STRUCTURAL, SEMANTIC AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES OF THE FRENCH MEDICAL ABBREVIATIONS

Abstract

This article examines the functioning of French abbreviations in medical discourse, their structural peculiarities, their classification based on the semantic and formal criterion. It was determined the theoretical bases of abbreviations phenomenon research in linguistics: the formation and use of different reduced French lexical items in diachronic aspect. The analysis of this question has made it possible to define the essential functions of French abbreviations in medical discourse in view of its peculiarities, author's communicative intentions and pragmatic aims: function of saving language resources, time and efforts; the lexicalization function and the appearance of neologisms; the confidential function, related to medical confidentiality for the implicit and hidden expression of a certain information. Different types of French abbreviations have been distinguished according to different criteria: those of the initial type, which can be literal, sonorous or literal and sonorous at the same time, abbreviated monosyllabic units, reduced words and mixed abbreviations; graphic, lexical and syntactic abbreviations representing elliptical shapes. By virtue to research of the semantics of abbreviations, we have developed a classification of abbreviations according to the criterion mentioned above. So, as a result of the study the basic structural, semantic and functional features of the French medical abbreviations have been analyzed.