Neologism in modern English

THE MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

THE UZBEK STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY

II ENGLISH PHILOLOGY FACULTY

ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY DEPARTMENT

QUALIFICATION PAPER

NEOLOGISMS IN MODERN ENGLISH

Written by the student Nosirova Aziza

Reviewer: Umarova M.V.

TASHKENT 2011

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter I

1.1 Neologisms. Their meanings and division by their structure

1.2 The appearance of neologisms during the English Renaissance

1.3 The types of neologisms

Chapter II

2.1 Sociolinguistic aspects of mathematical education based on neologisms

2.2 Neologisms from the point of view of semantic and phonetic factors

2.3 Differentiation with respect to Time Axis of neologisms (based on word — building)

Conclusion

The list of the used literature

INTRODUCTION

Neologisms are the main problem of modern scientific research. A lot of new objects and processes are continually created in technology. We can find new ideas and variations in social life, science. Neologisms can be defined as newly coined lexical units that acquire new sense. Peter Newmark proposed to review twelve types of neologisms and discuss the translation of particular instances by the way of the appropriate contextual factors. Every time neologisms appeared in our life. The 16^th century was the period of the great course in literature called «Renaissance». A lot of writers used new words in their poems and stories in order to «enrich» the English language. But some of neologisms are short-lived. They appeared and disappeared.

The subject matter of the qualification paper is lexical-semantic features of neologisms in modern English.

The object of the research work is the types of neologisms: the old words with new senses, derived words, abbreviations, collocations, new coinages.

The main aim of this work is to describe neologisms by their structure, to give examples of neologisms of old and new senses, to compare their meanings, to describe neologisms from the point of view of phonetic factors and semantics.

The following tasks have been solved in our qualification paper:

1. The contextual factors and comparative procedures of neologisms (all factors are in the frame of reference to compare neologisms) page 10.

2. To show examples of neologisms according to their structure in some languages.

The actuality of this theme is that neologisms are very important in our life, especially now, because we have a development of science and technology, the new courses in the field of literature, art and music etc. And there are a lot of new words created in different fields. All these mean that the actuality of this theme is very important. Sometimes people even don’t know the meaning of some abbreviations because they are new. Indeed, sometimes with the abbreviations such as AIDS, the unabbreviated form may be so specialized that it is unknown to most people — a point not missed by the compilers of quiz games, who regularly catch people out with a well-known abbreviations and another types of neologisms.

The result achieved and their novelty. Lexical-semantic features of neologisms in modern English, which more distinguished as the whole unit being in the mutual connection, have been studied. As the result of the investigation of patterns the new data of structural and semantic properties of the analyzed neologisms which determine the criteria of including frame groups into the microsystem have been revealed. Description of neologisms was conducted taking into account the active interaction of a person with objective reality, while word perception is connected with subjective assessment and has reflection on the language of the certain society.

The theoretical meaning. This theme is not so spread, but a lot of language scientists describe neologisms in their books. It is a very interesting theme to study. New notions come into being, requiring new words to name them. Sometimes a new is introduced for a thing or notion that continues to exist, and the older name ceases to be used. The number of words in a language is therefore not constant; the increase as a rule, more than makes up for the leak-out. It means that the vocabulary of any language does not remain the same but changes constantly.

The practical value. The theme of this qualification paper can be used as an aid for lectures of lexicology and it also can be used as a topic for discussion for students of Language Universities.

The structure of the work consists of the following parts: introduction, 2 chapters, conclusion and the list of the used literature.

The introduction to this work is based on the choice of this theme, the actuality of the aim and specific problems. Also considered are the theoretical meaning and the practical value of this work.

The first chapter shows the division of neologisms by their structure.

In the second chapter the appearance of neologisms during the English Renaissance is considered.

In the third chapter the types of the neologisms were described.

The forth chapter shows neologisms from the point view of semantic and phonetic factors.

The fifth chapter studies sociolinguistic aspects of mathematical education based on neologisms.

The sixth chapter studies neologisms as a word-building.

The conclusion generalizes all the results of the work and forms its primary conclusions. Abbreviations used on this Qualification Paper:

SL — source language

TL — target language.

CHAPTER I

1.1 NEOLOGISMS. THEIR MEANING AND DIVISION BY THEIR STRUCTURE

Neologism — 1) The use of new words or old words with new meaning: «His particular grievance was neologisms… even the newspaper, he complained, had got into the habit of using the adjective «off-coloured» — properly applied only to certain diamonds — to describe the pigmentation of half-caste people _New Yorker);

2) New word or expression or a new meaning for an old word: Such neologisms are clipped words like lube for lubricating oil and co-ed for coeducational; back-formations like to televise (1931) from television…; artificial or made-up formations like carborundum, cellophane and pianola (Simeon Patter);

3) The introduction of new view of doctrines, especially on religious subjects (The world encyclopedia).

