finalversion6217

International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World
(IJLLALW)
Volume 6 (2), June 2014; 245-258 Nikafrooz, M., et al
EISSN: 2289-2737 & ISSN: 2289-3245 www.ijllalw.org
245
GENERATIVE ASPECTS OF ACRONYMS
Mohammad Nikafrooz (Corresponding author)
Department of TEFL, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Khouzestan Science and Research
Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran
Email: m.nik60@gmail.com
Elkhas Veysi (Ph.D)
Department of TEFL, Ahvaz Branch, Payam Noor University, Ahvaz, Iran
Abdolreza Pazhakh (Ph.D)
Department of Foreign Languages, Dezful Branch, Islamic Azad University, Dezful, Iran
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to investigate acronyms and introduce a new phenomenon that is occurring in
acronyms these days. Day by day, new kinds of acronyms are invented at different levels of
complexity. The authors of this paper have called them double acronyms (DA) and triple
acronyms (TA) which are made from some internal acronyms (IA). The Number of DAs, TAs and
IAs recursively and rapidly increases and as a result a more detailed classification is needed to
categorize them. In this study, different acronyms especially those which are used in different
fields of science have been investigated. In the present paper, the researchers suggest a
generative model for explaining and predicting the production of new acronyms. Finally, it also
tries to see to what extent they correspond to Minimal Program of Chomsky with regard to
oncoming changes which occur in English. The findings of this study can provide researchers,
linguists, teachers and translators with useful information about how acronyms are structured or
might be structured.
KEYWORDS: acronym, double acronym, internal acronym, triples acronym, classification,
generative model, minimal program.
INTRODUCTION
Using language messages in short forms, instead of using a long phrase in an utterance, is a
mechanism which people use to simplify their daily language. In other words, people use
contracted or clipped forms of words or phrases to save time, conveying larger messages within
shorter forms. One of the common ways to do this is to use words derived from the initial letters
of several words to reduce the amount of utterance, which is known as acronym (Fromkin, 2003).
Acronyms are usually coined by specialists and scientists, especially in the case of inventing new
things or introducing new ideas. The words radar and laser are two well-known acronyms widely
used by people all over the world. Nowadays, with the development of different sciences in the
world, a large number of words are coined in acronym form. Many of them like RAM, NATO,
and HIV are so common that people do not look at them as new acronyms anymore and they are

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used as daily and ordinary words. The rate of word building in acronym form is so fast that
language speakers cannot learn all of them. So it can be expected that some acronyms emerge in
a language in which at first only experts or specialist have the necessary knowledge about their
existence at the time that they are created, but with a passage of time they may be widely used by
ordinary people.
Today, with the development of different disciplines and also the internalization of the accepted
acronyms, another kind of acronym has been invented. These new acronyms use initial letters of
words strings or phrases, in which one of these elements is an acronym by itself. In other words,
acronym makers build new acronyms which carry another acronym within their structure. For
example "LECS" stands for LAN Emulation Configuration Server and "LAN" by itself is an
acronym which stands for Local Area Network.
LITERATURE REVIEW
All words in languages can be categorized in different groups on the basis of their characteristics.
According to Katamba and Stonham (2006), any language consists of two different groups of
words: lexical morphemes and function words. Lexical morphemes are those which carry
semantic content, like nouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions and adverbs; on the contrary,
function words mainly signal grammatical information or logical relations in a sentence, like
articles, demonstratives, pronouns, and conjunctions. Other linguists use different terms to call
these two categories. For example, Richards and Schmidt (2010) called them content and
function words while Crystal (2008) refers to these two categories as open and closed classes.
According to openness, as one of the characteristics of language, languages get new members at
the level of words in various ways such as word building processes. These processes add new
words to content group which is open to taking new members. The processes of word building
include derivation, coining, loaning, blending, acronymy, compounding, clipping and many other
processes (Hudson, 2000).
Based on the linguistic elements involved in word building, two different kinds of word
formation categories can be traced, morphemetic and non-morphemetic. Morphemetic word
formations are those word formation processes that use those linguistic elements which are
morphemes, while non-morphemetic are those that use at least one element which is not a
morpheme. This element can be a splinter, part of a syllable, an initial letter, a number or a letter
used as a symbol (Fandrych, 2008). Among all different word formation processes in English,
acronymy, blending and clipping are the major non-morphemetic word formation processes. The
focus of this research is just on acronyms and how they are structured and developed.
Acronyms
People use languages in concise forms as an instrument to shorten their daily language messages.
Acronyms, as one of different word formation processes which shorten words and phrases, create
new forms from old ones (Falk, 1978). To Richards and Schmidt (2010), acronym refers to "a

