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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