Neologisms are perhaps the non-literary and the professional translator’s biggest problem. New object and processes are continually created in technology. New ideas and variations on feelings come from the media. Terms from the social sciences, slang, dialect coming into the mainstream of language, transferred words, make up the rest. A few years ago, three hundred «new» words were said to be counted in four successive numbers of the French weekly language express. It has been stated that each language acquires three thousand new words annually. In fact, neologisms cannot be quantified, since so many hover between acceptance and oblivion and many are short-lived individual creations. What is obvious is that their number is increasing steeply and as we become more language as well as self-conscious, articles, books and specialist and general dictionaries devoted to them appear more commonly. Since they usually arise first in a response to a particular need, a majority of them have a single meaning and can therefore be translated out of context, but many of them soon acquire new (and sometimes lose the old) meanings in the Target Language.

Neologisms can be defined as newly coined lexical units or existing lexical units that acquire a new sense. Unless they are opaque, obscure and possibly cacophonous (compare «yum» and «yuck»), neologisms usually attract and please everyone, but purists are so attached to Graeco-Latin conventions. (Once there was a fuss about oracy) that they jib at so-called violations of English grammar (`who did you get it from?'). Unlike the French, the English have no basis from which to attack new words. Most people like neologisms and so does the media and commercial interests exploit this liking. Multinationals with their ingenious advertising, make efforts to convert their brand names (Coke, Tipp-Ex, Tesa, Bic, Schweppes, etc.) into eponyms (i.e. any word derived from a proper noun including acronyms) and in appropriate cases you have to resist this attempt when you translate.

Neologism is any word which is formed according to the productive structural patterns or borrowed from another language and felt by the speakers as something new. Example: tape-recorder, supermarket, V-day (Victory day). The research of cosmic space by the Soviet people gave birth to new words: Sputnik, spaceship, space rocket. For that period all these words were new.

J.Buranov and A. Muminov in their book «A practical course in English lexicology» (1990) said that neologisms may be divided into:

1) Root words: Ex: jeep — a small light motor vehicle, zebra — street crossing place etc;

2) Derived words: Ex: collaborationist — one in occupied territory works helpfully with the enemy, to accessorize — to provide with dress accessories;

3) Compound: Ex: air-drop, microfilm-reader.

New words are as a rule monosemantic. Terms, used in various fields of science and technology make the greater part of neologisms. New words belong only to the notional parts of speech: to nouns, verbs, adjectives etc.

Neologisms are mainly formed by:

1) Word formation (mainly production types).

Ex: -gen, -ogen: carcinogen (biological term);

— ics: psycholinguistics, electronics;

— nik: filmnik; folknik;

2) Semantic extension: heel — a tractor (old meaning: heel — the back part of foot); to screen — to classify;

3) Borrowing: telecast, telestar (Greek), sputnik.

Neologisms also deal with metaphor. The translation is concerned with certain particular problems: metaphor, synonyms; proper names, institution and cultural terms, grammatical, lexical and referential ambiguity, clishй, quotations; cultural focus, overlap and distance, idiolect; neologisms; jargon, the four categories of key terms.

Neologisms can be categorized as:

a) formal — completely new words. These are rare — the locus classicus is the 17^th century word for `gas' (from `chaos') — in the semantic translation. If they are original, they should be transcribed, and recreated, if recently coined. Brand names should be transcribed or given their TL brand names;

b) eponyms — recently based on proper names, including inventors and names of firms and towns. (For the purposes of translation theory at any rate, I am extending the meaning and area of `eponym' to include all instances of transferred use of proper names, e.g. `macadamise', `Stalingrad', `academic. The secondary meaning of antonomasia (use of a proper name to express a general idea) is also included within my definition of `eponym'. The translator often has to be careful not to transcribe these (boycotter, but not limoger) and in particular beware of the Western nations' chauvinism about their medical vocabulary (Roentgen, Graves, Hodgkin, Wilson etc).;

c) derived — formed with production prefixes (i.e. de-, mis-, non-, pre-, pro-) and suffixes (e.g. -ism, -ize, -ization), e.g. misdefine, non-event, encyclopaedism, taxon, paraclinique, etc. If such neologisms are transparently comprehensible, the translator can cautiously ` naturalise' them, assuming that Latin and Greek roots are acceptable in the TL — particularly in technological texts;

d) new collocations, e.g. `urban guerrilla', `unsocial hours', route fleurie, ouvrier spйcialisй (`skilled worker'). Normally it is unwise to attempt a loan or `through translation' unless the translator is officially authorized to do so, otherwise he has to `normalise'. Is `scenic route' acceptable for route fleurie?