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word made from the initials of the phrase it stands for, for example “IPA” for International
Phonetics Association or International Phonetics Alphabet." (p. 7).
There is not a scientific consensus among linguists with regard to the definition of acronym and
abbreviation. There are some contradictions between different definitions which are suggested for
these two terms, and it is necessary to distinguish the differences which exist between them. Here
some of these definitions are discussed.
Plag (2002) differentiated them as follows: Abbreviations are similar to blending in nature.
Abbreviations are most commonly formed by taking initial letters of multiword sequences to
make up a new word; for example, BA (Bachelor of Arts) and DC (District of Columbia). Apart
from words composed of initial letters, one can also find abbreviations that incorporate non-
initial letters like, BSc Bachelor of Science. Disregarding the cases where the abbreviation use or
do not use dots, they can be divided in two groups according to their orthographic and
phonological properties. They can be spelled in capital letter and be pronounced by naming each
individual letter, or they can be spelled as regular words (e.g. NATO). The first one is known as
initialisms, whereas the latter is known as acronym. Both initialisms and acronyms can be written
in capital letter, for example; CIA (in capitals as initialisms) and NATO (in capitals as acronym).
Hudson (2000), states that acronym is a sort of clipping in which a phrase is replaced by a word
which is derived from initial letters of that phrase. There are two kinds of acronyms: word
acronyms which are pronounced as ordinary words not as spelling letters (e.g. RAM and Scuba)
and spelling acronyms or initialisms which are read as spelling letters (e.g. TLC "tender loving
care" and PR "public relation"). He also considered abbreviation and clipping the same
phenomenon, and mentioned that the difference between initialisms and abbreviations is that
abbreviations are followed by a period at the end (e.g. Mr/Mr.).
To Fromkin (2003), acronyms are those words derived from initial letters of several words. They
can be categorized in two groups, whether pronounced in sequences of letters or as ordinary
words, but abbreviations are shortening forms of longer ones. To her, abbreviations and clipping
are the same. Yule (1996) also suggested a definition similar to those proposed by Fromkin and
Hudson.
In this research, the definitions suggested by Hudson (2000) and Fromkin (2003) have been
adopted and all kinds of initial and spelling acronyms have been taken into consideration.
According to all definitions suggested for acronyms by different linguists, it is clear that all
linguists are unanimous about the fact that acronym is a word building process which is a short
representation of a longer text or word string. It seems that the main reasons for creating
acronyms refer to their capability for reducing the number of words in an utterance with keeping
the intended concept and simplifying the rapid transfer of the desired massages. In other words, it
can be said that the most important feature of acronyms is the capability to carry a long concept
through using a short form in a more economical manner. Using acronyms and abbreviations is
an effort in saving time and energy during language production which is in consistence with the
simplicity and economy principle of Chomsky (Zhou, 2012). For example, in a journal of
medicine the acronym NHLBI is used to convey the concept of National Heart, Lung and Blood

