Main Article Content
Leksikale vernuwing: neologismes en geleentheidskeppings
Abstract
Lexical renewal: neologisms and occasional creations
Advertising copy writers and journalists deserve recognition for the innovative and creative way they use Afrikaans and English in advertising and reportage. An analysis of collected data clearly showed that these texts encompass much more than artistic and intellectual inventive language. More often these word-formations in the media breach standard word-formation norms in a creative way.
From a linguistic perspective, the mental and linguistic lexicons consist of simplex and complex words, the latter formed morphologically by means of inflection, deriviation and compounding and combinations of the former. These lexical sets conform to canonical patterns and their operational parameters. These parameters of the canon restrict the kinds of morphemes and words that can appear in the lexicon of the language, which means that the productive patterns of word-formation are rule-governed.
A taxonomy of the norm-breaching patterns and systems will be proposed which will make it possible to describe the renewal of the vocabulary in terms of rule-changing creativity against the background of rule-governed productivity. The objective of this article is to distinguish linguistically among concepts in the linguistic lexicon, neologisms and occasional creations. What kinds of information are then needed when we comprehend a (new) word? It is evident that implicit knowledge of all the sub fields of linguistics, namely phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information, is needed.
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2004, 22(3&4): 173190
Advertising copy writers and journalists deserve recognition for the innovative and creative way they use Afrikaans and English in advertising and reportage. An analysis of collected data clearly showed that these texts encompass much more than artistic and intellectual inventive language. More often these word-formations in the media breach standard word-formation norms in a creative way.
From a linguistic perspective, the mental and linguistic lexicons consist of simplex and complex words, the latter formed morphologically by means of inflection, deriviation and compounding and combinations of the former. These lexical sets conform to canonical patterns and their operational parameters. These parameters of the canon restrict the kinds of morphemes and words that can appear in the lexicon of the language, which means that the productive patterns of word-formation are rule-governed.
A taxonomy of the norm-breaching patterns and systems will be proposed which will make it possible to describe the renewal of the vocabulary in terms of rule-changing creativity against the background of rule-governed productivity. The objective of this article is to distinguish linguistically among concepts in the linguistic lexicon, neologisms and occasional creations. What kinds of information are then needed when we comprehend a (new) word? It is evident that implicit knowledge of all the sub fields of linguistics, namely phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic information, is needed.
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2004, 22(3&4): 173190