e) phrasal (nouns or verbs) — `trade-off'', 'zero-in', etc. The translator has to normalise these in the TL usually by translating into two or three words;

f) acronyms (now a translation label for any combination of initial letters or syllables, and apparently the most productive element in European languages). International acronyms are usually translated (e.g. EEC, CEE, EG) — national acronyms are usually retained with, if necessary, a `translation' of their function, rather than their meaning, e.g. CNAA-CNAA, degree-awarding body for higher education colleges (non-university) in the United Kingdom; EDF, the French Electricity Authority, ZUP, areas for priority housing development. Words derived from acronyms have to be normalised (e.g. cйgйtiste, `member of CGT, the French TUC', onusien (related to UNO); smicard, `minimum wage earner';

g) blends («portmanteau» words), i.e. combinations of two words, highly productive. These either become internationalisms for at least European languages if they have Latin/Greek roots (e.g. `meritocracy', `tachygraph', `eurocrat', `bionics', many medical terms) or they are `borrowed' (e.g. sovkhoz, sovnarkom, sovpreme) or adopted (e.g. motel). If no recognized equivalent exists they should be translated (e.g. Abkьft, `mania for abbreviations', ecotage, `environment cult', but `workaholic ergomane (?)). Opaque blends such as `ruckus' should where possible have both components (ruction, rumpus) translated;

h) semantic, old words with new meanings, e.g. `sophisticated', `viable', `credible', `gay', base (F), Base (G). These should be `normalised' (i.e. translated by a normal word) but `base' should perhaps replace the patronizing `rank and file' and the excruciating `grassroots', as an old word with a new meaning (cf. `chalk face');

i) abbreviations (shortened form of word). These are commoner in French and German than English: e.g. Uni, Philo, `Beeb', `vibes', bac, Huma; they are normalised (i.e. translated unabbreviated), unless there is a recognized equivalent (e.g. bus, metro, plus sci-tech terms).

P.Newmark proposes to review twelve types of neologisms and discuss the translation of particular instances by way of the appropriate contextual factors. P. Newmark is a professor and he has many years of experience in teaching translation techniques. In the below frame you can see types, contextual factors and translation procedures for the translation of neologisms.

Neologisms. These are very common in newspaper vocabulary. The newspaper is very quick to react to any new development in the life of society, in science and technology. Hence, neologisms make their way into the language of the newspaper very easily and often even spring up on newspaper pages, e.g. lunik, a splash-down (the act of bringing a spacecraft to a water surface), a teach-in (a form of campaigning through heated political discussion), backlash or white backlash (a violent reaction of American racists to the Negroes' struggle for civil rights), frontlash (a vigorous antiracist movement), stop-go policies (contradictory, indecisive and inefficient policies).

The above-listed peculiarities of brief news items are the basic vocabulary parameters of English newspaper style.

The vocabulary of brief news items is for the most part devoid of emotional colouring. Some papers, however, especially those classed among «mass» or «popular» papers, tend to introduce emotionally coloured lexical units into essentially matter-of-fact news stories, e.g.

" Health Minister Kenneth Robinson made this shock announcement yesterday in the Commons." (Daily Mirror)

" Technicians at the space base here are now working flat out to prepare GeAiini 6 for next Monday’s blast-off." (Daily Mail)

" Defense Secretary Roy Mason yesterday gave a rather frosty reception in the Commons to the latest proposal for a common defense policy for all EEC countries." (Morning Star)

Important as vocabulary is, it is not so much the words and phrases used in brief news items that distinguish them from other forms of newspaper writing. The vocabulary groups listed above are also commonly found in headlines and newspaper articles. The basic peculiarities of news items lie in their syntactical structure.

As the reporter is obliged to be brief, he naturally tries to cram all his facts into the space allotted. This tendency predetermines the peculiar composition of brief news items and the syntactical structure, of the sentences. The size of brief news items varies from one sentence to several (short) paragraphs. And generally, the shorter the news item, | the more complex its syntactical structure.

The following grammatical peculiarities of brief news items are of paramount importance, and may be regarded as their grammatical parameters.

Translation of neologisms.

The English language is very rich in neologisms — the word has been created recently and perhaps will not live in the language for a long time. It is very seldom that we find equivalent for the translation of neologisms and for the most part we use descriptive translation and word-for-word translation /people of good will, top level talks.

We usually make out the meaning of the new words with the help of the context, but it is also necessary to take into consideration the way of their formation.

The frame of reference for the translation of neologisms

Neologisms. These are very common in newspaper vocabulary. The newspaper is very quick to react to any new development in the life of society, in science and technology. Hence, neologisms make their way into the language of the newspaper very easily and often even spring up on newspaper pages, e.g. lunik, a splash-down (the act of bringing a spacecraft to a water surface), a teach-in (a form of campaigning through heated political discussion), backlash or white backlash (a violent reaction of American racists to the Negroes' struggle for civil rights), frontlash (a vigorous antiracist movement), stop-go policies (contradictory, indecisive and inefficient policies).

The above-listed peculiarities of brief news items are the basic vocabulary parameters of English newspaper style.

The vocabulary of brief news items is for the most part devoid of emotional colouring. Some papers, however, especially those classed among «mass» or «popular» papers, tend to introduce emotionally coloured lexical units into essentially matter-of-fact news stories, e.g.

" Health Minister Kenneth Robinson made this shock announcement yesterday in the Commons." (Daily Mirror)

" Technicians at the space base here are now working flat out to prepare GeAiini 6 for next Monday’s blast-off." (Daily Mail)

" Defence Secretary Roy Mason yesterday gave a rather frosty reception in the Commons to the latest proposal for a common defence policy for all EEC countries." (Morning Star)

Important as vocabulary is, it is not so much the words and phrases used in brief news items that distinguish them from other forms of newspaper writing. The vocabulary groups listed above are also commonly found in headlines and newspaper articles. The basic peculiarities of news items lie in their syntactical structure.

