Abbreviations of English and Russian economic terms: a contrastive aspect

The paper reveals and structures the main types of English and Russian economic abbreviations. The author identifies structural features in the formation of economic abbreviations with the help of derivatological analysis in a contrastive aspect: English and Russian terminological units are treated as contrastive pairs. Abbreviation is a productive unit of the process of word-formation. Its morphological structure contains at least one abbreviated fragment of a full generative unit. Structural type is a correlation of the language level of an abbreviated fragment between reduced derivative and discrete linguistic units. It is a natural basis for the classification of abbreviated structures. Shortened economic terms are classified on this basis. The following structural types (ST) can be distinguished: ST-I - initial abbreviations; ST-II - shortened names which include blends; ST-III - ellipsis (verbal structures); ST-IV - abbreviations with affixation; ST-V - abbreviations-composites (reduced structures with unabbreviated words); ST-VI -syntactically-associated shortened structures; ST-VII: graphic shortenings. The author discusses each structural type in more detail, and illustrates them by the examples in (A) English and (B) Russian languages. ST-I - initial abbreviations - are formed by taking initial letters of multiword sequences. They may be pronounced as individual letters (initialisms), as regular words (acronyms) and as the hybrid of initials and sounds. For example, A) English: ZBB (Zero-based budget); B) Russian: NDS (Nalog na dobavlennuyu stoimost' [VAT]). It is also possible to differentiate structural patterns in the number and method of combination of vowel and consonant initials in the shortened structure. There is greater variety in the modes of combination of vowel and consonant initials in English than in Russian. ST-II shortenings are derived by the lack of phonetic material compared with the base word. For example, A) English: load (

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