MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF UKRAINE MYKHAILO DRAHOMANOV NATIONAL PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY OF KYIV

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

"Reduction in modern English: methods of formation and functioning peculiarities"

COURSE PAPER

PRESENTED BY

Ann Shcherbyna

a fourth year student

of the English department

SUPERVISED BY

Iryna Gorohova

an associate professor

of the English department

KYIV 2016

CONTENTS

Introduction 3

CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF FEATURES OF THE CONCEPT "REDUCTION" 4-9

1.1Historical information about abbreviations in English 4-7

1.2 Abbreviations and the problem of sound and meaning linking 8-9

CHAPTER 2 DESCRIPTION OF SHORTENING IN MODERN ENGLISH 10-31

2.1Graphic reduction 10-11

2.2Lexical reduction 11-2

2.3Trends in English in recent years 28-31

Conclusions 32-33

Bibliography 34-35

List of reference sources 36

List of data sources 37

Annex A 38

Introduction

Actuality of studying of reductions in modern English is conditioned by wide prevalence of such language units and their currentness. Reductions serve as the evident reflection of development of English in course of time and they are the symbol of its aspiring to the greater economy of communicative space and pragmaticness.

Modern information oversaturation of social life requires interlocutors finding ways brief statement of description of events and phenomena, including through the creation of new nominative units with informational content and 'simplified' form language signs.

The objective is to identify ways of formation and features emission functioning in the modern English language.

The aim leads to the following tasks:

• trace the development of the phenomenon as a reduction in general and within English;

• describe the main types and varieties of abbreviations in modern English;

• show features use of abbreviations and their place in modern English;

• explore the mechanism of reduction in shaping and word formation, define the role of reduction mechanisms in the process of forming new formative elements.

The subject of this work is reducing, the object is a modern English.

Scientific development of these problems engaged such scientists as H.Hart, Dzh.Sheard, O.Espersen, N.N.Morozova, I.V.Arnold, I.M.Berman. In Ukraine, the English abbreviation thoroughly studied such linguists as Yu.A.Zatyshnyy, S.M.Yenikyeyeva, O.L.Harmash.

The aim and objectives of this work dictate the necessity use of descriptive method, the diachronic analysis, the study of lexical-semantic and pragmatic features examples abbreviations used in modern English.

The practical value of this work is meaningful gathering comprehensive information about modern English abbreviation that can be used for teaching English.

Chapter 1

THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF FEATURES OF THE CONCEPT "REDUCTION"

1.1Historical information about abbreviations in English

The mechanism of Abbreviations used even when there was a so-called phonetic record; in some ways it was very common in early literacy, where spelling of a word often was skipped and initial letters commonly used to refer to the words in a specific context. Abbreviations history started with the Sumerians, in the XIV century BC. In ancient times, Greece and Rome, the reduction of words to single letters was still normal, but lost its using [22]. Ancient Roman acronyms or tyrotan mark, moved together with Latin in the Middle Ages, where they are primarily met in inscriptions and coins, and then in the manuscripts, especially since the eleventh century, and in the charters of which they do not disappear including to the sixteenth century. [26]

Increasing of literacy, as history shows, led to the emergence of abbreviation trends. The process of standardization of English in the period from XV to XVII centuries included a growth of abbreviation number. At this time there were calls for considering the standard of the English language of the royal court, but novelties of spoken speech actively penetrate the higher layers of society. Gradually reducing lost social importance and became common in all walks of life and social circles. Although already in the XVIII-XIX centuries abbreviation was attacked by purists that however means a large amount and intensity of use of the language units in broadcasting.

Initially various removal marks were sometimes applied in reductions not just the point. For example, the combination <er> changed to <ɔ>, such as a <mastɔ> instead of master and <exacɔbate> instead <exacerbate>. And if it does not seem significant at first glance, should consider the specificity of this phenomenon of copying academic texts, when people resorted to him, trying to reduce the time of writing.

