33. Secondary types of word-formation: shortening (contraction), abbreviation, acronyms, blends, clippings.

Shortenings (or contracted words) are produced in two different ways. The first is to make a new word from a syllable of the original word. The letter may lose its beginning (phone from telephone, fence from defence), its ending (hols from holidays) or both the beginning and ending (flu from influenza). The second way of shortening is to make a new word from the initial letters of a word group: U.N.O., B.B.C.

Types of Shortening: substantivisation, acronyms and letter abbreviations , blends (сращения), clippings (усечения)

Substantivisation: is dropping of the final nominal member of a frequently used attributive word-group.

The remaining adjective takes on the meaning and all syntactic functions of the noun and, in this way, develops into a new word. A number of nouns in English appeared in this way (documentary – a doc. film; finals – final examination; an editorial – an editorial article).

Abbreviation: a shortened form of a written word or a phrase used in a text in place of the whole for economy of space and effort.

Main types of shortenings:

graphical abbreviations (the result of shortening of words and word-groups only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are used for the economy of space and effort in writing), e.g. Mon - Monday, Apr - April, Mr., Dr.

lexical abbreviations

Acronyms and letter abbreviations:

Though the border-line between them is rather vague scholars make distinction between these 2 notions.

Letter abbreviations: are mere replacements of longer phrases including names of well-known organizations, agencies, institutions, political parties, official offices. They are pronounced letter by letter and, as a rule, possess no linguistic forms proper to words (ITV = Independent Television; SST = Supersonic Transport)

Acronyms are regular vocabulary units spoken as words (CLASS, yuppie).

All acronyms, unlike letter abbreviations, perform the syntactic functions of ordinary words and can have grammatical inflexions. Eg.: MP-MP's-MPs

Acronyms may be formed in different ways:*****from the initial letters or syllables of a phrase (NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization; UNO = United Nations Organization) *****from the initial syllables of each word of a phrase (Interpol = international police)

Blends: are words created when initial and final segments of two words are joined together (smog = smoke + fog; brunch = breakfast + lunch).

Clipping: is creation of new words by shortening a word of 2 or more syllables without changing its class membership (van = caravan, advantage (in tennis); dub = double; mike = microphone).

As a rule, lexical meanings of the clipped and the original word do not coincide.

E.g.: Doc refers only to "sb. who practises medicine", while doctor denotes also "the higher degree given by a University, and a person who has received it" – Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Law).

Clippings fall into: initial (van = advantage) ; medial (specs = spectacles, maths = mathematics); final (fan = fanatic)