Peut-on parler d’une néologie siglique en langue arabe ?Réflexions et observations à travers les domaines techno-scientifiques : le cas du domaine d’Internet
Abstract: Acronyms and initialisms, which may be defined as a type of morphological
formation, are increasingly important in at least two sectors of the lexica of European
languages, namely technical and scientific. The focal point of this study is to establish
whether Arabic, a Semitic language, uses this form of word formation : can Arabic produce
acronymic neologisms, and if so, how ? The empirical basis of this study is a corpus of
documents in Arabic dealing with the Internet published over a period from 1996 to 2005. It
appears form this that Arabic does not exploit this form of neology. This is due in large part
to its writing system and its lexical structure is based on consonant roots. Internet acronyms
in English are either borrowed directly into Arabic or are rendered through calques.
