A Typology of Shortening Devices

Abstract

N THE THIRD CONTRIBUTION to this journal in which Baum deals with acronyms,' he asserts that technical term loses its usefulness if its sense is not sharply demarcated.2 He was particularly concerned with the use of the word acronym to cover what are frequently labeled blends or portmanteau forms of the sort illustrated by motel for 'motor hotel' or brunch for 'breakfast and lunch.' He also tried to suggest different orders of acronyms, depending upon how much of the original was retained in the shortened form. This article goes beyond Baum's observations (although surely it must be seen as part of the same intent) in reconsidering the entire range of devices used for compression of one or another sort. Since it has been objected that the word abbreviation does not normally cover all of the phenomena relevant to this general field, we shall avoid it. At the same time, an overview of the field may provide some perspective on the regular historical sequence so frequently followed as well as on the changing nature of the linguistic system itself, which now allows certain previously intermediate steps to be bypassed in favor of the final resultant. Let us turn then first to the general typology, a synchronic consideration, before aiming at historical perspective, a diachronic consideration. All shortenings may be considered in accordance with the particular medium which is compressed. Thus, one may have phonological shortening, orthographical shortening, or both. This point perhaps deserves a short digression, since the lack of recognition of this fact reflects a fundamental weakness in American linguistics, from the Bloomfieldian to the postBloomfieldian period. The same lack of insight of the synchronic structure of communicative systems led to the long-standing bickering between the historical linguists operating as synchronicists on the one hand, and traditional philologists, teachers, and old-fashioned grammarians on the other. It