Università di Camerino
Discussion
Started 17 January 2025
When technology, religion, politics, or culture changes, how do we bring new words into the language to talk about these changes?
SEMANTIC GAPS AND SOURCES OF NEW WORDS
Whenever there is a paradigm shift because of changing technology, religion, politics, culture, etc., new concepts are brought into the language. And when there are no words to talk about these new concepts, then new words must enter the language.
This PowerPoint gives examples of semantic gaps and the linguistic processes that are used to fill these semantic gaps: Borrowing, Loan Translation, Shift in Denotation or Connotation, Metaphorical Shift, Suffixation, Prefixation, Compounding, Clipping, Blending, Back Formation, Acronyming, Metathesis, Onomatopoeia, Reduplication, and Part of Speech Change. We also discuss “Sniglets.”
All replies (2)
Thank you for your very interesting insights. What about hyperforeignisms (i.e., words with a foreign "coating" that are given new meanings)? Examples between the English-Italian language pairs are, notoriously, pepperoni (that has nothing to do with the italian "peperoni", peppers, but are spicy salami); confetti (which, in Italian are sugared almonds given at weddings, whereas in English they are pieces of coloured paper/plastic launched in the air at weddings, ceremonies or carnival). Janda et al (1994 - Systematic Hyperforeignisms as Maximally External Evidence for Linguistic Rules) define hyperforeignsms as "Pseudo-loanwords – which, parallel to a (wo)man without a country, are forms without a language". Some scholars make other examples of hyperforeignsms, such as phrases where foreign words are introduced, as in "hasta la vista, baby" (in the film "Terminator"); or where English words are given a foreign flavour, as in "no problemo", "fatso", "weirdo" and "diabeto" (a character in Family Guy).
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