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Institute to readers in order to quickly receive the intended massage. There are some examples in
Table 1.
Table 1: Some common acronyms
Acronym Definition
CPU Central Processing Unit
GPS Global Positioning System
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
LAN Local Area Network
LASER Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
PC Personal Computer
RADAR Radio Direction and Range/Ranging
As it can be seen in table 1, there are two kinds of acronyms; word acronyms and spelling
acronyms. The former are those which are pronounced as ordinary words not as spelling, for
example: NASA, RAM. The latter or initialisms are those acronyms which are read and
pronounced as spelling or as a sequence of letters; for example, NFL and HIV (Hudson, 2000).
Table 2 shows some examples.
Table 2: Different kinds of acronyms
Type of acronyms Acronym Definition
Word Acronym NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
RAM Random Access Memory
Spelling Acronym NFL National Football League
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
Works done on acronyms in English and non-English languages
Literature review shows that there are not many researches done on acronymy. Most researchers
considered acronyms in their own languages. Similarly, in English language the number of such
studies is not very large. The following are some works done on acronyms in recent years.
In a research on acronymy, Vazou and Xydopoulos (2007) focused on the Greek acronyms. They
worked on different kinds of phrases which form initialisms and word acronyms. They also had a
look on graphitic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic processes which affect
creation of such abbreviated words.
Fandrych (2008) examined acronyms, blending and clipping thoroughly. She compared
morphemetic and non-morphemetic word formation in building new words. According to her,
morphemetic word formation is regarded as mainstream word building process. She tried to show
certain gaps which are left by mainstream word formation and tried to suggest an innovative
analysis of three non-morphemetic word formation processes to fill the gaps. She also added that

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morphemetic word-formation processes can be analyzed in terms of their modifier/head
relationships, but in non-morphemetic word-formation processes there are not any modifier/head
structure.
Slattery, Pollatsek and Rayner(2006) studied how readers choose article “a” or “an” before
acronyms during reading texts and which kind of coding (orthographical or phonological) is
preferred and activated early by readers in choosing these articles.
Haruo (2010) investigated the phonological nature of alphabetic Japanese acronyms like PTA,
JR, and JTB within different Japanese dialects. He conducted a contrastive analysis to explore
differences among the Japanese dialects, on one hand, and also between Japanese and English, on
the other hand.
McCully and Holmes (1988) examined the segmental and suprasegmental structure of acronyms
in current English. They suggest that while acronyms do not undertake Consonant
Extrametricality, they do undertake the English Stress Rule (ESR) in a very normal manner. They
also propose that bisyllabic items (in particular) are instances of word-creation whose structure is
to some extent conditioned by the notion of „canonical pressure‟ expressible through a template
drawn from dependency phonology. Finally, they expressed that acronyms provide new evidence
for the working and ordering of phonological rules in English.
This paper, however, aims to find out the variation of existing acronyms and explain how new
acronyms are produced by using other existing acronyms as internal elements. It tries to describe
the relationships between building double or triple acronyms and their generativity according to
Chomsky‟s generative and recursive model, and also to suggest a new classification or
categorization for these new kinds of acronyms. Finally, it tries to find out to what extent this
new phenomenon correspond to Chomsky's minimal program.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The main questions to be investigated in the present paper are as follows:
Is there any relationship between existence of double and triple acronyms with generative model
and recursive rules of Chomsky?
Is there any consistency between the existence and development of double and triple acronyms
with minimalist principles?
METHODOLOGY
Corpus
This paper relies more on English acronyms corpus gathered from different scientific disciplines.
The main reasons for choosing these disciplines are their capacity in producing and generating
new words especially in building new acronyms. This phenomenon stems from rapid
development of these fields which enables them to produce many new acronyms each year.

