Invisible neologisms: category change

Abstract

New word formation procedures involving a grammatical category or subcategory change are suffixation, part of prexifation, somre borrowings, conversion, lexicalisation, somre cases of abbreviation, and syntactic change. Our approach is based on the idea that procedures that do not attach derivational affixes or seemingly borrow from other languages can initially be perceveid as less innovative than the rest, and that is why we have named the set of procedures formed by conversion, lexicalisation, abbreviation and syntactic change as invisible neologisms. In keeping with proposal for the multidimensional classification of neologisms by Cabré (2006, 2009 and 2015), the grouping - under the category dimension - of a set of neologisms la belled with four different formation procedures allows us to overcome the difficulty of esta blishing clear boundaries between some of these procedures because, for example, there are some cases of reduction within conversion, and there are some instances of loexicalisation or abbreviation that could be considered cases of conversion. This work forms part of the research activities connected with the project entitled Neologismes per a l'actualització del diccionari normatiu (NADIC, Neologisms for thw Pupose of Updating the Standard Dictionary) that, in the period spanning 2015-2017, established a set of criteria to assist the decision-making process in regard to the dictionarisation of neologisms in the Catalan language. Within this context, the aim of this work is twofold: firstly, to analyse the neologisms formed by conversion, lexicalisation, abbreviation and syntactic change that had been filtered by the project's criteria; and secondly, to see if the application of the dictionarisation criteria to the set of neological data documented by the Neology Observatory over the past 20 years enabled good candidates for inclusion in the standard dictionary to come to the surface. We found that the characterisation of the neologisms analysed was a good reflection of the tendencies displayed by these formation procedures in Catalan neology in general. Thus, the conversion of adjectives into nominal neologisms was confirmed as the most common procedure, followed by the conversion of deverbal into nwe verbs. We also found that the functional, category, formal and semantic changes occurring in these neologisms in relation to their lexical base, regardless of the formation procedure they followed, shaped the speakers' perceptions of newness. In this respect, those neologisms displaying a category change only, without any modification of the inflectional paradigm (e.g., between nouns and adjectives), and therefore potentially being perceived as less innovative, were generated by both conversion and abbreviation. Meanwhile, those neologisms that, in addition to a category change, sought to complete inflectional paradigms (e.g., between verbs and nouns) were associated with proceduresof conversion, lexicalisation and syntactic change. Moreover, by incorporating inflectional morphemes and acquiring new semantic features, their degree of innovation was more visible. And, lastly, the least invisible and, therefore, most innovative neologisms were also formed by conversion and abbreviation. These combined a more marked (or less predictable) category change and a formal change - often with orthographical expressions to a noun or to a grammatical connector). In the conclusions, we also identified the correlation between this perception of neologisms being more invisible (or less innovative) and more visible ( or innovative) through the corresponding lexicographical treatment.