英语词汇学 第四章 Chapter 4.ppt

Chapter Four;WORD-FORMATION ( II ) (The Minor Processes of Word-Formation) Apart from the three major types of word formation—compound- ing, derivation and conversion—there are also minor types of word-formation, such as acronymy, clipping, blending, and others as listed in Chapter III, a number of which have attained some importance in current English. 1. Acronymy--Initialisms and Acronyms 112 ; A. Initialisms Initialism is a type of shortening, using the first letters of words to form a proper name, a technical term, or a phrase; an initialism is pronounced letter by letter. For example, BBC (for British Broadcas- ting Corporation) is pronou-nced/bi:bi:si:/; APC (for aspirin, phenacetin, caffeine, usually in a white tablet used for reducing fever,relieving headache, etc.) is pronounced / ei pi:si:/; VIP (for a very important person) is likewise pronounced /vi:aipi:/. 112; The usual practice in the past was to put a period after each letter of an initialism, but the tendency today is to omit periods, especially for initialisms of technical terms and organizations: e. g. CPR (for cardio pulmonary resuscitation) rather than C. P. R.; EPA (for Environmental Protection Agency), not E. P. A. Some initialisms, however, appear both with or without periods: EEC or E. E. C. (for European Economic Community), GMT or G. M. T. (for Greenwich Mean Time). 113; There are three types of initialisms: 1. The letters represent full words. This is the main type. Examples are: CIA=the Central Intelligence Agency of the U. S., IOC = International Olympic Committee, ISBN = International Standard Book Number, RAM=random-access memory, ROM= read-only memory and UN = the United Nations. 113; 2. The letters represent elements in a compound or just part of a word (Quirk et al 1972), e. g. ID= Identification (card), SST = supersonic transport, ETV = educational television and TB= tuberculosis 3. A letter r