WORD FORMING PROCCESS COINAGE, BLENDING, ACRONYM

WORD FORMING PROCCESS COINAGE, BLENDING, ACRONYM

a.      Coinage

There are some points of view about the meaning of coinage. Coinage is the word formation process in which a new word is created either deliberately or accidentally without using the other word formation processes and often from seemingly nothing. As neologism or coinage, we identify the word formation process of inventing entirely new words (neology). This is a very rare and uncommon method to create new words, but in the media, people try to outdo each other with more and better words to name their products. Often these trademark names are adopted by the masses and they become ''everyday words of language'' (Yule 2006, 53). Also coinage refers to extension of a name of a product from a specific reference to a more general one such as Kleenex, Xerox, and Kodak. And in some cases, the meaning of these words is broadened. Example, complicated chemical or technical terms (like Aspirin: acetylsalicylic acid) are adopted as the trademark term and often replace standard terms for e.g. in this example, painkillers. This also happened to words like Xerox, Kleenex or the German Nutella. Some words are differentiated from 'standard' neologisms, namely eponyms. Eponyms are words that are ''based on the name of a person or a place'' (Yule 2006, 53). Common eponyms are watt from name of the discoverer, Fahrenheit from name the expert, jeans takes from Italian city of JENWA, sandwich from a person who makes his meal between two slices of bread, gold from Italian scientist.

The following list of words provides some common coinages found in everyday English:

Aspirin       Escalator                      Heroin             Band-aid

Factoid       Frisbee                         Google             Kerosene

Kleenex     Laundromat                 Linoleum         Muggle

Nylon        Psychedelic                  Quark              Xerox 

Zipper

Notice that many coinages start out as brand names for everyday items such as Kleenex for a facial tissue.

b.      Blending

The earliest blends in English only go back to the 19th century, with wordplay coinages by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky. For example, he introduced to the language slithy, formed from lithe and slimy) and galumph, (from gallop and triumph Interestingly galumph has survived as a word in English, but it now seems to mean 'walk in a stomping, ungainly way'. Some blends that have been around for quite a while include brunch (breakfast and lunch), motel (motor hotel), electrocute (electric and execute), smog (smoke and fog) and cheeseburger (cheese and hamburger).

A blending is a combination of two or more words to create a new one, usually by taking the beginning of the other word and the end of the other one. So new words like spork (spoon + fork), fanzine (fan + magazine), bromance (brother + romance) or Spanglish (Spanish + English) are created. There are of course other ways to create a blending: for example, you can take both beginnings of a word (cybernetic + organism → cyborg) or take a whole word and combine it with a part of another one (guess + estimate → guesstimate) (Yousefi 2009. The most common type of blend is a full word followed by a word part (called a splinter) as in motorcade (motor + cavalcade). Another example of combining words, in this case names, is the bleding of celebrity couple names, such as Brangelina (Brad + Angelina) or Bennifer (Ben + Jennifer). Sometimes blendings are referred to as portmanteau words. The term portmanteau was coined by Lewis Carroll in 1882, when in his book Through the Looking Glass Humpty Dumpty describes a new word he uses as follows: "Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy'. […] You see, it's like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed into one word" (Carroll 1996, 102 - i.e. there are two different words with completely unequal meanings put together to form a new word with a new meaning.

Examples and Observations:

motel (motorway hotel)                                 brunch (breakfast lunch fridge (freezer refrigerator)                           smog (smoke fog)                          stagflation (stagnation and inflation)                 spork (spoon and fork)                  carjacking (car and hijacking)           mocktail(mock and cocktail with no alcohol)                              splog (spam and blog)

fake blog designed to attract hits and raise Google-ranking' britpoperati(Britpop and literati) 'those knowledgable about current British pop music'.

{agitprop (agitation + propaganda)}           alcopop (alcohol + pop)

bash (bat + mash)                                      biopic (biography + picture

Breathalyzer (breath + analyzer)          camcorder (camera + recorder) chexting (cheating + texting)                             clash (clap + crash) cosmeceutical (cosmetic + pharmaceutical)         

docudrama(documentary+ drama),faction (fact + fiction),electrocute (electricity + execute),fanzine (fan + magazine), emoticon (emote + icon),flare (flame + glare),  flirtationship (flirting + relationship),   glimmer (gleam + shimmer), Globish (global + English),                guitarthritis (guitar + arthritis), infotainment (information + entertainment), moped (motor + pedal), palimony (pal + alimony), pornacopia (pornography + cornucopia), pulsar (pulse + quasar), sexcapade (sex + escapade), sexploitation (sex + exploitation), sitcom (situation + comedy), slanguage (slang + language). smash (smack + mash), sportscast (sports + broadcast), stagflation (stagnation + inflation), staycation (stay home + vacation), telegenic (television + photogenic), textpectation (text message + expectation), workaholic (work + alcoholic).

c.       Acronym

In English, acronyms pronounced as words may be a 20th-century phenomenon. Linguist David Wilton in Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends claims that "forming words from acronyms is a distinctly twentieth- (and now twenty-first-) century phenomenon. There is only one known pre-twentieth-century [English] word with an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word is colinderies or colinda, an acronym for the Colonial and Indian Exposition held in London in that year."

