MOKSLO KALBOS KULTŪROS IR TERMINOLOGIJOS PROBLEMOS

LIETUVIŲ KALBOTYROS KLAUSIMAI, XXIV (1985)

LARISA FROLOVNA KAKHOVSKAYA

ABBREVIATIONS IN SCIENTIFIC TERMINOLOGY

The productivity of abbreviation as a method of word formation and the active use of shortened forms in all spheres of public life are indisputable facts in modern languages. Highly economical in expression, abbreviations occur frequently in texts of various kinds, often leading to an overabundance of shortened words and prompting legitimate objections from linguists. However, only objections to the use of abbreviations—not to abbreviation as a method in itself—can be considered justified.

For quite some time, new words formed by abbreviation have been enriching the sociopolitical vocabulary of many languages. It is this category of words that is primarily examined when periodicals are used as a source of factual material. A number of interesting studies, based mainly on sociopolitical vocabulary, have considered abbreviation not only as one of the factors in language development but have also investigated the shortened forms themselves in detail. In the works of D. I. Alekseev, V. V. Borisov, N. V. Gyach, V. A. Itskovich, R. I. Mogilevsky, L. K. Pavlovskaya, and others, abbreviations are examined both synchronically and diachronically, both within the system of a single language and by comparing material from several languages; the history of abbreviations, their place and role among other lexical units, their structure, and their dependence on the source expression are studied.

A characteristic feature of modern abbreviation is the increasingly widespread use of this derivational method to form terms in various branches of science, technology, and industry. Lists of abbreviations of various structures, explaining their meanings, have become common in scientific and technical information departments and in editorial practice. There is evidently an urgent need not only to compile dictionaries of abbreviations for particular languages, but also to produce specialized terminological dictionaries and reference works of shortened forms.

Studying abbreviations as terms can provide additional information about the properties of shortened words, both with respect to their formation and their use in scientific literature.

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The intensive use of abbreviation in the formation of words serving as terms is encouraged, first, by certain intralinguistic factors: the tendency to economize linguistic resources, the temporal asymmetry between the pronunciation and perception of meaning, the uneven distribution of information across stretches of speech, the informational redundancy of linguistic messages, and so on.

The active use of abbreviations is explained, second, by their distinctive properties: (a) an abbreviation can convey the same information with fewer characters than the corresponding phrase; (b) the lexemes from which the elements of abbreviations are formed exist independently in the language; truncated components are associated with particular words at the moment of derivation, while during use both the abbreviation as a whole and the original phrase are associated with the denotatum; (c) abbreviations and their corresponding phrases are often used in parallel throughout the abbreviation’s lifetime, substantially broadening the scope of synonymy.

Observations show that abbreviations can generally be used synonymously in speech with the original (or corresponding) phrase, with a particular form of the head word(s), and, finally, with a lexeme derived from the head word or the main meaning-bearing word, e.g.: АЖ — rigid arch support — arch support; АЗС — motor-fuel filling station — gas station; РДТ — solid-propellant rocket engine — rocket engine; СБУ — self-propelled drilling rig — self-propelled rig. The use of basic psycholinguistic analysis techniques shows that in the field of sociopolitical terminology, for example, when reading a text containing shortened words, 60 to 80% of informants read and understand an abbreviation as an independent word; 4 to 30% substitute the head word or a derivative of it for the abbreviation; and 4 to 17% of participants in the experiment read the original full phrase in place of the abbreviation. The distribution of synonym pairs depends on many conditions, including the sphere of use. Thus, in spoken language, the shortened word and a semantic condensate such as самоходка, заправка are predominantly used as synonyms; in the sphere of written record (specialized scientific literature, periodicals), abbreviations are generally used alongside the original full phrase. The frequency of use (average recurrence) of abbreviations contributes greatly to their use in scientific terminology and to their being understood by a large number of language users; compare: АСУ, КПД (and кпд), ЛЭП, but АПВ (automatic reclosure), ИСО (inertial reference system), ТМК (theory of mass communication), and others.

