The long history of shortening: a diachronic analysis of abbreviation practices from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century
ALPO HONKAPOHJA,
IMOGEN MARCUS
Abstract:This article investigates continuities and changes in abbreviation practices from late Middle English to twenty-first-century digital platforms. Adopting a diachronic perspective and lexicological framework, it quantitatively analyses frequency patterns across fifteenth-century memoranda, letters and administrative receipts, seventeenth-century letters and depositions, late nineteenth-century letters, early twentieth-century letters and a subcorpus of WhatsApp instant messages dating from 2018–19. It then pres… Show more
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