The main types and models of the creation of English pharmaceutical terms-abbreviations

Abstract

The subject of the research in the framework of the article is the study of the main derivational models of abbreviated terminological units of the pharmaceutical field in modern English. The object of the study was the English-language terms-abbreviations of the sphere under consideration, selected in an amount of more than 300 units. In the course of the work, the structural types of pharmaceutical terminological units that have undergone abbreviation are analyzed in detail, as well as the key structural and word-formation models according to which this process was carried out. The main frequency and occasional morphological, morphological-syntactic and syntactic models of terminoderivation are revealed. The research methodology is complex and includes the method of continuous sampling of abbreviated pharmaceutical terms, the method of component analysis, the method of definitional analysis, the method of reconstruction of structural and word-formation models (models of terminoderivation) in modern English, the method of etymological analysis, methods of quantitative analysis. The main conclusion of the study is that the pharmaceutical field in modern English is characterized by the presence of terms-abbreviations containing from one to seven components, while letter abbreviations containing two, three and four term elements prevail. In the course of the work, it was revealed that about 40% of pharmaceutical terminological names are accompanied by an abbreviation. The main type of pharmaceutical terms-abbreviations are letter abbreviations, a significant part of which are initial abbreviations. Among the most frequent models of terminoderivation in the pharmaceutical terminosystem, purely syntactic models were identified. Frequency syntactic models are represented by various combinations of nouns, including proper names, adjectives and nouns, as well as participles connected by prepositions and conjunctions, etc. A special contribution of the author to the research of the topic is the identification of specific models of terminoderivation when creating pharmaceutical abbreviations, as opposed to the formation of full-structured terms. The prospects of the research include the study of models of the formation of abbreviated terminological units of the pharmaceutical sphere in Russian, Spanish, French and German.