Some studies of word abbreviation behavior.

Abstract

Experiment I demonstrated that the percentage of letters used in constructing abbreviations of common words decreased with word length (4-5, 6-7, 8-9 letters) and Thorndike-l.orge (T-L) frequency (1-24, 25-49, A, AA). The contraction principle (omitting interior letters) was preferred with short words and truncation (omitting terminal letters) with long words. Number of different abbreivations increased with word length, but not T-L frequency.Experiment II asked 5s to construct abbreviations by systematic use of contraction, truncation, or both. The results were virtually the same as before and showed that 5s can use the abbreviation rules in a consistent fashion. Experiment III required 5s to reconstitute the original words from the abbreviations produced in Experiment I. Although approximately 67% were reconstructed correctly, word reconstruction varied greatly with T-L frequency, word length, and sex of 5. The experiments were related to intraword constraint and coding processes.

An experimental evaluation of abbreviation schemes in limited lexicons

“…The most extensively studied schemes are simple truncation and contraction (Hodge and Pennington 1973, Ehrenreich and Moses 1981, Moses and Potash 1979, Rogers and Moeller 1981, Moses et al 1980. Simple truncation is the easiest to define.…”

“…Simple truncation is the easiest to define. Hodge and Pennington (1973) state that truncation is formed when 'One or more contiguous terminal letters of a word are omitted'@. 350).…”

“…Hodge and Pennington (1973) broadly state that contraction is formed when 'one or more interior letters are removed and the remaining letters pushed together'(p. 350). Thus, Bldg.…”

“…Simple truncation seems to be optimal in encoding tasks, where users are asked to provide an abbreviation for a word (Ehrenreich and Moses 1981). This is the rule users appear to employ when generating abbreviations for shorter words of approximately four to six letters (Hodge and Pennington 1973).…”

“…Two .factors have been reported to affect abbreviations: the length of a word in letters (Hodge and Pennington 1973) and the number of syllables per word (Streeter et al 1981). Thus, the fourth step controlled for these factors: bivariate distributions (letter and.syllablecount) ofthe terms in each list and ofa combined list were produced.…”