Abbrs and abbrevs

[alice]

Have there been any investigations into the ways words are abbreviated in languages of various morphological types?

[Vijay]

I don't think abbreviations are all that cross-linguistically common to begin with...I mean, don't they presuppose the existence of a writing system? And I'm not sure there's really much to say about cross-linguistic differences in abbreviating things.

[Travis B.]

I don't think abbreviations are all that cross-linguistically common to begin with...I mean, don't they presuppose the existence of a writing system? And I'm not sure there's really much to say about cross-linguistic differences in abbreviating things.

What about syllabic abbreviations, where selected syllables out of a phrase are combined into new words? I can see this being possible even without a writing system.

[Vijay]

I guess, but why would you need one?

[Pabappa]

Spanish has some stress based abbreviations...e.g. bolígrafo > bolí. English has abbreviations based on the first syllable... lab, gym, etc. Both of these sound like they could work in a language with no alphabet.
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And Swahili does the initial syllable thing... https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Catego ... hortenings ...dont know if thats premodern, or if so, whether it arose naturally from the classifier prefixes or is a separate phenomenon.

[Vijay]

You mean BAKITA and CHAKITA? Those were founded in 1967 and 1998 respectively. That's a very not premodern phenomenon.

Spanish has some stress based abbreviations...e.g. bolígrafo > bolí. English has abbreviations based on the first syllable... lab, gym, etc. Both of these sound like they could work in a language with no alphabet.

Are you saying clipping is abbreviations? I'm not sure those are the same thing.

[WeepingElf]

Russian is quite fond of syllabic acronyms, such as Gosplan from Gossudarstvenny Planovy Komitet (name of the economic planning authority of the USSR). Hebrew, which, as typical of Semitic languages, uses triconsonantal roots, has a very long tradition of acronyms such as Tanakh 'Holy Scripture', root T-N-K from Torah, Nevi'im 'Prophets', Ketuvim 'Scriptures', in which the first consonants of the words are combined into a new root.

[Linguoboy]

Russian is quite fond of syllabic acronyms, such as Gosplan from Gossudarstvenny Planovy Komitet (name of the economic planning authority of the USSR).

Not just Russia, but the Soviet Bloc generally. Which made it a weird experience for me to come to West Germany (for the final months of its existence) and see widespread use of this form of acronym. It's occasionally used in the USA, but we're much more likely to find some way to shoehorn in a few vowel-initial letters to get something pronounceable. Or we'll just pretend they're present when they're not. (For instance, I have a colleague who pronounces MFHD [Marc Format for Holdings Data] as if spelled "muffhead".)

[zompist]

Mandarin abbreviates phrases by using just key syllables— e.g. Beijing University 北京大学 Běijīng Dàxué is called Běidà.

But I think this may be modern, as are Soviet coinages like Gosplan. On the other hand, some province names are formed this way, and go back at leat 500 years, I think— e.g. Fújiàn = Fúzhōu + Jiànzhōu.

Tanakh is a great example; does anyone know how old the word is?

Alphabetic abbreviation goes back at least 2500 years, to the Λ for Lakonia that appeared on the shields of Spartans.

[M Mira]

Mandarin abbreviates phrases by using just key syllables— e.g. Beijing University 北京大学 Běijīng Dàxué is called Běidà.

But I think this may be modern, as are Soviet coinages like Gosplan. On the other hand, some province names are formed this way, and go back at leat 500 years, I think— e.g. Fújiàn = Fúzhōu + Jiànzhōu.

Province names formed by abbreviations existed as early as the 1280s under the Yuan Dynasty. Though I can't come up with any other pre-modern abbreviations right now.

[Whimemsz]

The general Hebrew pattern is to take the initial consonant of each part of the word/phrase plus /a/ (occasionally /e/), and convert y or w to /i/ or /u/; this is also done with personal names, including their titles, which is why you have רמב״ם Rambam (Rabbi Moshe ben Maymon "Rabbi Moses son of Maimon" = Maimonides), רש״י Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitskhaki "Rabbi Solomon of Isaac"), etc., both from the middle ages. (I'm not certain, however, if those acronyms were used in their lifetimes or how late the development of this system was; apparently "Tanakh" at least was not used in the early Rabbinical period. The name "Rambam" was at least used in the Shulkhan Arukh, so no later than the mid-1500s.)

It's still used for modern abbreviations, like צה״ל Tsahal "the IDF" (Tsva haHagana leYisra'el "the Army of Defense for Israel").

[Vijay]

Malayalam has syllabic abbreviations, but I can't think of any that people would actually pronounce as abbreviations (unless perhaps they needed to refer to the abbreviation itself for some reason). Malayalees use a lot of abbreviations that are straight-up English, though (and I think these are far more common than the syllabic abbreviations).

Spanish has some stress based abbreviations...e.g. bolígrafo > bolí.

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure it's boli (without an accent) and not bolí (with an accent). I don't think stress has anything to do with it.