Faculty Of Education at Masaryk University in Brno Words Recently Coined And Blended: Analysis Of New English Lexical Items Mrg. Lenka Šomanová English Language And Literature Section Mgr. Radek Vogel, Ph. D June 15, 2017 ABSTRACT Hundreds of new lexical items are coined or borrowed every year. The focus of the thesis is on analysing lexical enrichment of English as it is reflected in newly derived, compounded and blended words. A number of them has been added into the Oxford Dictionary (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/), however a great amount have not been included into any dictionary yet. This work will investigate how the new items have eventually been created, the possible reasons why these may have been blended, the purposes and fields of their everyday use and last but not least the specific group of users from various social or professional classes. CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 2 THERORETICAL PART ................................................................................................................ 2 2.1 WORD FORMATION PROCESSES ..................................................................................... 2 2.1.1 Compounding .................................................................................................................. 2 2.1.2 Reduplication ................................................................................................................... 3 2.1.3 Derivation ........................................................................................................................ 3 2.1.4 Back formation ................................................................................................................ 4 2.1.5 Affixation ........................................................................................................................ 4 2.1.6 Blending .......................................................................................................................... 4 2.1.7 Clipping ........................................................................................................................... 5 2.1.8 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................. 6 2.1.9 Acronyms ........................................................................................................................ 7 2.1.10 Analogy ........................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.11 Eponyms .......................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.12 Novel Creation ................................................................................................................ 8 2.1.13 Creative respelling ........................................................................................................... 8 2.1.14 Conversion ....................................................................................................................... 9 2.1.15 Coinages ........................................................................................................................ 10 2.1.16 Nonce words .................................................................................................................. 10 2.1.17 Borrowing ...................................................................................................................... 11 2.1.18 Calquing ........................................................................................................................ 11 2.1.19 Metaphor ....................................................................................................................... 12 3 CLASSIFICATION BY THE FIELD OF USE ............................................................................ 12 3.1 SOCIAL NETWORKING..................................................................................................... 12 3.2 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ........................................................................................ 15 3.3 POPULAR CULTURE ......................................................................................................... 18 3.4 TRADEMARKS ................................................................................................................... 19 3.5 POLITICS ............................................................................................................................. 22 3.6 JOURNALISM ...................................................................................................................... 24 3.7 TEXTING AND MESSAGES .............................................................................................. 26 4 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 27 4.1 WAYS OF WORD FORMATION IN SOCIAL NETWORKING ....................................... 27 4.2 WAYS OF WORD FORMATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ........................... 28 4.3 WAYS OF WORD FORMATION IN POPULAR CULTURE ........................................... 29 4.4 WAYS OF WORD FORMATION IN THE FIELD OF TRADEMARKS .......................... 30 4.5 WAYS OF WORD FORMATION IN POLITICS................................................................ 30 4.6 WAYS OF WORD FORMATION IN JOURNALISM ........................................................ 31 4.7 MOST COMMON WAY OF WORD FORMATION IN TEXTING................................... 32 1 INTRODUCTION Adding new words to a language especially English is recently becoming more and more common. The internet, television, commerce, new industrial products or services have provided a fertile soil for blending of a vast amount of new lexical items. It will not be daring to state that the English language is unbelievably fast in adjusting to the changing world. New expressions from everyday life representing the latest changes and evolutions are conventionalized daily. Nevertheless, it is necessary to differentiate between new words and neologisms. It is understood that neologisms are completely new expressions that have not yet been entered in the Oxford Dictionary while new words already have. These new words are constantly being coined and gradually being used by particular groups of people and have not become formal yet. The completely new words are called neologisms as the following definition taken from the website www.vappingo.com explains: “Neologisms are newly coined terms, words, or phrases, that may be commonly used in everyday life but have yet to be formally accepted as constituting mainstream language. Neologisms represent the evolving nature of the English language. Over time people create new words that express concepts or ideas that were previously expressed using other words or use words that may not have existed at all. Neologisms can be completely new words, new meanings for existing words or new semes in existing words“. 1 2 THERORETICAL PART 2.1 WORD FORMATION PROCESSES In the first chapter different ways of word formation throughout history will be depicted. The following paragraphs have been inspired by this internet source: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words/wordtypes.html 2.1.1 Compounding Compounding means joining two or more common words together in order to form an independent lexical item. Most base words are originally English but sometimes the items are borrowed from other languages such as Latin, Greek. For example: mailbox, mailman, dog house, fireplace, fireplug, email, e-ticket, dry run, cupcake, pick-up truck. Quite frequently prepositions form part of the compound such as pick-up truck. It is important to point out different ways of joining the base forms. Sometimes space is left between items (dog house), in other cases the words are connected with a hyphen (pick- pocket) and sometimes they just stand next to each other without any space between (blackbird). Note that it is possible to create compounds with different parts of speech. Majority of them are noun-noun compounds while less of them are formed with adjective-noun (dry run, hard drive, blackbird). Nevertheless, verb-noun combination appears to be another way of joining lexical items together (pick-pocket). Next, verb-particle pattern is also used while the particle usually expresses kind of a movement, position or often has a metaphorical meaning (drive- through, get-away). It is surprising that sometimes these compounds come out as different parts of speech that their parts (drive-verb, through-preposition, drive-through is a noun). There exist cases when even more than two items form a compound, such as ice-cream cone, no-fault insurance. 2 2.1.2 Reduplication So called compound substitutes can also be formed using rhyming words. Actually, two rhyming meaningful words make a rhyming compound (lovey-dovey). On the other hand, rhyming compounds can be created from new invented words that usually have no meaning but rhyme with the first component (higgledy-pigglety, easy-peasy). Another way of forming compounds is connected with child talk and is called hypocoristic language. Henny-Penny, Pigiie-Wiggie…. Whereas the second component again usually has no logical meaning but apparently the way they rhyme is entertaining for the little ones. Other examples may be the following: • adjective-noun compound: