Why Is Itthe Ciabut Not *The Nasa? Acronyms, Initialisms, and Definite Descriptions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6032172 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Heidi Harley (0000-0002-3577-153X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 79 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 368-399 |
| Publication date | 2004-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Speech (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1283 • E-ISSN: 1527-2133 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00031283-79-4-368 |
| OpenAlex | W2124562335 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 7 |
Using 61 acronyms and initialisms culled from Web sites in May 2003, this study shows that the syntactic behavior of abbreviations from phrases is regular. When a definite description is abbreviated, its syntactic category is predictable, depending on whether the result is an acronym (ERIC,NAFTA) or an initialism (FBI, NSF). Acronyms behave like proper names and drop the definite determiner: “ERIC produces a variety of publications....” Initialisms continue to behave like common compound nouns and retain the determiner: “... the FBI has unique response capabilities....” Two frequent exceptions, university names(UCLA) and television networks (NBC), are shown to act like bare locative nominals in English (go to school). Other apparent exceptions (GE, AA) are also shown to exhibit regularity
Acronym · Determiner · Linguistics · Locative case · Natural language processing · Noun · Proper noun · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Variety (cybernetics · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · History · Lexicography and Language Studies · linguistics and terminology studies · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,4 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |