The transgression of word-formation rules as a sign of linguistic change in Catalan: the case of -isme, -itis, and -metre

Abstract

In Catalan, -isme ‘-ism’, -itis, and -metre ‘-meter’ create new words that do not follow the WFRs described in grammar books and dictionaries. As a result, these lexical innovations, such as panxacontentisme (panxacontent ‘carefree’ + -ism ‘-ism’), titulitis (títol ‘certificate’ + ‘-itis’), and emocionòmetre (emoció ‘emotion’ + -metre ‘-meter’), tend to be considered transgressive. The main aim of this paper is to provide a close review of grammar books and dictionaries among other sources to compare the rules described in the literature and the data provided by the bank of neologisms of the Observatori de Neologia. Since language changes and variations are inherent phenomena of any living language, the deviation experienced by these bound morphemes could be conceived as an example of linguistic change and not only as a one-time transgression. In addition, in order to check whether these linguistic changes are specific to the Catalan language, I reviewed some English, French, and Spanish literature. Finally, a set of diachronic corpora, that covers the time span from the 11th century until the present day, is used to study the first examples of these phenomena in the Catalan language. The results point out that in Catalan, these changes can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century, and that they cannot be considered language-specific, since they affect the different languages under study.