As the reporter is obliged to be brief, he naturally tries to cram all his facts into the space allotted. This tendency predetermines the peculiar composition of brief news items and the syntactical structure^, of the sentences. The size of brief news items varies from one sentence to several (short) paragraphs. And generally, the shorter the news item, | the more complex its syntactical structure.

The following grammatical peculiarities of brief news items are of paramount importance, and may be regarded as their grammatical parameters.

a) Complex sentences with a developed system of clauses, e. g.

" Mr. Boyd-Carpenter, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster-General (Kingston-upon-Thames), said he had been asked what was meant by the statement in the Speech that the position of war pensioners and those receiving national insurance benefits would be kept under close review." (The Times)

" There are indications that BO AC may withdraw — threats of all-out dismissals for pilots who restrict flying hours, a spokesman for the British Airline Pilots' association said yesterday," (Morning Star)

b) Verbal constructions (infinitive, participial, gerundial) and verbal noun constructions, e.g.

" Mr. Nobusuke Kishi, the former Prime Minister of Japan, has sought to set an example to the faction-ridden Governing Liberal Democratic Party by announcing the disbanding of his own faction numbering 47 of the total of 295 conservative members of the Lower House of the Diet." (The Times)

c) Syntactical complexes, especially the nominative with the infinitive. These constructions are largely used to avoid mentioning the source of information or to shun responsibility for the facts reported, e. g.

" The condition of Lord Samuel, aged 92, was said last night to be a 'little better.'" (The Guardian)

" A petrol bomb is believed to have been exploded against the grave of Cecil Rhodes in the Matopos." (The Times)

d) Attributive noun groups are another powerful means of effecting brevity in news items, e.g. 'heart swap patient' (Morning Star), 'the national income and expenditure figures' (The Times), 'Labour backbench decision' (Morning Star), 'Mr. Wilson’s HMS fearless package deal' (Morning Star).

e) Specific word-order. Newspaper tradition, coupled with the rigid rules of sentence structure in English, has greatly affected the word-order of brief news items. The word-order in one-sentence news paragraphs and in what are called «leads» (the initial sentences in longer news items) is more or less fixed. Journalistic practice has developed what is called the «five-w-and-h-pattern rule» (who-what-why-how-where-when)and for a long time strictly adhered to it. In terms of grammar this fixed sentence structure may be expressed in the following manner: Subject—Predicate (+Object)—Adverbial modifier of reason (manner) — Adverbial modifier. of place-4Adverbial modifier of time, e.g.

" A neighbour’s peep through a letter box led to the finding of a woman dead from gas and two others semiconscious in a block of council flats in Eccles New Road, Salford, Lanes., yesterday." (The Guardian)

It has been repeatedly claimed by the authors of manuals of journalistic writing that the «five-w-arid4i» structure was the only right pattern of sentence structure to use in news reports. Facts, however, disprove this contention. Statistics show that there are approximately as many cases in which the traditional word-order is violated as those in which it is observed. It is now obvious that the newspaper has developed new sentence patterns not typical of other styles. This observation refers, firstly, to the position of the adverbial-modifier of definite time. Compare another pattern typical of brief news sentence structure:

" Derec Heath, 43, yesterday left Falmouth for the third time in his attempt to cross the Atlantic in a 12ft dinghy." (Morning Star)

" Brighton council yesterday approved, а Ј 22,500 scheme to have parking meters operating in the centre of the town by March." (The Times)

This and some other unconventional sentence patterns have become a common practice with brief news writers.

There are some other, though less marked, tendencies in news item writing of modifying well-established grammatical norms. Mention should be made of occasional disregard for the sequence of tenses rule, e.g.

" The committee —which was investigating the working of the 1969 Children and Young Persons Act — said that some school children in remand centres are getting only two hours lessons a day." (Morning Star)

What is ordinarily looked upon as a violation of grammar rules in any other kind of writing appears to bЈ a functional peculiarity of newspaper style.

1.2 THE APPEARANCE OF NEOLOGISMS DURING THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

During the 16^th century there was a flood of new publications in English, prompted by a renewed interest in the classical languages and literatures, and in the rapidly developing fields of science, medicine, and the arts. This period, from the time of Caxton until around 1650, was later to be called the «Renaissance», and it included the Reformation, the discoveries of Copernicum, and the European exploration of Africa and the Americas. The effects of these fresh perspectives on the English languages were immediate, far-reaching and controversial.

The focus of interest was vocabulary. There were no words in the language to talk accurately about the new concepts, techniques, and inventions which were coming from Europe, and so writers began to borrow them. Most of the words which entered the language at the time were taken from Latin, with a good number from Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Then, as the period of word-wide exploration got under way, words came into English from over 50 other languages, including several indigenous languages of North America, Africa, and Asia. Some words came into English directly; others came by way of an intermediate language. Many came indirectly from Latin or Italian via French.

