a publically held meeting.

Here are more examples of hyphenated compound words.

One-half	Mother-in-law
Eighty-six	One-third