Filologija, No. 30-31, 1998.
Original scientific paper
Neologisms at the boundary between linguistic openness and linguistic purism
Vesna Muhvić-Dimanovski
; Zavod za lingvistiku Filozofskoga fakulteta, Zagre
Abstract
There are various definitions of neologism -ranging from those which describe it in a rather narrow sense to those which include into this linguistic category every new word, every new meaning, even new morphemes. According to such a wide definition every foreign word appearing in a language is a neologism; neologisms are thus the consequence of the openness of a language and its readiness to accept new words "imported" along with new concepts. On the other hand, linguistic purism which often comes as a reaction to a (too) large inflow of foreign words also generates neologisms; these neologisms, however, are built from native elements but are novelties in the language as well. Both linguistic openness towards foreign influences and a rigid purism are favourable to languages in enlarging their vocabularies. Neologisms are treated differently in various general monolingual dictionaries and dictionaries of neologisms, depending on the attitude towards normativity.
Keywords
neologism; linguistic openness; linguistic purism; normativity; lexical creativity
Hrčak ID:
173525
URI
Publication date:
6.4.1998.
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