Military-marked abbreviations in modern ukrainian media discourse

Abstract

The article comprehensively studies abbreviations, different in terms of their creation and meaning, found in Ukrainian media texts on military topics. Compound abbreviated words are inventoried in terms of derivational features and described in the context of external factors that became a prerequisite for the use of these derived units. It was found that in the information space of the active phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war, abbreviations function to denote: 1) persons with military professional activities, 2) military units, formations, bodies, etc., the main task of which is reconnaissance operations, countering disinformation, exposing fakes, debunking narratives imposed by Russia, etc.; 3) aircraft and various types of military equipment; 4) artillery systems, guns, other means of detecting and destroying enemy targets; 5) objective actions and processes. Complexly abbreviated linguistic units are characterized with a projection onto syntactic connections, semantic relations and morphological characteristics of words that structure compound compounds. Attention is focused on derivatives that combine only thefirst or both truncated parts of compound units, as well as sound and letter acronyms, partly accompanied by proper names and digital identifiers. Within the framework of derivative words of the initial variety, graphobarbarisms formed in Latin are considered. It is found that abbreviations perform two functions -nominative-informative and nominative-factological. Among the important features of complexly abbreviated units is their participation in the ability to continue the derivational chain and serve as the basis for the creation of new nominations. The functioning of derivatives of the abbreviation pattern is motivated by the fact that they contribute to the economical use of media space, usually without creating difficulties in understanding the information presented in the heading or article.