Bachelor Thesis Kubova Neologisms in English

Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Bakalářská diplomová práce KristýnaKubová 200 2009 Kristýna Kubová Hřbet 9 Masaryk University Facultyof Arts Departmentof English and American Studies English Language and Literature Kristýna Kubová Neologisms in English Bachelor ’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CSc. 2009 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. ……………………………………………… Kristýna Kubová I would like to thank to my supervisor, PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CSc., for her valuable comments, helpful suggestions and the time that she devoted to supervising my thesis. Table of Contents 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………..1 1.1 Thesis Proposal…………………………………………………………………………1 1.2 Methodology of Work………………………………………………………………..1 2. The Theoretical Part……………………………………………………………………………5 2.1 Theoretical Background……………………………………………………………..5 2.1.1 System of Vocabulary……………………………...……….………….5 2.1.2 Vocabulary Layers……………………………….……………………….6 2.2 Neologism………………………………………………………………………………….6 2.2.1 What is it?.......................................................................6 2.2.2 Nonce Formations………………………………………………………….8 2.2.3 History of Neologisms – Neologisms in the 20th Century……8 2.3 Word Formation…………………………………………………………………………9 2.3.1 Derivation......................................................................10 2.3.2 Compounding or Composition…….………………………………….11 2.3.3 Conversion………………………………………………………………….13 2.3.4 Coinage………………………………………………………………………14 2.3.5 Borrowing or Loan Words……………………………………………..14 2.3.6 Blending………………………………………………………………………15 2.3.7 Clipping or Shortening………………………………………………….16 2.3.8 Backformation……………………………………………………………..17 2.3.9 Abbreviating and Acronyming………………………………………..17 2.3.10 Eponyms - Words from Names…………………………………....18 2.3.11 Imitation……………………………………………………………………18 2.3.12 Word Manufacture……………………………………………………..18 2.3.13 Multiple Processes or Mixed Formations……………………….19 2.3.14 Changes of Meaning or Semantic Changes……………………19 2.4 Various Styles of Writing and Speaking in English………………………..20 2.4.1. Slang…………………………………………………………………………20 2.5 Corpus Linguistics…………………………………………………………………….21 3. The Practical Part…………………………………………………………………………………24 4. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………125 5. Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………129 6. Appendix………………………………….………………………………………………………132 1. Introduction 1.1 Thesis Proposal I have chosen this topic because I am interested in new words in English. I think this area of vocabulary is very interesting. It shows us how the language is developing. I have chosen this topic also from the reason that I can enrich my vocabulary. My research questions are: What kind of word formation is used most in creating neologisms? Is there any style in which the use of neologisms is prevailing? Which neologisms are the most frequent ones? I test two hypotheses. The first one concerns the type of word formation. A lot of neologisms seem to be created by blending and compounding. On the other hand, as Lehrer says, "a common explanation for changes in the forms we also see in neologisms … says that frequent forms tend to become shorter" (Lehrer 2007: 1). Therefore clippings and abbreviations should be the most frequent types of word formation. I will test which statement is true and which one is not. The second hypothesis concerns the style of English in which neologisms appear. I expect that most neologisms appear in newspapers. 1.2 Methodology of Work In my thesis, I do primary research "which involves collecting original data, analysing it and then drawing one's own conclusion from the analysis" (Dörnyei 2007: 19) My research is quantitative, which means that it "involves data collection procedures that result primarily in numerical data which is then analysed primarily by statistical methods" (Dörnyei 22). For the research I use the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and Google. I have made a list of neologisms mentioned in a book by Kerry Maxwell, From Al Desko to Zorbing – New Words for the 21st Century . I use it as an initial set of information on which I base my research. Apart from neologisms themselves, I use the data concerning word class and meaning of neologisms, which I supplement with the data I gained from searching in the corpus and Google. I examine the neologisms from the linguistic point of view: I determine the word class(es) of each neologism and I look all the neologisms up in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and in Google (only in pages written in English) and note down their frequency in both. To get relevant results, I typed the query into Google in inverted commas – as an exact phrase. I search for other