Thematic classification of English abbreviations for language teaching organizations. Introduction

Abstract

The article analyzes the distribution of thematic subgroups (TSG) of English abbreviations within the thematic group (TG) "Names of language teaching organizations". Basing on the similar thematic classification studies of Ukrainian terminology, the authors found the lack of relevant research on English abbreviations, which, together with the need for their systematic thematic classification, allowed them to substantiate the relevance of the study, aimed to identify the said TSGs. The objectives involved the selection of the corpus, its analysis, as well as the formulation of conclusions and the prospects of further research. English terminology is a specific system based on the relevant conceptual features. It comprises a number of TGs, i.e. the sets of lexemes grouped together according to their extralinguistic properties. The criterion for defining a TG is a denotative feature reflecting the extralinguistic reality. The distribution of lexemes among the TGs is an important task of studying any terminological system. The corpus included 122 abbreviations selected from the original English-language sources. TSGs of English abbreviations within the said TG have varying degrees of complexity. The most sophisticated ones are the TSGs related to "Organizations directly involved in language teaching" (19%), "Government agencies" (14%) and some others. The proposed TSGs vary in their quantitative composition, structural type, parts of speech their full forms belong to, as well as the auxiliary words strategies. Some abbreviations are formally synonymic, though denoting different organizations. The analyzed TG includes ten TSGs, whose logic and clarity is provided for by the common conceptual features of their constituents, which are carriers of their thematic integrity. The said components are based on different term-formation models that constitute the prospect of further research.