Semantic classification of neologisms
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Transcript Semantic classification of neologisms
ADAM MICKIEWICZ UNIVERSITY IN POZNAŃ
Faculty of English
Extracting neologisms from
a corpus using NeoDet
Marta Grochocka
[email protected]
wa.amu.edu.pl
The development of a lexical item
(Bauer 1983)
1. Nonce formation
Neologism (Fischer 1998)
certain frequency over a certain period of time
distribution in different contexts and domains
2. Institutionalization
3. Lexicalization
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Types of neologisms
• formal a new word, including acronyms and
affixes, e.g. PC, e-, -gate (Metcalf 2002)
• syntactic a new expression or grammatical
construction
• semantic a new meaning of an already
existing word
• borrowing
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Methodology
Aims of the study:
to examine productive morphological processes in
English by means of studying formal neologisms
PART 1: Formal classification
PART 2: Semantic classification
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Neologism detector tool
Functions:
1. compilation of the study corpus
2. neologism extraction based on the exclusion principle
3. neologism management
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Neologism extraction process
Study corpus
Exclusion sources
Neologism candidates
Manual verification
Neologism management
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Study corpus size and content
14.3 million words
newspaper articles and blogs published between
1st Jan. 2009 and 26th Oct. 2010
daily broadsheets: The Daily Telegraph, The Times,
The Guardian
tabloids: The Sun, The Daily Mail
almost 9,000 neologism candidates analyzed
(out of ca. 73,000)
121 neologisms extracted (without borrowings)
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Exclusion sources
Corpus: The British National Corpus (1991-1994)
General dictionaries:
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 7th Edition, OALD7 (2005)
Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 11th Edition, MW11 (2006)
Macmillan English Dictionary 2nd Edition, MEDAL2 (2007)
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary 3rd Edition, CALD3 (2008)
Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, CH11 (2008)
Google: COBUILD
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 5th Edition, LDOCE5 (2009)
Dictionary.com
Slang dictionaries:
The Oxford Dictionary of New Words (1991)
The Probert Encyclopaedia of Slang (2004)
The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
(2007)
The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (2007)
Word lists: proper names, geographical names
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Neologism candidates analysis
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Search engine
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Neologism management 1
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Neologism management 2
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Neologism management 3
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Formal classification of neologisms
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Blends
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Twitterati (Twitter + glitterati)
welectricity (wellingtons + electricity)
retrotastic (retro + fantastic)
girlicious (girl + delicious)
Frankenfish (Frankenstein + fish)
Obamarita (Obama + margarita)
Holohoax (Holocaust + hoax)
zeroflation (zero + inflation)
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Semantic classification of neologisms
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Semantic classification – examples
IT and communications technology
Politics and current affairs
beatblogger
Af-Pak
cyber-locker
Muslimist
datablog
Obamanomics
Facebooker
gamification
iPad
celebdom
to liveblog
fabby
to retweet
lip-syncher
pet-set
retrotastic
Business and finance
infocapitalism
micro-employment
zeroflation
Entertainment
Food and dieting
frankenfish
orthorexic
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Problems
• impossible to detect semantic and syntactic neologisms
• alternative spelling, e.g. micro-blog, G & T
• items provided as examples in the exclusion sources not
analyzed by NeoDet
• failure of the online exclusion sources to respond to the
queries made by NeoDet
• overrepresentation of the Entertainment and News
section in the study corpus
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Conclusions
• formal neologisms as indicators of productive word
formation processes
• confirmation of the status of affixation and compounding
as the most popular methods of extending the lexicon
• blends as an important source of neologisms coined with
the purpose of being witty, amusing and memorable
• the largest number of neologisms in the area of IT and
communications technology
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Thank you !
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