forms of the words – plurals, passives, gerunds, usages of nouns as verbs and vice versa. To find them, I type the query in the corpus as a lemma (then a table with results shows whether the word occurs also in other forms or not) or try to look the particular forms up manually. I give example to each word form I found (except for compounds differing from each other only with a dash or space between the component words) – I use illustrative sentences with citations of source. Illustrative sentences were not checked by a native speaker. I also state frequencies of those word forms in Google and in the Corpus. When a particular word form was found in the corpus, I give example of it from the corpus and note its frequency in Google. In cases when a particular form of word was not found in the corpus, but it was found in Google, I write an illustrative sentence from Google (and I do the same in cases when results in the corpus for a particular neologism have not the intended meaning of a neologism). I also note down frequency of each neologism in various styles of English (in the COCA) – spoken English, fiction, magazines, newspapers and academic English – to investigate in which of these styles neologisms occur the most frequently. To get a result, I count up the numbers of occurrence of each neologism in the Corpus of American English in those five categories and compared them. I attach a table with the data I got to this thesis. The neologisms are listed alphabetically in the form which Kerry Maxwell used as a heading in her book. However, the numbers (frequencies of particular words in respective styles of English) are already counted up for all the forms of the neologisms I found. Finally, I determine the type of word-formation of these neologisms and make a statistics of the frequency of usage of particular types of word formation processes nowadays. I also try to find all the neologisms in two dictionaries - Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners: International Student Edition from 2007 and Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English by Albert Sydney Hornby from 2005. The usage of corpora and Google is more closely discussed in the last chapter of the practical part of my thesis. In the practical part of my thesis, I use a number of capital letters to describe in detail the word class of the neologisms. "U" means "uncountable", "C" means "countable", "I" means "intransitive" verb and "T" means "transitive" verb. 2. The Theoretical Part 2.1 Theoretical Background 2.1.1 System of Vocabulary Peprník presents his view of the system of vocabulary in his book English Lexicology : "The vocabulary is a set of interconnected phenomena that influence each other." (Peprník, 2006: 21) The system of vocabulary has its centre and periphery. "The centre is occupied by lexical units with greatest stability and frequency and with greatest independence from the changeable extralinguistic reality. In the centre prevail notional words and words with a precisely defined meaning, i.e. nouns rather than adjectives. From expressive words, only the inherently expressive words are part of the centre, that is words in which the expressive element is an integral part of the meaning, independent from the context" (Peprník 22). "The periphery contains words that are limited in frequency (e.g. specialist technical terms, slang), restricted as to territory and period, that is dialectisms and regionalisms, archaisms, and neologisms (including words recently loaned from other languages and not yet asssimilated ..." (Peprník 22). "On the extreme periphery of neologisms is the nonce formation, that is a word coined on the spur of the moment to cover some immediate need (or to show off the inventiveness of the author, often a journalist) and used only 'for the nonce'... it may never become institutionalized (lexicalized), i.e. accepted as a regular lexical item" (Peprník 22). 2.1.2 Vocabulary Layers We can look at vocabulary from various points of view. I focus on the time and stylistic differentiation in my thesis. Other types of differentiation are territorial and social differentiations, differentiation in origin and expressivity differentiation. Concerning stylistic differentiations, Yule writes that the general pattern is that "a written form of a message will inevitably be more formal in style than its spoken equivalent" (Yule 2006: 244). Peprník means by differentiation in time "whether a word is or is not in full use." (Peprník 75) Further on, he distinguishes obsolete, out-of-date, dated, or archaic words. On the opposite side of a timeline are neologisms. I will describe them in the next chapter. 2.2 Neologism 2.2.1 What is it? "A neologism is a new word or sense of a word." (Peprník

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