Some writers, such as Thomas Elyot, went out of their way to find new words, in order (as they saw it) to `enrich' the language. They saw their role as enabling the new learning to be brought within the reach of the English public-whether this was access to the old classical texts, or to the new fields of science, technology, and medicine. There were many translations of classical works during the 16^th century, and thousand of Latin and Greek terms were introduced, as translators searched for an English equivalent and could not find one. Some, indeed, felt that English was in any case not an appropriate vehicle for the expression of the new learning. English, in this view, did not compare well with the tried and tested standards of Latin or Greek, especially in such fields as theology or medicine. It was a language fit for the street, but not for the library.

Then as now, the influx of foreign vocabulary attracted bitter criticism, and people leaped to the language’s defense. Purists opposed the new `inkhorn' terms, condemning them for obscurity and for interfering with the development of native English vocabulary. Some writers (notably, the poet Edmund Spenser) attempted to revive obsolete English words instead — what were sometimes called `Chaucerisms' - and to make us of little-known words from English dialects. Algate (`always'), sicker (`certainly'), and yblent (`confused') are examples. The scholar John Cheke used English equivalents for classical terms whenever he could, such as crossed for `crucified' and gainrising for `resurrection'.

The increase in foreign borrowings is the most distinctive linguistic sign of the Renaissance in English. Purist opinions did not, in the event, stem the influx of new words — nor have it ever, in the history of this language.

Some Renaissance loan words in English

From Latin and Greek

Absurdity, adapt, agile, alienate, allusion, anachronism, anonymous, appropriate, assassinate, atmosphere, autograph, benefit, capsule, catastrophe, chaos, climax, conspicuous, contradictory, crisis, criterion, critic, delirium, denunciation, disability, disrespect, emancipate, emphasis, encyclopedia, enthusiasm, epilepsy, eradicate, exact, exaggerate, excavate, excursion, exist, expectation, expensive, explain, external, extinguish, fact, glottis, habitual, halo, harass, idiosyncrasy, immaturity, impersonal, inclemency, jocular, larynx, lexicon, lunar, malignant, monopoly, monosyllable, necessitate, obstruction, pancreas, parasite, parenthesis, pathetic, pneumonia, relaxation, relevant, scheme, skeleton, soda, species, system, tactics, temperature, tendon, thermometer, tibia, tonic, transcribe, ulna, utopian, vacuum, virus.

From or via French

Alloy, anatomy, battery, bayonet, bigot, bizarre, chocolate, colonel, comrade, detail, docility, duel, entrance, equip, explore, grotesque, invite, moustache, muscle, naturalized, passport, pioneer, probability, progress, shock, surpass, ticket, tomato, vase, vogue, volunteer.

From or via Italian

Argosy, balcony, ballot, cameo, carnival, concerto, cupola, design, fuse, giraffe, grotto, lottery, macaroni, opera, piazza, portico, rocket, solo, sonata, sonnet, soprano, stanza, stucco, trill, violin, volcano

From or via Spanish and Portuguese

Alligator, anchovy, apricot, armada, banana, barricade, bravado, cannibal, canoe, cockroach, cocoa, corral, desperado, embargo, guitar, hammock, hurricane, maize, mosquito, mulatto, negro, potato, port (wine), rusk, sombrero, tank, tobacco, yam

From other languages

Bamboo (Malay), bazaar (Persian), caravan (Persian), coffee (Turkish), cruise (Dutch), curry (Tamil), easel (Dutch), flannel (Welsh), guru (Hindi), harem (Arabic), horde (Turkish), keelhaul (Dutch), ketchup (Malay), kiosk (Turkish), knapsack (Dutch), landscape (Dutch), pariah (Tamil), raccoon (Algonquian), rouble (Russian), sago (Malay), sheikh (Arabic), shekel (Hebrew), shogun (Japanese), troll (Norwegian), trousers (Irish Gaelic), turban (Persian), wampum (Algonquian), yacht (Dutch), yoghurt (Turkish).

1) Lexical creation

Anglo-Saxon forms, borrowings, and the use of affixes account for most of what appears within the English lexicon, but they do not tell the whole story. People do some creative, even bizarre things with vocabulary, from time to time, and a fascinating topic in lexicology is to examine just what they get up to. The general term for a newly-created lexeme is a coinage: but in technical usage a distinction can be drawn between nonce words and neologisms.

A nonce word (from the 16^th-century phrase for the nonce, meaning `for the once') is a lexeme created for temporary use, to solve an immediate problem of communication. Someone attempting to describe the excess water on a road after a storm was head to call it a fluddle — she meant something bigger than a puddle but smaller than a flood. The new-born lexeme was forgotten (except by a passing linguist) almost as soon as it was spoken. It was obvious from the jocularly apologetic way in which the person spoke that she did not consider fluddle to be a `proper' word at all. There was no intention to propose it for inclusion in a dictionary. As far as she was concerned, it was simply that there seemed to be no word in the language for what she wanted to say, so she made one up, for the nonce. In everyday conversation, people create nonce-words like this all the time.

