Neologisms

Lection 1. Stylistic aspect of vocabulary usage.

Theme 7. Lexical and stylistic characteristic of the English and Ukrainian languages.

Points under discussion:

1. Neologisms.

2. Archaisms and historicisms.

3. Term and terminology.

New notions constantly come into being, requiring new words to name them. Sometimes a new name 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.

New words and expressions or neоlоgisms are created for new things irrespective of their scale of importance. They may be all-important and concern some social relationships, such as a new form of state, e. g. People’s Republic, or something threatening the very existence of humanity, like nuclear war. Or again the thing may be quite insignificant and short-lived, like fashions in dancing, clothing, hairdo or footwear (e. g. roll-neck). In every case either the old words are appropriately changed in meaning or new words are borrowed, or more often coined out of the existing language material either according to the patterns and ways already productive in the language at a given stage of its development or creating new ones.

Thus, a neologism is a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing word, or a word borrowed from another language.

The intense development of science and industry has called forth the invention and introduction of an immense number of new words and changed the meanings of old ones, e. g. aerobic, black hole, computer, isotope, feedback, penicillin, pulsar, quasar, tape-recorder, supermarket and so on.

The laws of efficient communication demand maximum signal in minimum time. To meet these requirements the adaptive lexical system is not only adding new units but readjusts the ways and means of word-formation and the word-building means. Thus, when radio location was invented it was defined as radio detection and ranging which is long and so a convenient abbreviation out of the first letter or letters of each word in this phrase was coined, hence radar.

The process of nomination may pass several stages. In other words, a new notion is named by a terminological phrase consisting of words which in their turn are made up of morphemes. The phrase may be shortened by ellipsis or by graphical abbreviation, and this change of form is achieved without change of meaning. Acronyms are not composed of existing morphemes according to existing word-formation patterns, but on the contrary revolutionise the system by forming new words and new morphemes out of letters. The whole process of word-formation is paradoxically reversed.

The lexical system may adapt itself to new functions by combining several word-building processes.

- fall-out — the radioactive dust descending through the air after an atomic explosion — is coined by composition and conversion simultaneously. –

- Ad-lib ‘to improvise’ is the result of borrowing (Lat. ad libitum), shortening, compounding and conversion.

- in blends, e.g. bionics < bio+(electr)onics; slintnastics < slim+gymnastics.

- Derivation (chairperson, policeperson) man.

Automation = automatic with the help of the very productive suffix -tion.

Re- is one of the most productive prefixes, the others are anti-, de-, un-, the semi-affixes self-, super- and mini- and many more; e. g. anti-flash ‘serving to protect the eyes’, antimatter n, anti- novel n, anti-pollution, deglamorise ‘to make less attractive’, resit ‘to take a written examination a second time’, rehouse ‘to move a family, a community, etc. to new houses’.

As a general rule neologisms are at first clearly motivated. An exception is shown by those based on borrowings or learned coinages which, though motivated at an early stage, very soon begin to function as indivisible signs. A good example is the much used term cybernetics ‘study of systems of control and communication in living beings and man-made devices’ coined by Norbert Wiener from the Greek word kyberne-tes ‘steersman’+suffix -ics.

There are, however, cases when etymology of comparatively new words is obscure, as in the noun boffin ‘a scientist engaged in research work’ or in gimmick ‘a tricky device’ — an American slang word that is now often used in British English.

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