The Processes Of Lexical Innovation Flashcards
What are the 4 ways lexical change occurs?
Compounding - combining two full existing words into a new word
Blending - clips morphemes or syllables from existings word before creating a new lexical item
Acronymisation - words pronounced as words
Initialisation - words pronounced as letters
What are the 5 ways semantic changes can occur?
Amelioration - when a word gains more status
Pejoration - a word goes down the scale of acceptability
Broadening - when society extends the meaning of a word
Narrowing - the narrowing of a words meaning
Bleaching - when a word loses its power
What is an example of compounding? (lexical change)
Laptop
Lap + top
What is an example of Blending? (Lexical change)
Bromance
Brother + Romance
What is an example of acryonyimisation? (Lexical change)
Scuba and LOL
What is an example of initialisation? (Lexical change)
Whats an example of bleaching? (Semantic change)
Crap
What is an example of narrowing? (Semantic change)
Meat (meaning food in ME) —> meaning flesh in Modern
What is an example of broadening? (Semantic changes)
Pants —-> now meaning ‘awesome’ too
What is an example of Pejoration? (Semantic changes)
‘Gay’ now being used as an adjective
What is an example of amelioration? (Semantic change)
‘Sick’ now meaning ‘cool’
What are the 4 ways a word can grammatically change?
Conversion - turns an existing word into another word class
Back formation - when a veb is created from a noun by clipping the suffix
Suffixation - either a prefix, an infix or a suffix being added
Clipping - a morpheme being clipped
What is semantic reclimation?
Where offensive words are reclaimed and reused by positively by the labelled groups (e.g ‘queer’ by the LGBTQ community)