But there is never any way of predicting the future, with language. Who knows, perhaps the English-speaking world has been waiting decades for someone to coin just this lexeme. It would only take a newspaper to seize on it, or for it to be referred to in an encyclopedia, and within days (or months) it could be on everyone’s lips. Registers of new words would start referring to it, and within five years or so it would have gathered enough written citations for it to be a serious candidate for inclusion in all the major dictionaries. It would then have become a neologism — literally, a `new word' in the language.

A neologism stays new until people start to use it without thinking, or alternatively until it falls out of fashion, and they stop using it altogether. But there is never any way of telling which neologisms will stay and which will go. Blurb, coined in 1907 be the American humorist Gelett Burgess (1866−1951), proved to meet a need, and is an established lexeme now. On the other hand his coinage of gubble, `to indulge in meaningless conversation', never caught on. Lexical history contains thousands of such cases. In the 16^th century — a great age of neologisms — we find disaccustom and disacquaint alongside disabuse and disagree. Why did the first two neologisms disappear and the last two survive? We also find effectual, effectuous, effectfull, effectuating, effective. Why did only two of the five forms survive, and why those two, in particular? The lexicon is full of such mysteries.

2) Bagonizing Bagonize — to wait anxiously for suitcase to appear on the baggage carousel (coined by Neil McNicholas)

However many words there are in English, the total will be small compared with those which do not yet exist. Native speakers, however, seem to have a mania for trying to fill lexical gaps. If a word does not exist to express a concept, there is no shortage of people very ready to invent one. Following a ten-minute programme about neologisms on BBC Radio 4 in 1990, over 1000 proposals were sent in for new English lexemes. Here are a dozen of the more ingenious creations.

Aginda — a pre-conference drink

Circumtreeviation — the tendency of a dog on a leash to want to walk past poles and trees on the opposite side to its owner

Blinksync — the guarantee that in any group photo there will always be at least one person whose eyes are closed

Fagony — a smoker’s cough

Footbrawl — physical violence associated with the game of soccer

Literate — said of people who care about litter

Illiterate — said of people who don’t care about litter

Catfrontation — the cause of nightly noise when you live in a neighborhood full of cats

Polygrouch — someone who complains about everything

Kellogulation — what happens to your breakfast cereal when you are called away by a 15-minute phone call, just after you have poured milk on it

Potspot — that part of the toilet seat which causes the phone to rink the moment you sit on it

Hicgap — the time that elapses between when hiccups go away and when you suddenly realize that they have

Liximania — a compulsive desire to invent new words

Loadsalexemes

Loadsamoney, an informal label for someone who flaunts wealth, first came to notice in the mid-1980s as the name of a character invented by British alternative comedian Harry Enfield. It caught on, and was given a boost in May 1988, when Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock used it to label the Conservative government’s policy of encouraging the creation of wealth for its own sake. Journalists began referring to a Loadsamoney mentality and the Loadsamoney economy, and gradually the prefix began to take on a life of its own. Later that year we find in various newspapers: loadsasermons, loadsaglasnost, loadsaspace, loadsapeople.

Several affixes seem to have found new life in the 1980s. Mega-, for example, was used with dozens of forms, such astrendy, -sulk, -worry, -terror, -plan, -bid, -brand, andcity. The suffixing use offriendly was found not only with user- (its original usage), but also with audience-, customer-, environment-, farmer-, girl-, nature-, and many more. Sexism brought a host of otherisms, such as weightism, heightism and ageism. Rambo-based coinages included Ramboesque and Ramboistic. Band-aid gave birth to Sport-aid and Nurse-aid. And the Watergate affair of the mid-1970s lived on linguistically, -gate continuing to attach itself to almost any proper noun where there may be a hint of wicked goings-on, as in Irangate, Lloydstage, and the remarkable Gospelgate (for the wrongdoing of US televangelists).

Thingummybob and whatsisname

It is by no means clear how we should spell most of the items in the following list — and accordingly they tend to be omitted from dictionaries, whose focus is generally on the written language. They are nonetheless an important element in the English lexicon, providing speakers with a signal that they are unable to retrieve a lexeme — either because it has slipped their mind or perhaps because there is a lexical gap in the language. Such nonsense words occur in many variant forms and pronunciations, just some of which are recorder here.

In addition those with sharp ears (for such forms are often said very rapidly) will hear many idiosyncratic items — such as gobsocket, jiminycricket, and this splendid blend (from a professor of linguistic, no less) thingummycallit.

3) Literary neologizing

The more creative the language context, the more likely we are to encounter lexical experiments, and find ourselves faced with unusual neologisms. The stretching and breaking of the rules governing lexical structure, for whatever reason, is characteristic of several contexts, notably humor, theology, and informal conversation, but the most complex, intriguing and exciting instances come from the language of literature.

These pages illustrate the range of neologisms used by several modern authors, with pride of place given to the chief oneiroparonomastician (or `dream-pun-namer' - the term is Anthony Burgess’s), James Joyce. Joyce himself called Finnegan’s Wake `the last word in stolentelling', a remark which seems to recognize that the extraordinary lexical coinages in his novel have their roots in perfectly everyday language. Certainly, it is our grassroots linguistic awareness which enables us to disentangle some of the layers of meaning in a Joycean neologism. However, untutored native intuition will not sort everything out, as considerable use is also made of elements from foreign languages and a wide range of classical allusions.

