Acronyms & Co.: A typology of typologies

This article puts forward a critical review of the treatment of acronyms and related items (clippings, blends and abbreviations) as regards denominations, definitions and taxonomic arrangement. The analysis includes occasional references to works in Spanish, although English in the language chosen to illustrate the final proposal. The results obtained evince that detailed taxonomies with classically bounded and profusely labelled categories and subcategories coexist with general or vague definitions, unsystematic enumerations of irregular cases, and scalar or multidimensional treatments. However, none of the alternatives seem able to provide a truly satisfactory account of the object. The article concludes with a proposal to label and classify the categories mentioned by combining multidimensional descriptions with the notions of typicality and continuity. This combination results in a characterization of central, peripheral and borderline cases of simple and complex shortenings which is exemplified by English, thus providing a unified and comprehensive picture of this controversial area of word-formation