Coiner’s Remorse

2021 ◽  
pp. 231-243
Author(s):  
Ralph Keyes
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Change ◽  
Profit Center ◽  
New Words ◽  
Irrational Exuberance ◽  
Peter Drucker

Some who create new words later wish they hadn’t. They experience “coiner’s remorse.” Such penitents include Alan Greenspan (irrational exuberance), Trent Lott (nuclear option), Peter Drucker (profit center), and John Gyakum (bomb cyclone). Coinage regret is felt for a variety of reasons: coiners can develop reservations about their verbal offspring, terms they coined years earlier may no longer reflect their outlook, or the ways others use and misuse it is not to their liking. In that case coinage penitents don’t regret a term they created as much as its usage. As part of the process of semantic change, linguists assume that the meaning of coined words will diversify in ways never intended by their coiner. This is small consolation to those who introduced such terms, however. They’re far more likely to be perturbed than reassured by this inevitable process of definition diffusion.

CORONASPEAK-2020: WORD-FORMATION ASPECT

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-130
Author(s):  
O. Ye. Tkachuk-Miroshnychenko
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Word Formation ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Forming Process ◽  
New Words ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
Speech Classification

The article presents a first assessment of the word-stock of “coronaspeak”-2020 — a new language of the Covid-19 pandemic. The English vocabulary is subjected to constant change due to various extralinguistic factors. The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the ‘explosion’ of new words. As of today, “coronaspeak” has over 1,000 words with more units appearing each day. The scale of the expansion is unprecedented, which requires reaction of the linguistic community. The article raises the issue of the classification of the “coronaspeak” word-stock. It argues that facilitated by media and social networks new words are changing their status of nonce words to neologisms, which makes the classification untimely and premature. The word-building analysis of 200 new words of “coronaspeak” allows to conclude that the creation of the new “coronavirus” word-stock applies the structural patterns specific for the English language. These various patterns include semantic change in denotation, derivation, compounding, blending, shortening, The analysis of the “coranaspeak” word-stock has demonstrated that the semantic changes in denotation, in particular the extension and the narrowing of a meaning, are scarce, and, hence, non-productive. Affixation, as a word-forming process, has proved semi-productive with the predominantly noun-forming suffixes. Among a limited number of shortenings we have observed final (apocope) and initial (apheresis) clippings, combined with affixation, by adding the suffix — y. Compounding and blending have proved to be highly productive. According to the part of speech classification, most “coronaspeak” compounds and blends are nouns. Of special interest are a group of “coronapuns”, which have demonstrated pragmatic potential.

scholarly journals Semantic Change

Linguistics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Keyword(s):  
Historical Linguistics ◽  
Vocabulary Development ◽  
Gottlob Frege ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
New Words ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
Context Of Use ◽  
Organizing Principles

Semantic change is the subfield of historical linguistics that investigates changes in sense. In 1892, the German philosopher Gottlob Frege argued that, although they refer to the same person, Jocasta and Oedipus’s mother, are not equivalent because they cannot be substituted for each other in some contexts; they have different “senses” or “values.” In contemporary linguistics, most researchers agree that words do not “have” meanings. Rather, words are assigned meanings by speakers and hearers in the context of use. Linguists distinguish semantic change from changes in “lexis” (vocabulary development, often in cultural contexts), although there is inevitably some overlap between the two. Semantic changes occur when speakers attribute new meanings to extant expressions. Changes in lexis occur when speakers add new words to the inventory, e.g., by coinage (“affluenza,” a blend of affluent and influenza), or borrowing (“sushi”). Linguists also distinguish organizing principles in research. Starting with the form of a word or phrase and charting changes in the meanings of that the word or phrase is known as “semasiology”; this is the organizing principle for historical dictionaries. Starting with a concept and investigating which different expressions can express it is known as “onomasiology”; this is the organizing principle for thesauruses.

Prologue to the Forum: Vocabulary Across the School Grades

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne M. Adlof
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Vocabulary Instruction ◽  
Elementary Grades ◽  
Reading Disorders ◽  
Vocabulary Intervention ◽  
New Words ◽  
School Grades ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
Ability Levels ◽  
Instructional Settings

Purpose This prologue introduces the LSHSS Forum: Vocabulary Across the School Grades. The goals of the forum are to provide an overview of the importance of vocabulary to literacy and academic achievement, to review evidence regarding best practices for vocabulary instruction, and to highlight recent research related to word learning with students across different grade levels. Method The prologue provides a foundational overview of vocabulary's role in literacy and introduces the topics of the other ten articles in the forum. These include clinical focus articles, research reviews, and word-learning and vocabulary intervention studies involving students in elementary grades through college. Conclusion Children with language and reading disorders experience specific challenges learning new words, but all students can benefit from high-quality vocabulary instruction. The articles in this issue highlight the characteristics of evidence-based vocabulary interventions for children of different ages, ability levels, and language backgrounds and provide numerous examples of intervention activities that can be modified for use in individual, small-group, or large-group instructional settings.

Regularity in Semantic Change

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Closs Traugott ◽  
Richard B. Dasher
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Change

Filling words in fundamental groups of Riemann surfaces

2013 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
C. Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Riemann Surface ◽  
Fundamental Group ◽  
Riemann Surfaces ◽  
Fundamental Groups ◽  
Closed Geodesics ◽  
New Words

The purpose of this article is to utilize some exiting words in the fundamental group of a Riemann surface to acquire new words that are represented by filling closed geodesics.

Tusaaji Tusilaartuq: When the Translator Must be Hard of Hearing

1969 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis-Jacques Dorais
Keyword(s):  
Hard Of Hearing ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Target Language ◽  
New Words ◽  
Written Texts

This article examines how translation to and from Inuktitut, the language of the Eastern Canadian Inuit, often compels the translator to create new words or explanatory phrases in the target language, in order to cope with the existing cultural and semantic gaps between most Indigenous languages and languages of wider communication. Moreover, the transcription of Inuktitut into the syllabic script also entails phonetic distortions. The article concludes that some types of translations in Inuktitut are practically useless, but that more Inuktitut oral and written texts should be translated into mainstream languages.

Chronofact Names: Their Transformations in Contemporary MassMedia

2020 ◽  
pp. 92-102
Author(s):  
Irina Kryukova
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
New Words ◽  
Technological Disasters ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Tragic Event ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
Historical Periods

The article presents the results of the study devoted to the semantic transformations of chronofact names understood as proper names referring to resonance events that are often tragic. In spite of many studies devoted to the processes of new words activation in various historical periods, proper names, with rare exceptions, are not included in the phenomena under the study. The objective of the following research is to identify universal features of chronofact names that make it possible to study these names as a separate group of onyms with their specific semantic and motivational characteristics. The proper names that have become the symbols of technological disasters, terrorist attacks, antigovernment actions, etc. (Chernobyl, Fukushima, Nord-Ost, Beslan, Bolotnaya Square, Maydan, and so on) served as the material of this study. Contextual analysis of these names in Russian media in the last decades, as well as component analysis of the connotative semantics of each name, allowed the author to select several common characteristics of chronofact names. First, every chronofact name undergoes rapid semantic transformations in the following order: it denotes a certain object – it denotes a singular tragic event (metonymy) and the development of a connotative onym – it denotes any other similar event (metaphor) and develops the characteristics of a precedent name. Second, chronofact names display same lexical and grammatical signs and they are used in homogenous contexts. Third, under certain extra-linguistic conditions, chronofact names are capable of expanding their figurative meanings and denoting a genuine notion for a long time. The material under the analysis is of interest to theoretical understanding of connotation as well as lexicographic description.

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