The style largely depends on the mechanisms involved in the simple pun, but whereas puns generally rely for their effect on a single play on words, it is usual for Joyce’s forms to involve several layers of meaning, forming a complex network of allusions which relate to the characters, events, and themes of the book as a whole. There is also a similarity to the `portmanteau' words of Lewis Carroll, though Carroll never tried to pack as much meaning into a portmanteau as Joyce routinely did.

James Joyce (1882−1941) was a writer of that period.

In Joysprick (1973), Anthony Burgess presents an illuminating analysis of the linguistic processes involved in the development of what he calls Joyce’s `jabberwocky'. These successive drafts (a-c) of Finnegan’s Wake, published in the 1920s, show that the style is carefully engineered, despite its apparent randomness and spontaneity. Each version introduces extra connotations, puns, and allusions, and a growing intricacy of lexical structure. The version, which appears in the book (d), is included for comparison.

(a) Tell me, tell me, how could she cam trough all her fellows, the daredevil? Linking one and knocking the next and polling in and petering out and clyding by in the east way. Who was the first that ever burst? Some one it was, whoever you are. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, Paul Pry or polish man. That’s the thing I always want to know.

(b) Tell me, tell me, how could she cam through all her fellows, the nectar she was, the diveline? Linking one and knocking the next, tapping a flank and tipping a jetty and palling in and petering out and clyding by on her east way. Wai-whou was the first that ever burst? Someone he was, whoever they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat. Tinker, tailor, soldier, Paul Pry or polishman. That’s the thing I always want to know.

© Tell me, tell me, how cam she camlin trough all her fellows, the neckar she was, the diveline? Linking one and knocking the next, tapting a flank and tipting a jutty and palling in and pietaring out and clyding by on her eastway. Waiwhou was the first thurever burst? Someone he was, whuebra they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat. Tinker, tilar, souldrer, salor, Pieman peace or Polistamann. That’s the thing want to know.

(d) Tell me, tell me, how cam she camlin trough all her fellows, the neckar she was, the diveline? Casting her perils before our swains from Fonte-in-Monte to Tidingtown and from Tidingtown tilhavet. Linking one and knocking the next, tapting a flank and tipting a jutty and palling in and pietaring out and clyding by on her eastway. Waiwhou was the first thurever burst? Someone he was, whuebra they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat. Tinker, tilar, souldrer, salor, Pieman Peace or Polistamann. That’s the thing I’m elways on edge to esk.

A good way of developing an understanding of how Joyce’s neologisms wok is to try to imitate them, or parody them.

Burgess suggests a game to fill long winter evenings. In response to an instruction to `punbaptise the names of the months from the viewpoint of a confirmed drunkard', he gives us:

Ginyouvery

Pubyoumerry

Parch

Grapeswill

Tray

Juinp

Droolie

Sawdust

Siptumbler

Actsober

Newwinebar

Descendbeer

Al this means that a lot of writers use literary neologizing in their novels and stories.

4) Neologistic compounds

A lot of writers and poets used Neologistic compounds. Some Liverpool poets as Adrian Henry (b.1932), Roger McGough (b.1937), and Brian Patten (b.1946) can show Neologistic compounds in their poems.

Joycean lexicoining is but one of the several techniques described in earlier pages available to any author who wishes to neologize. For example, there may be a novel use of affixes:

Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house

The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;

(Dylan Thomas, «Altarwise by Owl-light», 1935;6)

Or an unusual word-class conversion:

we slipped thro' the frenchwindows

and arminarmed across the lawn

(Roger McGough, «The Fish», 1967)

But innovative compounds are particularly widespread, and deserve special space.

The staid set of compound lexemes which was illustrated before does not even begin to capture the exuberant inventiveness which can be seen in English literature from its earliest days. Old English was dominated by its creative compounding, as seen in such forms as hronrad `sea' (literally, `whale-road'), and, much later, Shakespeare made considerable use of Neologistic compounds: pity-pleading eyes and oak-cleaving thunderbolts. Sometimes several items are joined in a compound-like way:

a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited;

hundred-pound, filthy woosted-stocking

knave, a Lilly-livered, action-taking,

whoreson, glasse-gazing super-seruiceable

finicall Rogue

(King Lear, II.ii.15)

It is not a great remove from here to the Joycean juxtapositions of Ulysses, 1922:

a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed

redhaired freely freckled shaggy-bearded widemouthed

largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekned

brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero.

or to the lexical creations of Gerard Manely Hopkins, mixing hyphenated and solid forms:

This darksome burn, horseback brown,

His rollrock highroad roaring down…

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth

Turns and twindles over the broth…

(«Inversnaid», 1881)

Of course, simply to print a series of words without spaces between them is hardly to create a compound, except at a most superficial level. A real compound acts as a grammatical unit, has a unified stress pattern, and has a meaning which is in some way different from the sum of its parts. Many literary compounds do none of this, and have a solely graphic appeal, as in this later line from Roger McGough’s poem:

Then you took of your other glove

There is perhaps a phonetic implication in such forms, suggestive of a difference in rhythm or speed of utterance when read aloud; but there is no grammatical or semantic change involved. A different kind of point is being made: to break graphic convention for its own sake reinforces the iconoclastic, irreverent tone with which the Liverpool Poets of the 1960s came to be identified.

