NEOLOGISMS

Every language is like a dynamic system that changes and develops all the time.
Consequently, the vocabulary of a language is changing by introduction of new words and
phrases into it called neologismsNewmark (1988) says that “Neologisms can be defined as
newly coined lexical units or existing lexical units that acquire a new sense”. Therefore, they
play a great role in the contemporary system of language and speech term neologism is used by
linguists to describe a new word, usage, or expression. For a deep understanding of neologisms
of the English language, it is very important to explain these three basic aspects such as their
creation, their types, and their uses from a linguistic perspective.

A neologism is often created by different way such as: blending, borrowing, semantic
drift, compounding and clipping. The first way to create neologisms is blending which is a new
word created by combining two separate words with different meanings such as
breakfast+lunch= brunch. The second one is semantic drift that refers to the evolution of word
usage, usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage
as apology (before meant “to defend oneself “ and nowadays means “formal statement of
regret”) . The third one is borrowing that is the adoption of a word from another language, then
it is completely or partially naturalized as Pizza from Italy. The fourth is compounding which
refers to a word formation process in which two or more lexemes are combined into a single
new word such as note + book= notebook. And the last one is clipping that makes reference to
the word formation process in which a word is reduced or shortened without changing the
meaning of the word such as gasoline = gas. According to this due to globalization and
technology new words are emerging and they are created with this different processes.

According to Newmark (1988), there are twelve types of neologisms classified by their
formation. The first type is the old words which are words acquiring a new meaning. The second
one is new coinages that refers to brand or trade names. The third is derived words which are
coined by adding one or more affixes to the them. The fourth is abbreviations that refers to
shorten words or phrases. The fifth is collocations that are those used in the social sciences and
in computer fields. The sixth is eponyms, words derived by names. The seventh is phrasal words
that are words converted from verbs to nouns. The eighth is transferred words which show the
adjustment of words from another language into the English lexicon. The ninth is acronyms that
are words based on just the initials letters from a phrase. The tenth is pseudo-neologism which
is replaced by an specific one. The eleventh is internationalism which concerns a borrowing
that keep the same meaning in any language. Lastly, the collocations with new meanings are
group of terms that eventually changed their meaning. There are some emerging words that
come from the flexibility, brevity and creativity of the existing words or even borrowing from
other languages.