For example, this we can see in the Oxford journal for 1503:

“Mastɔ subwardenɔ y ɔmēde me to you. And wherɔ y wrot to you the last wyke that y trouyde itt good to differrɔ thelectionɔ ovɔ to quīdenaɔ tinitatis y have be thougħt me synɔ that itt woll be thenɔ a bowte mydsomɔ” [22].

In the 1830s in the United States, starting with Boston, and the beginning of the heyday of philology and Linguistics in Britain academia reducing gained popularity. Sometimes as a symptomatic example of this lead abbreviations of names "fathers of modern etymology" Dzh.R.R. Tolkien and his friend K.S. Louise and other members of the Oxford literary group known as "Inklings". Similarly in Boston began its victorious progress even now very popular term OK a century before.

After World War II the British significantly reduced consumption of points and other punctuation in texts reductions in at least a semi-formal style, while the Americans still kept the old rules of consumption and to support them till now more than the British. A classic example which the Americans find pretty interesting places of intermediate consumption was in the name of the British organization of secret agents "Special Operations, Executive" – "S.O., E." – somewhere around it seized in 1960.

But before that Britons were more scrupulous in observing the French forms. In French, point is in the end of the abbreviation only if its last letter is the last letter of the word that designates it: "M." is short for "monsieur", while "Mme" is short for "madame". Like other linguistic acquisition in continental southern neighbors, Britons readily adopted this rule, while the Americans have established simple rules.

However with the years a lack of conventions has led to difficult deciding which shortenings for two words should be used with a point and which are not. US media tend to use periods in abbreviations two-part type U.S. (United States), but not PC (personal computer) or TV (television). Most of the British press in general gradually lost the habit of taking a point in abbreviations.

Minimization of punctuation in typewritten became desired in terms of the economy in the 1960s and 1970s, many Members carbon-film tape as a point or comma took the same length of expensive tape that could not be used again as a capital letter.

Widespread electronic communication (cell phones, Internet) in 1990 served as a push for a significant increase in the number of colloquial abbreviations, especially due to the popularity of short message service SMS, which limits most of the text messages up to 160 characters. This concise promoted informal abbreviation scheme which is called "textoze". Later, in the 2000s, was the "Twitter", which provided the social networking service in which text messages are limited to 140 characters [22].

Thus in writing in the English language appeared first reduction. At first they were graphic and then some of them succumbed lexicalization because that the process of simplification of complex pieces of any type is unavoidable. Reading the graphic cuts on names of letters, the gradual formation of stable word - is one way of reduction to the first vocabulary in English. And abbreviations processes reflects the logic that characterizes the development of the language that seeks to preserve the simplicity of expression and information significance for the purpose of communication.

Modern English is experiencing a so-called "boom of neologism" [13, 4]. Quantitative growth of vocabulary determines rationalization language and saving the nominative and word-building efforts. One of the clearest manifestations of speaking rationalization and optimization processes is the phenomenon of reduction lexical units. Mechanisms of words reduction play a leading role in the shaping and word formation. In the first case the reduction of word is the main and only word formation mechanism and in the second case it acts in combination with bases folding mechanism. Replacement lexical unit "more economical source" is not only rationalization of speaking native speakers, but also optimize the formative processes. Reduced sign language can be used in the speech message as an equivalent substitute or tokens prototype can participate in the creation of hard-abbreviated words. The term "reduction" includes both process and result of the process truncation, collection of phonemes and / or morpheme words and phrases without changing their lexical and grammatical meaning. The formation of a shorter version of the formal lexical unit for further use as independent tokens caused by speakers desire to reduce the length of the speech signal, simplifying the formal language symbol (especially when it is a key and often used in a particular subject).

If visualization occasional words created by reduction, they can become full-fledged units of the vocabulary of the language, coexisting with its multi-correlates the rights of their substitutes (synonyms), since it is known that the reduction differ from the full word forms its stylistic references [11, 11 ]. Short lexeme can stay ahead in its distribution of its multi correlate or even replace it with items.