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Therefore, to conduct the present study, more than 20000 acronyms from a variety of disciplines
like computer, astronomy, engineering, genetics and so on were considered.
Instruments
This study used the generative model of language proposed by Chomsky (1957) to explain the
relationship between double, triple and internal acronyms. For showing these relationships, tree
diagrams were used to show how they were constructed and formed according to the generative
model. To do this, a computer software known as Edraw Max 6.8 was employed to show the
relationships of internal acronyms and other constituent elements within an acronym in graphical
forms.
Innovative Model to Presenting Acronyms
According to Chomsky‟s X bar theory, an X phrase always contains a head of the same type and
other elements like specifiers, which the head by itself is a phrase and it is built up around a
lexical category such as N from which it takes its name and its main properties (Cook, 1996). The
X bar theory defines and describes the productivity properties of phrases. Each X single-bar
phrase consists of an X and some elements and each X two-bar category consists of a single-bar
as head which is supported by other elements. This theory also covers more complex bar
categories and it can predict and explain from single to n-bar categories.
In this paper, the researchers suggested a model based on generative grammar and recursive rules
of Chomsky to depict the relationships which exist between present acronyms or the relationships
which have already existed between different acronyms and also the acronyms which may come
into in the future. According to recursive rules and X-bar theory, acronyms can be generated
based on some recursive rules in which each acronym carries one or more acronyms inside its
internal structure. This situation continues from lower levels to upper levels of tree diagrams. To
demonstrate these relationships, an innovative model was presented in a tree diagram format to
show how upper level acronyms are shaped based on their elements in the case of words or
acronyms (see figure 1).
Figure 1: Innovative model to presenting generativity in acronyms
According to the above figure, "A" refers to any acronym, and "A" single bar refers to those
acronyms (double acronym) that are constructed based on other acronyms (internal acronym),

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and "A" two bar refers to those acronyms (triple acronym) which contain a double acronym in
which that acronym per se consists of one or more acronyms. Other elements labeled by "E" are
those elements which are not acronyms by themselves.
Procedures
The procedures used in this study began with collecting English acronyms existing in some
disciplines such as computer, astronomy, engineering and genetics. Then, they were investigated
to find which one is a double or a triple acronym and which acronyms act as an internal acronym
within the other one. After categorizing and finding their elements, they were investigated on the
basis of generative model of Chomsky to see how these acronyms take part in constructing other
acronyms. Then their structures were depicted in tree diagrams by using Edraw Max 6.8. After
this stage, each acronym was supported by a comprehensive explanation in order to present and
describe its structure. Finally, a general model for these acronyms was presented to show how
acronyms may be produced and generated in a recursive manner.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Double, Triple and Internal Acronyms
There are some new acronyms which are made by using initial letters of a word string which
themselves consist of one acronym or more. In other words, acronym makers use some words for
coining new acronyms which are by themselves acronyms accepted and used for a long time by
society. There are some examples in Table 3.
Table 3: Double acronyms & internal acronyms
Double Acronym Definition Internal Acronym
AIR Airborne Imaging Radar Radar
COLD Computer Output to Laser Disk Laser
EDG EOS Data Gateway EOS
EGS EOS Ground System EOS
FGGE First GARP Global Experiment GARP
GLAS Geosciences Laser Altimeter System Laser
GLRS Geodynamics Laser Ranging System Laser
LAWS Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder Laser
LECS LAN Emulation Configuration Server LAN
NAM NASA Advisory Manager NASA
NAMIS NATO Automated Meteorological Information System NATO
NCCF NOAA Central Computer Facility NOAA
NIC NASA Information Center NASA
NISN NASA Integrated Services Network NASA
NOCN NOAA Ocean Communications Network NOAA
PGGA Permanent GPS Geodetic Array GPS
SAR Synthetic Aperture Radar Radar
SIR Shuttle Imaging Radar Radar
TONS TDRSS On-board Navigational System TDRSS
VAS VISSR Atmospheric Sounder VISSR
As you see in table 3, there is one acronym inside another acronym which acts as an internal
element of that acronym. In this study, these kinds of acronyms are called internal acronyms. So