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In various areas of the language of science, abbreviated words of all known types occur, e.g.: initial abbreviations of the alphabetic and phonetic subtypes — АМС, АРН, ОСТ (technical); НС, ТА, ФЕ (linguistic); syllabic abbreviations винипласт, лавсан, парсек; mixed forms — молекс (molecular sieve), ПРОСАБ (anti-aircraft aviation bomb), радиокип (radio comparison and direction finding), etc. Mixed abbreviations, in which initial parts are combined with syllabic truncations, account for a small proportion of the total body of abbreviated terms. No pattern in their use has been established.

Of particular interest are terms formed by abbreviating a particular part of the source phrase while retaining the main word in full. Examples of such words, called partially abbreviated, incomplete, transitional, and so on, are widely known in the language (Главлес, Гос-телерадио, вибропомол, etc.). The language of science has a distinctive formal expression for this type of abbreviation, e.g.: ВЧ-сигналы, НС-анализ, НЧ-сигналы, УВЧ-терапия. Their distinctive feature is that such abbreviations are usually hyphenated, with an initial initial-letter component, and can be transformed into phrases of various compositions; cf.: high-frequency signals, analysis by immediate constituents, therapy using ultra-high frequency. Terminological abbreviations such as АТ-двигатель and УВЧ-терапия should be regarded as compound words or secondary abbreviated formations. Repeated application of the abbreviation process (e.g.: 1) ultra-high frequency→УВЧ — 2) therapy using УВЧ→УВЧ-терапия) leads to the emergence in scientific terminology of abbreviations with an attributive component, which may be classified as the formation of adjective abbreviations¹. It is more appropriate, however, to consider the attributive component to have become part of the new word through compounding or abbreviation. In scientific terminology, abbreviations formed according to a pattern with recurring extracted components are systematically observed: elements such as -ан, -ен, -ин, -ол, etc. are added to the truncation of the principal meaning-bearing word in a syntagm. Series of analogous formations are created, e.g.: бензол, виналол, винол, ксилол, пайлен, пионы, резол, силон, синтин, этанол, этролы, etc. In some of them, it is possible to establish the origin of the extracted component and its full-form equivalent, e.g.: летилен, элан, where -ан comes from АН — Academy of Sciences; радон — radium and argon; силал — from Latin Silicium (silicon) and English alloy, while in other abbreviations such a component is used by analogy as a ready-made word-forming suffix; cf.: дедерон, нейлон,

¹ Шуба П. П. Аббревиатуры-прилагательные в современном русском языке.— В кн.: Словообразование и номинативная деривация в славянских языках.— Гродно, 1982, ч. 1, с. 157—159.

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перлон. It has been established that such names for substances and materials are not only actively used in the language of science, but are also applied fairly consistently beyond the boundaries of a particular field of terminology. They are included in polytechnic dictionaries, where they are marked “trade name.”

Despite the productivity of abbreviations formed according to the patterns “abbreviation + full word” and “truncation + fixed element such as -оль,” initial abbreviations continue to be the most widespread in specialized scientific texts, and their overall number continues to grow.

Other new trends in modern abbreviation are also observed in the language of science: the absence of so-called source phrases and the use of corresponding syntagms after an abbreviation has appeared; and deliberate homonymy between abbreviations and lexemes already familiar in the language, e.g.: взор — optical reconnaissance platoon, Выстрел — advanced marksmanship courses, СИРИУС — collection of information, registration, measurement, control, and signaling (automatic system), etc.

The distinctive character of abbreviations in scientific terminology is determined not only by their structure, method of formation, and subject area. The very use of abbreviations and abbreviation processes in terminology has certain specific features. The parallel functioning of abbreviated and unabbreviated designations is accompanied by the establishment of a stable association between them and a particular fact of reality. Regardless of the method of formation, the number and size of truncated elements, or the formal-semantic relationship between an abbreviated word and its source designation, both components of this distinctive word-formation pair correspond in parallel to one denotatum. A terminological abbreviation that has once been associated with a particular fact of reality (e.g.: силал — alloyed cast iron with 5—6% silicon, ПЗУ — read-only memory in electronic computers) needs no definition, much less a component-by-component expansion, each time it is used again. The parallel use of abbreviated terms and phrases for stylistic purposes may lead to one of the designations—the syntagm or the abbreviation—displacing the other, e.g.: КВ — short waves, КБО — consumer services complex, социолингвистика — social linguistics, ТМК — theory of mass communication.

