It seems to me the work of the dictionary is to give us
conventionalized form/meaning pairings and not get too concerned about
whether they are words or not. (Which is not to say the question
itself is not interesting.) For the heck of it, I looked up DNA and
found it, plus DJ on the same page. For the same reason
(inclusiveness), a good dictionary generally gives us conventionalized
phrases as well. When we hear or see something, it's good to have a
way to find out what it means. I don't know how many people could tell
you what DNA is short for, but it does have a conventionalized meaning
as something like "molecular blueprint for life."
   When something comes out of a technical field (like DNA) or mainstream
culture, we tend not to question it as shorthand. I would bet that LOL
is thought of as "bad grammar" in the public mind, but TV, DNA, and DJ
are routinely accepted.

Craig >



Initialisms tend to have the stress patterns of phrases, so UN has the
> stress of black bird in “a crow is a black bird,” not of
> “blackbird” as the name of a species.  On the other hand they are
> fixed collocations that have meanings like words do.  I’ve noticed that
> for many speakers TV has become a compound, like blackbird, while for me
> and many other speakers it’s a phrase, like black bird.
>
> Herb
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of T. J. Ray
> Sent: Sunday, March 27, 2011 11:54 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The Word
>
> Bob,
> I still say RBI, but I hear more and more sports announcers
> saying like "ribby."
>
> tj
>
> On Sunday 03/27/2011 at 10:45 am, Robert Yates wrote:
> Just some observations about initialisms to words.
>
> In English, UN is still the initial; however in French UNO is a word.
>
> The same is true for UFO; also a word in French and German.
>
> On the other had, there is the case of RBI. Do you pronounce the
> letters or is it a word for you?
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
>
> "T. J. Ray" <[log in to unmask]> 03/27/11 6:27 AM >>>
> Herb,
> I appreciate your response. Can't find anything in it to disagree
> with at all. My
> curiosity involves how many different ways people define "word" in
> daily life.
> You touched on the way linguists use the term, leaving us with the
> conclusion
> that "the President of the United States" is one word. Teachers
> assigning
> 100-word essays to students would more likely count that example as
> six
> words. Dictionary makers are very spotty in whether they include
> items
> with more than word word in them.
>
> I'm also curious as to the transition from using the words for the
> letters (GP,
> RADAR) to seeing the grouping as a standalone entity where the
> individual
> words are not being thought of. (Yes, that is a terrible sentence!)
> As many times
> as folks refer to the United Nations as "the UN," I've yet to hear
> anyone say "UN"
> as a word.
>
> Thanks.
>
> tj
>
>
>
> On Saturday 03/26/2011 at 11:00 pm, "STAHLKE, HERBERT F" wrote:
>
>
>
> Without getting into some difficult and probably not entirely relevant
>
>
> linguistic issues, there is a linguistic definition of word that goes
> back to Leonard Bloomfield, the author of what was for decades a
> standard text on linguistics. He describes a word as a “minimal
> free form,” that is, the smallest portion of an utterance that can
> be pronounced in isolation without changing it phonologically or
> morphologically. Thus in a spoken sentence like
>
> The ball’s in play.
> [D@ ‘bOlz Im ‘pleI] (ASCII IPA with spaces for clarity)
>
> For an English speaker who is not specifically phonetically trained
> and behaving like a linguist, the minimal parts of this utterance that
>
>
> can be pronounced in isolation without changing their phonetic or
> morphological form are [‘bOl] “ball” and [‘pleI] “play.”
> If phonetically untrained native speakers try to pronounce the
> unstressed syllable [D@] “the” by itself they will say either
> [‘DV] or [‘Di], stressing either form, because any isolated
> one-syllable utterance in English must be stressed. By Bloomfield’s
> definition, only “ball” and “play” would be words. “the,”
> “’s,” and “in” would be something linguists call
> “cliticized forms,” that is, unstressed forms that attach to
> stressed forms. (There’s more to clitics than that, but it’s
> mostly not relevant here either.)
>
> I suspect this is not what you meant by your question, though. I
> think you are asking rather how something people say gets some sort of
>
>
> official recognition as a word. Most dictionary writers have a
> strong descriptivist streak in them, and they allow usage to determine
>
>
> what is a word. If an acronym like “radar” begins to appear in
> print enough, then they will include it as a word, perhaps adding a
> usage marker of some sort. The same holds for initialisms (LOL), loan
>
>
> words (sushi), slang (cool), and other sorts of new words. Different
> dictionaries will have different standards by which they determine
> whether to include something as a new word, which means that there are
>
>
> lots of words out there that aren’t yet acknowledged by an authority
> like a dictionary.
>
> Herb
>
>
>
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of T. J. Ray
> Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2011 8:36 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: The Word
>
> With dictionaries beginning to add items such as LOL to their listings
>
>
> of words,
>
> it might be a good time to pose the question What is a word?
>
>
>
> Granted that aconyms have been comi> loran, radar, sonar, snafu, jeep,
> kayo, veep, emcee, and others. In
> most of such
>
> instances, the new "word" is a blending of the individual letters and
> is pronounced
>
> as a single lexical unit. Do LOL and such texting shortcuts qualify?
>
>
> When one
>
> sees LOL, isn't the mental response a return to "laugh out loud"?
> Words such
>
> as jeep don't (at least any longer) evoke "general purpose."
>
>
>
> I look forward to your feedback.
>
>
>
> tj
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