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it can be said that they are those acronyms which are a part of other acronyms and the acronyms
which are made by using internal acronyms are called double acronyms. For example, LECS
stands for LAN Emulation Configuration Server and LAN itself is an acronym which stands for
Local Area Network. In this example, LECS is a double acronym which consists of some
elements. LAN as an element of LECS is an acronym which exists in LECS as an internal
acronym. Figure 2 shows the structure of double acronym LECS.
Figure 2: Tree structure of double acronym LECS
According to the above-mentioned example and table 3, double acronyms (DAs) are made by
internal acronyms (IAs). An acronym is called internal acronym when it is used as an element of
another acronym (double acronym). So we can say these acronyms (DAs) are somehow the
offspring of internal acronyms and IAs are their ancestors. This new acronym (double acronym),
like what was mentioned earlier, can be pronounced in word acronyms or spelling acronyms
form.
There are some double acronyms which are supported by more than one internal acronym. Some
examples are shown in Table 4.
Table 4: Double acronyms with two internal acronyms
Double Acronym Definition Internal Acronym
NCHSTP National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention HIV, STD, TB
NRDN NOAA Radar Data Network NOAA, Radar
According to the above table, double acronym "NRDN" consists of "NOAA" and "Radar" and
they by themselves stand for “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration” and “Radio
Direction and Range/Ranging”. These kinds of double acronyms are scarce compared to those
which carry one internal acronym. Figure 3 shows the tree structures of "NRDN" acronym.

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Figure 3: Tree structure of double acronyms NRDN
By the popularity of using acronyms, especially double acronyms, another kind of acronyms is
invented which stands at a higher level of double acronyms. These acronyms carry a double
acronym in their structure as an internal acronym. Table 5 contains some of these acronyms.
Table 5: Triple acronyms
Triple Acronym Definition Double Acronym Internal Acronym
ASF Alaska SAR Facility SAR Radar
ASP Alaska SAR Processor SAR Radar
EITC EGS Interface Test Capability EGS EOS
EVP EDG Valid Processing EDG EOS
FOY FGGE Operational Year FGGE GARP
GSAS GLAS science Algorithms system GLAS Laser
GSMF GLAS Software Maintenance Facility GLAS Laser
LSM LAWS System Model LAWS Laser
NISC NISN Information support center NISN NASA
RNN Regional NOCN Nodes NOCN NOAA
SPS SAR Processing System SAR Radar
SRA SAR Receiver Antenna SAR Radar
TGSS TONS Ground Support System TONS TDRSS
TVM Transparent VAS Mode VAS VISSR
VIP VAS Image Processor VAS VISSR
According to the above table, "VIP" stands for VAS Image Processor in which "VAS" by itself is
a double acronym which acts as an internal acronym for "VIP" and it stands for VISSR
Atmospheric Sounder. VISSR also acts as an internal acronym for "VAS". VISSR by itself stands
for Visible/Infrared Spin-Scan Radiometer (see figure 4).

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Figure 4: Tree structure of triple acronym VIP
Generativity of Acronyms
The relationship between different layers of word acronyms can be described by a generative
model derived from X-bar theory. Each triple acronym consists of one or more double acronyms
and each double acronym is built from one or more acronyms in a recursive manner. According
to the innovative model proposed by the researchers of this study, "TGSS" as a triple acronym is
an "A" two-bar category derived from "TONS" and some other elements and "TONS" is an
internal acronym which by itself is a double acronym and is an "A" single-bar structure derived
from "TDRSS" which is an acronym derived from a word string. In this example, "TDRSS" is
known as an "A" category.
For a better understanding, the example is presented in hierarchal structure by tree diagrams.
Figure 5 represents the relationship between components of "TGSS", and Figure 6 expresses its
generative model.
Figure 5: Tree structure for triple acronym TGSS

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Figure 6: Generative model for triple acronym TGSS
According to the model proposed here, the following tree structure can be used to describe the
generative aspect of acronyms. In the figure 7, "A" n-bars refer to the highest level for "A"
category which dominates other "A" categories which immediately come below it.
Figure 7: Generative model for acronyms
As you can see each "A" acronym consists of some words from different lexical categories as
structural elements. Each "A" bar category is constructed from an "A" acronym and other
structural elements while "A" two-bar category is composed of an "A" bar category and so on and
this structure follows up to more higher levels which are more complex bar categories like "A" n-
bars. This model which is derived from Chomsky‟s generative model easily describes present and
future structure of "A" bar categories. It can be expected that popularity of lower levels of "A"