The widespread, frequent use of acronyms and initialisms across the whole range of registers is a relatively new linguistic phenomenon in most languages, becoming increasingly evident since the mid-20th century. As literacy rates rose, and as advances in science and technology brought with them a constant stream of new (and sometimes more complex) terms and concepts, the practice of abbreviating terms became increasingly convenient. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) records the first printed use of the word initialism as occurring in 1899, but it did not come into general use until 1965, well after acronym had become common. By 1943, the term acronym had been used in English to recognize abbreviations (and contractions of phrases) that were pronounced as words. (It was formed from the Greek words ἄκρος, akros, "topmost, extreme" and ὄνομα, onoma, "name.") For example, the army offense of being absent without official leave was abbreviated to "A.W.O.L." in reports, but when pronounced as a word ('awol'), it became an acronym. While initial letters are commonly used to form an acronym, the original definition was a word made from the initial letters or syllables of other words, for example UNIVAC from UNIVersal Automatic Computer.

Acronym is way to form word, it is similar to abbreviation, when each first letter of the source word is taken and to form new acronym. In English we can find like NASA (national aeronotics and space administration), VIP (very important person), NATO (north Atlantic treaty organization), etc. Acronym is forming words from the initials of a group of words that designate one concept. Usually, but not always, capitalized. An acronym is pronounced as a word if the consonants and vowels line up in such a way as to make this possible, otherwise, it is pronounced as a string of letter names. Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations formed from the initial letter or letters of words, such as NATO and HTML, and are pronounced in a way that is distinct from the full pronunciation of what the letters stand for. Of the two words, acronym is the much more frequently used and known, and many speakers and writers refer to all abbreviations formed from initial letters as acronyms. However, many others differentiate between acronyms and initialisms. An acronym is a pronounceable word formed from the initial letter or letters of the constituent words, such as NATO. An initialism is an abbreviation pronounced as the names of the individual letters, and is formed only from the initial letter of constituent words, such as TLA. This distinction is supported by many dictionary definitions, but not by all.

Although the term acronym is widely used to describe any abbreviation formed from initial letters, some dictionaries define acronym to mean "a word" in its original sense, while some others include additional senses attributing to acronym the same meaning as that of initialism. The distinction, when made, hinges on whether the abbreviation is pronounced as a word, or as a string of letters. According to the first definition found in dictionaries, examples of acronyms are NATO (/ˈneɪtoʊ/), scuba (/ˈskuːbə/), and radar (/ˈreɪdɑr/), while examples of initialisms are FBI (/ˌɛfˌbiːˈaɪ/) and HTML (/ˌeɪtʃˌtiːˌɛmˈɛl/). There is no agreement on what to call abbreviations whose pronunciation involves the combination of letter names and words, such as JPEG (/ˈdʒeɪpɛɡ/) and MS-DOS (/ˌɛmɛsˈdɒs/). There are also some disagreements as abbreviations that some speakers pronounce as letters and others pronounce as a word. For example, the terms URL and IRA can be pronounced as individual letters: /ˌjuːˌɑrˈɛl/ and /ˌaɪˌɑrˈeɪ/, respectively; or as a single word: /ˈɜrl/ and /ˈaɪərə/, respectively. Such constructions, however—regardless of how they are pronounced—if formed from initials, may be identified as initialisms without controversy.

The spelled-out form of an acronym or initialism (that is, what it stands for) is called its expansion.

Comparing a few examples of each types of acronym:

a.       Pronounced as a word, containing only initial letters

AIDS: acquired immune deficiency syndrome

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Scuba: self-contained underwater breathing apparatus

Laser: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

b.      Pronounced as a word, containing non-initial letters

Amphetamine: alpha-methyl-phenethylamine

Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolizei (secret state police)

Interpol: International Criminal Police Organization

Nabisco: National Biscuit Company

c.       Pronounced as a word, containing a mixture of initial and non-initial letters

Necco: New England Confectionery Company

Radar: radio detection and ranging

d.      Pronounced as a word or names of letters, depending on speaker or context

FAQ: ([fæk] or ef-a-cue) frequently asked question

IRA: When used for Individual Retirement Account, can be pronounced as letters (i-ar-a) or as a word [ˈaɪrə].

SAT(s): ([sæt] or ess-a-tee) (previously) Scholastic Achievement (or Aptitude) Test(s)(US) or Standard Assessment Test(s) (UK), now claimed not to stand for anything.[11]

SQL: ([siːkwəl] or ess-cue-el) Structured Query Language.

e.       Pronounced as a combination of names of letters and a word

CD-ROM: (cee-dee-[rɒm]) Compact Disc read-only memory

IUPAC: (i-u-[pæk]) International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry

JPEG: (jay-[pɛɡ]) Joint Photographic Experts Group

SFMOMA: (ess-ef-[moʊmə]) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

f.       Pronounced only as the names of letters

BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation

OEM: Original Equipment Manufacturer

USA: The United States of America

g.       Pronounced as the names of letters but with a shortcut

AAA: (triple A) American Automobile Association; abdominal aortic aneurysm; anti-aircraft artillery; Asistencia Asesoría Administración

(three As) Amateur Athletic Association

IEEE: (I triple E) Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

NAACP: (N double A C P) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

NCAA: (N C double A or N C two A or N C A A) National Collegiate Athletic Association

h.      Shortcut incorporated into name

3M: (three M) originally Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company

E3: (E three) Electronic Entertainment Exposition

W3C: (W three C) World Wide Web Consortium

C4ISTAR: (C four I star) Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance.

i.        Pseudo-acronyms, which consist of a sequence of characters that, when pronounced as intended, invoke other, longer words with less typing (see also Internet slang)

CQ: cee-cue for "seek you", a code used by radio operators

IOU: i-o-u for "I owe you" (a true acronym would be IOY)

K9: kay-nine for "canine", used to designate police units utilizing dogs

Q8: cue-eight for "Kuwait"

j.        Initialisms whose last abbreviated word is often redundantly included anyway

ATM machine: Automated Teller Machine machine

HIV virus: Human Immunodeficiency Virus virus

PIN number: Personal Identification Number number

LCD display: Liquid Crystal Display display.