Orwellian compound speak

times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

This Newspeak message, sent for re-editing to Winston Smith, in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four, is given the following Oldspeak (standard English) translation:

The reporting of Big Brother’s Order for the Day in The Times of December 3^rd 1983 is extremely unsatisfactory and makes references to Non-existing persons. Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to higher Authority before filing.

Newspeak uses three kinds of words: the A vocabulary consists of everyday items, B vocabulary is ideological; and the C vocabulary contains technical terms. The B vocabulary comprises only compound words. Orwell describes it as `a sort of verbal short-hand, often packing whole ranges of ideas into a few syllables'. Its aim is `to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them'. Examples include: doublethink, goodthink, oldthink, crimethink, oldspeak, speakwrite, thoughtcrime, sexcrime, prolefeed, dayorder, blackwhite, duckspeak.

These forms could be inflected in the usual way. For example, goodthink (`orthodoxy' on Oldspeak), could generate goodthinking, goodthinkful, goodthinkwise, goodthinker, and goodthinked. (There are no irregular forms in Newspeak). Other terms in Newspeak are not so much compounds as blends, involving fragments of either or both of the constituent lexemes: Pornsec (Pornography Section), Ficdep (Fiction Department), Recdep (Records department), and Thinkpol (Thought Police).

The novel gives the impression that there are hundreds of such forms. Indeed, one of the characters (Syme) is engaged in the enormous task of compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary. In fact, there are only a few dozen Newspeak terms mentioned in the novel and its Appendix, though several of them are used repeatedly.

1.3 THE TYPES OF NEOLOGISMS

1) The old words with new senses

Firstly lets take the existing words with new senses. These do not normally refer to new objects or processes and therefore are rarely technological. However, creneau, which started as a metaphor as creneau de vente (therefore is a `pseudo-neologism') can normally be translated technically as `market outlet' or informally as `range of demand for a particular type of product' depending on the three types: 1) expert, 2) educated generalist, who may require extra explanations of the topic of the SL culture, 3) the ignorant, who may need explanations at various levels. All these types belong to the type of readership.

The term `gay' appears to have been deliberately used by homosexual to emphasise their normality. It is no longer slang-translations such as schwul or homo will not do. Possibly when homosexuality loses al its negative connotations, there will be no need for this sense of `gay' but it is likely to stay — it has gone into French and German as gay. You cannot go back in language — a colloquial term is not usually replaced by a formal term. To sum up, old words with new senses tend to be non-cultural and non-technical. They are usually translated either by a word that already exist in the TL, or by brief functional or descriptive term.

Existing collocations with new senses are a translator’s trap: usually these are `normal' descriptive terms which suddenly become technical terms; their meaning sometimes hides innocently behind a more general or figurative meaning.

Ex: in English in German

`unsocial hours' Studen auberhalb der

normalen Arbeitzeit

`high-rise' Hochhaus

`real-time' (computers) Echtzeit

Existing collocations with new senses may be cultural or non-cultural. If the referent (concept or object) exists in the TL, there is usually a recognised translation or trough-translation. If the concept does not exist or the TL speakers are not yet aware of it, an economical descriptive equivalent has to be given. There is also the possibility of devising a new collocation in inverted commas, which can later be slyly withdrawn.

Translators also have to be aware of the reverse tendency, which is to use `technical' collocations such as `critical mass' or `specific gravity' an a generalized sense — this often leads to jargon which can be `corrected' in the translation of informative texts.

2) Derived words

The great majority of neologisms are words derived by analogy from ancient Greek (increasingly) and Latin morphemes usually with suffixes asismo, -ismus, -ija etc., naturalised in the appropriate language. In some countries (e.g. pre-War Germany, Arabic-speaking countries) this process has been preferred. E.g. `television' - Fernsehen. However, now that this word-forming procedure is employed mainly to designate (non-cultural) scientific and technological rather than cultural institutional terms, the advance of these internationalisms is wide-spread. Normally, they have naturalised suffices. Many are listed in Babel appears to be the main non-European language that `imports' them.

However, this does not mean that the translator can apply the process automatically. For example: «Bionomics» has given way to `ecology', and `ergonomics' (second sense) to `biotechnology'. He has to consult the appropriate ISO (International Standards Organisation) glossary to find out whether there is already a recognized translation; secondly, whether the referent yet exists in the TL culture; thirdly, how important it is and therefore whether it is worth `transplanting' at all. If he thinks he is justified in transplanting it (has he the necessary authority?), and he believes himself to be the first translator to do so. P. Newmark should put it in inverted commas.