In terminology, full-fledged abbreviated terms that have the status of lexemes and are recorded in dictionaries should be distinguished in particular, e.g.: ДСК — house-building combine, лазер — quantum-mechanical amplifier of the visible-light range (from English light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, laser), ПЭЗС — tidal power plant, РТС — repair and maintenance station, etc. The abbreviations noted

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They have a sufficiently high frequency of use, as a result of which they are readily understood and widely used in texts of various kinds and purposes.

The research also identifies abbreviations characteristic only of individual texts (or groups of texts). This group of terms may provisionally be called textual abbreviations. Abbreviated words of this kind are generally not used in a text without being spelled out. Their place in the language system can be defined as lying between specialized terminology and conventional abbreviations. This intermediate position is reinforced by the fact that textual abbreviations periodically align now with one group, now with the other: they are an inexhaustible source of modern lexical abbreviation; however, many textual abbreviations continue for a long time to remain conventional abbreviations, cf., e.g.: МС (interplanetary station), НТИ (scientific and technical information), СЭС, санэпидстанция (sanitary-epidemiological station), but АРВ (autonomous refrigerated railcar), ВУС (auxiliary communications node), ВЭЗ (vertical electrical sounding), гв. (guards, guardsman), ФЕ (phraseological unit).

The stability of textual abbreviations is explained by various factors: the highly specialized nature of the abbreviated units, their field of use, their association with the written form of the language, efficient modes of application, and so on. There is a definite system for using textual abbreviations: as a rule, an explanatory designation is first given alongside the abbreviated form in parentheses. Subsequently, the abbreviated term is used, and the full designation is brought in only when stylistically necessary, e.g.: “design of launch vehicles (LV), engines, onboard control systems” and later: “…LVs of the Kosmos type² are launched”; “Functioning as a supra-phrase unity (SU)³” and “…the position of these structures when oriented toward the SU^»⁴, etc.”

Textual terms-abbreviations cannot be called purely graphic abbreviations, since in texts they are read in their abbreviated form, used in sentences in accordance with the categorial features of nouns, are for the most part capable of lexicalization, and are characteristic of every field of scientific terminology.

The parallel use of an abbreviated term and its original designation for a certain period, together with the firm establishment during that period of the abbreviated name for a particular denotatum, is a закономерный

² Политехнический словарь.—М.: Сов. энциклопедия, 1980, с. 246.

³ Теория языка. Методы его исследования и преподавания.—Л.: Наука, 1981, с. 130.

⁴ Ibid., p. 132.

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stage in the process of abbreviation in modern languages. Nowhere, however, is it manifested as vividly and clearly as in the language of science, where blends and abbreviated words are particularly widespread.

In the study and codification of scientific terminology, abbreviated terms deserve close attention. The excessive use of abbreviated terms, the transfer of abbreviations known in one field to another, and the disregard of trends in contemporary abbreviation significantly impede the understanding of a text. Only the judicious and moderate use of abbreviated terminology can effectively facilitate the transmission of information without hindering communication.

ЛИТЕРАТУРА

1. Алексеев Д. И. Сокращенные слова в русском языке.— Саратов: Изд-во Саратовск. ун-та, 1979.

2. Борисов В. В. Аббревиация и акронимия.— М.: Воениздат, 1972.

3. Гяч Н. В. Вопросы лексической аббревиации. Автореф. дис.... канд. филол. н.— Л., 1971.

4. Ицкович В. А. Новые тенденции в образовании аббревиатур.— В кн.: Терминология и норма. М., 1972.

5. Каховская Л. Ф. Аббревиация как способ словообразования: Автореф. дис.... канд. филол. н.— Минск, 1980.

6. Могилевский Р. И. Некоторые замечания о происхождении и развитии слоговых аббревиатур в славянских языках.— Тр. Самаркандск. ун-та, 1963, вып. 3.

7. Павловская Л. К. Сложносокращенные слова в общественно-политической лексике современного русского литературного языка первого десятилетия советской эпохи (1917—1930): Автореф. дис.... канд. филол. н.— М., 1968.

8. Теория языка. Методы его исследования и преподавания.— Л.: Наука, 1981.

9. Шуба П. П. Аббревиатуры-прилагательные в современном русском языке.— В кн.: Словообразование и номинативная деривация в славянских языках. Гродно, 1982, ч. 1.