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categories to the society leads to provide a suitable ground to produce higher levels of "A" bar
categories.
CONCLUSION
Acronyms like words can join together or join with other words to build other acronyms. These
coined acronyms are at a higher level than words and acronyms that they are derived from. Today
many double and triple acronyms are produced, but it takes much time until they come to be used
by people as common words.
As figures and tables in this study have shown, higher level acronyms consist of lower level
acronyms, for example TAs are constructed from DAs and IAs. It means that in the production of
a double acronym, another acronym is included, and also a double acronym is used to form a
triple acronym. For example, "SPS" as a triple acronym consists of "SAR" as an internal acronym
and some structural elements, in which "SAR" by itself is a double acronym containing another
acronym (Radar as an internal acronym). This fact refers to the capability of acronyms in
producing and generating themselves in a recursive manner. So it can be said that acronym
building follows productivity and recursive properties to build higher level acronyms.
The development of technology and sciences and the integration of information technology into
various aspects of our everyday life create some conditions in which people try to use shorter
forms of language in order to economize the use of language. Acronyms, as a kind of shortening
process in all languages, have always received a lot of attention among people, and today with
the growing use of email, chat and SMS in communication, acronyms have attracted a more
prominent attention to be used as one of the leading word formation processes. As it was said
before, the main reasons for using acronyms are economizing language use and transferring the
intended messages in shorter forms. This fact which corresponds to minimal program and
economy principle (Chomsky, 1995) can show and explain how acronyms can be used as a tool
to convey the messages economically. With the increasing popularity of acronyms between
language users, the chance of new acronyms to be accepted as a new linguistic item will increase.
This is because they satisfy more economy and acceptability features and principles of human
language. If a linguistic item is created based on economy principle, it may have much more
chance to be accepted by language users in the future. For example, "NOAA" which refers to a
specific term in astronomy has a high frequency of use as an internal acronym within other
acronyms like "NCCF", "NOCN" and "NRDN". It may be expected that one day this acronym
comes to be used by ordinary people.
In the future we may have some acronyms which are constructed under more layers of acronyms
so that people accept the earlier acronyms as common words and try to make other acronyms. It
is expected that the number of word acronyms (in different levels) will increase and there may be
more double acronyms, triples or any other kinds in higher levels.

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Implications of the Study
The findings of this research can be used to find out how multiple acronyms are structured or
might be structured. Having knowledge about their structures also helps us to learn and memorize
them more comprehensively. The finding of this research can be used in education, translation
and also as a source of knowledge for creating new acronyms.
In education, it can be said that having knowledge about structural elements of double and triple
acronyms can help teachers and students to better learn and understand their concepts and also it
can make learning more efficient and beneficial. In addition, it can facilitate the consolidation of
their concepts in their minds. For example, by having knowledge about structural elements of
SIR (Shuttle Imaging Radar), students have much more chance to learn this acronym
comprehensively.
Normally, one of the most common problems that translators have to deal with is the translation
of acronyms. Being unfamiliar with the internal element of each acronym may lead to some
serious problems in translation. When a translator is faced with a double or triple acronym,
getting the necessary knowledge about the formation and the structure of that acronym helps to
transfer the meaning and its concept from native to target language more effectively. This is
because having knowledge about structural elements of a multiple acronym helps to remove
vagueness and causes the translator to have a better access to its meaning and also its usage,
especially when a translator tends to describe and define that acronym in target language. And the
last implication of this study is related to acronym makers. Having knowledge about internal
structure of the new generation of acronyms (double and triple) especially with regard to the
feature of recursiveness can provide them with the possibility of creating new acronyms more
systematically.
Suggestions for Further Researches
The present paper only focused on some double and triple acronyms which are more frequent
than others, but it is suggested that some works be done on finding quadra acronyms and
analyzing and describing their structures. It can also be suggested to conduct some studies on
acronyms' generativity between English and other languages.
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