The general knowledge of neologisms
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delay acceptance, for instance by refusing to include the neologism in dictionaries; this can sometimes cause a neologism to die out over time. Nevertheless if the public continues to use the term, it always eventually sheds its status as a neologism and enters the language even over the objections of language experts.
1.2 The Classification of English Neologisms
English vocabulary has surpassed the number of 500,000 words with jargons excluded. According to the statistics of The Barnhart Dictionary Companion, there are 1,500 to 1,600 words and meanings inputting into the computer database each year (12). Classification of neologisms usually is made according to the following four standards:
) Neologisms can be classified according to their functions. Innumerable neologisms can be classified as either referential or expressive. Referential neologisms are neologisms created to fill the gap in a specific special field. They are produced to solve communication difficulties, for example, core dump (to clear out a computers memory). Expressive neologisms are neologisms developed to introduce new forms of expression into discourse, for example, open collar workers (people who work at home or telecommute).
) Neologisms can be classified according to their coinage processes. New words and expressions coming from old words and expressions but with new meanings. For example, killer (adj, very cool, powerful). New created words and expressions which are invented to describe new ideas and things, for example, internet, I-way (short form of information superhighway), and 411 (the latest information of gossip). Borrowed words and expressions, for example, masterpiece, Mao-tai, and haman .
) Neologism can be classified according to their formation. Neologisms in form, including the following structures: derivations (with prefixes and suffixes); compounds; phrases; shortenings (using initialisms, acronyms, clippings). For example, Pekingology, educationese and hard science. Semantic neologisms, including three types of processes: broadening or narrowing or change the meaning of the base form. For example, feedback, window, fallout. Borrowed neologisms, which are true borrowings and loan translations. For example, masterpiece, perestroika.
) Neologisms can be classified according to their sources, that is, according to where they come from. Scientific words or phrases created to describe new scientific discoveries or inventions, for example: Bluetooth, Broadband network, IW, Melatonin, Cyberstalking .
1.3The ways of formation of neologisms
is interesting to discuss how new words are formed. In any language, people express a new idea, describe a new process, and market a new product through three ways. A single way or a combination of any of these ways can produce large number of polysemous words. In general, there are three main methods of new word creation:
) By adding new meaning to existing words. Additional meanings are appended to the existing words. Many of the new words added to the ever-growing lexicon of the English language are just created from scratch, and often have little or no etymological pedigree. A good example is the word dog, etymologically unrelated to any other known word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously displaced the Old English word hound (or hund) which had served for centuries. Some of the commonest words in the language arrived in a wordsly inexplicable way (e.g. jaw, askance, tantrum, conundrum, bad, big, donkey, kick, slum, log, dodge, fuss, prod, hunch, freak, bludgeon, slang, puzzle, surf, pour, slouch, bash, etc).Words like gadget, blimp, raunchy, scam, nifty, zit, clobber, gimmick, jazz and googol have all appeared in the last century or two with no apparent etymology, and are more recent examples of this kind of novel creation of words. Additionally, some words that have existed for centuries in regional dialects or as rarely used terms, suddenly enter into popular use for little or no apparent reason (e.g. scrounge and seep, both old but obscure English words, suddenly came into general use in the early 20th Century).Sometimes, if infrequently, a "nonce word" (created "for the nonce", and not expected to be re-used or generalized) does become incorporated into the language. One example is James Joyces invention quark, which was later adopted by the physicist Murray Gell-Mann to name a new class of sub-atomic particle, and another is blurb, which dates back to 1907.
Аnother well - known examples: English: footprint - an impact on our planet; Russian: мыло ("an email" - the new IT-slang meaning; "a soap" - the traditional meaning).
