Abbreviations in SMS Messages in the Bosnian Language

Abstract

The paper presents the abbreviations used in SMS messages in the Bosnian language. Abbreviations recorded in the analyzed corpus are diverse in origin, shortening mechanisms, and morphological and syntactic features. Recognized abbreviations are first classified according to the type of shortened units – into abbreviations formed from words (nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numbers, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, particles) and abbreviations formed from groups of words, sentences, or utterances. Within the classes defined in that way, abbreviations are divided about the mechanism of shortening and described. Abbreviations in SMS messages are in some cases formed by the norms of the standard language but usually deviate from the standard forms. The same words and constructions can be abbreviated in several different ways, and abbreviations most often vary in terms of the use of upper and lower case letters as well as the writing or omission of a period at the end. Abbreviations are most often created by final elision, i.e. by omitting the end of the word and reducing the word to the beginning. They are also created by reducing the word to the first letter and some other meaningful letters inside the word or at the end of the word. In the corpus, not a single word of the Bosnian language was found in which numbers and letters are used as logograms or are incorporated into larger expressions that are read as rebuses. A particularly interesting phenomenon in shortening is the unmotivated multiplication of graphemes at the end of some abbreviations. A significant number of abbreviations created by dropping vowels and some consonants or reducing them to only some consonants are confirmed in the corpus.