2) By borrowing words from other languages. New words are borrowed from other languages. It is a common way in vocabulary enlargement when the native language is unable to express the new and translation is still on the way to come out. It is possible to concern borrowings which are characterized by untypical for the English language by the distribution, by the morphological division and absence of motivation to strong neologisms. And although on this stage borrowings are on periphery of lexical system, they are still an integral part of innovations. For the last decade growth of borrowings from Japanese and Spanish has taking place. The main centers of attraction for new borrowings are: 1) art and culture: cinemateque (from French), karaoke (from Japanese); 2) social and political life: Ossi, Wessi (from German) - denotation of citizen of the East and West Germany; fatwa (from Arabic) - a legal decision or ruling given by Islamic religious leader; karoshi (from Japanese) - death caused by overwork or job-related exhaustion; 3) everyday life: taqueria (from Spanish) - a restaurant specializing in Mexican food, particularly tacos; otaku (from Japanese) - people who are obsessed with the trivia of a particular hobby; geek (from Danish) - unfashionable, boring or socially inept person;4) scientific and technical borrowings: biogeocenose (from Russian) - ecological system. result of borrowings is not only the addition to lexical composition of the language, the stylish colouring of lexical units changes in the process of borrowing and their inner structure homonymical relations are formed, that promotes, the variation of lexical units and partly predetermines it.
3) By rules of word-formation. The language produces new words by means of its formation rules. It is the need of society and the impetus of development of the language itself. words are being made up all the time. The shapes of words we know lead us to shape new words. John Algeo, a leading scholar of new words, has demonstrated that almost all new words have familiar origins (10). They are extensions of our established vocabular rather than completely new creations. The expansion of vocabulary in modern English depends chiefly on word-formation. There is variety of means being at work now. The most productive are affixation, compounding and conversion. According to Pyles and Algeo (10), words produced through affixation constitute 30% to 40% of the total number of new words; compounding yields 28% to 30% of all the new words; conversion gives us 26% of the new vocabulary. The rest of the new words come from shortening including clipping and acronymy, amounting to 8% to 10%, together with 1% to 5% of words born out of blending and other means. In the following pages those commonly used ways of word-formation will be investigated with examples for the purpose of a well explanation. is generally defined as the formation of words by adding derivational affixes to stems. Affixation is an effective way to increase the English vocabulary. Over 100 affixes exist in English, dozens of which are the most active, for example, a-, an-, au-, be-, co-, com-, con-, counter-, de-, dis-, en-, e-, inter- and so on. According to the positions which affixes occupy in words, affixation falls into two subclasses: 1) prefixation and 2) suffixation.
) Prefixation is the formation of new words by adding prefixes to stems. Prefixes do not generally change the word-class of the stem but only modify its meaning. It allows us to expand our vocabulary without specifically memorizing new words. However, present-day English finds an increasing number of class-changing prefixes, e.g. asleep a (a-+v), encourage v (en-+ n), unearth v (un-+n), de-oil v (de-+n), postwar a(post-+n), intercollege a (inter-+ti) and others. These make up only an insignificant number in the huge contemporary vocabulary. By the way of prefixation any new word, whatever its source, may almost immediately become the nucleus of a cluster of derivatives. Prefixes like pro- and docu- have been used to create words like prosultant and docudrama. Lets have a look at some examples:
=prefix: cyber- + speak =prefix: hyper- + link =prefix: inter- + not =prefix: intra- + net =prefix: un- + wired
development of computer circle is beyond peoples imagination. So is the production of affixes related with it. Originated in computer, compu- has formed many words, such as compudisk, computalk, computicket, compuword, compuspeak, computistical, computopia, computopolites. ecological issues are put on the important agenda, words related to eco are gaining more concerns. If people are not careful about their eco-activities, they may suffer ecocatastrophe. When ecoatmosphere and ecoclimate are destroyed, some species will come to ecocide and thus ecocrisis happens. At present, many ecologists are appealing for ecodevelopment (economic + ecological +development) in order for the eco-economic comprehensive benefit. Now many kinds of food sold at market as labeled Ecology Mark (chemical-free commodity). Ecotourism is getting popular in recent few years. str