Autonomia i heteronomia del català en la formació de neologismes denominatius i estilístics

Rufí i Pibernat, Carla

Autonomia i heteronomia del català en la formació de neologismes denominatius i estilístics

Citation

Rufí i Pibernat, C. Autonomia i heteronomia del català en la formació de neologismes denominatius i estilístics. 2022. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/53823

This citation was generated automatically.

Abstract

Most studies on lexical vitality are based on the presence of borrowings among the formation processes of neologisms in a language. Freixa et al. (2020) propose a shift in this regard by stating that foreign lexical innovation is not only found in borrowings, but is also hidden in calques. Thus, the date of the first documentation of neologisms is the indicator of their genuineness. With the aim of studying the lexical vitality of the Catalan language, we analyse the tendency to autonomy or heteronomy with respect to Spanish of 191 neologisms documented in written media between 2021 and 2022. In accordance with the hypothesis that suggests that neologisms with a stylistic function present a greater tendency to autonomy than neologisms that only perform a denominative function, we decide to focus the analysis on opinion articles. Our results confirm this tendency: Catalan does not rule the current denominative world given the strength of other languages, but it preserves a space for lexical innovation of its own in the creation of units with expressive value. Far from pretending to offer determinant results on the lexical vitality of the Catalan language, this study verifies the continuity of the innovative and more refined approach of previous studies (Freixa et al., 2020 and Llopart-Saumell, 2016) and paves the way for future lines of research that apply these sociolinguistic variables to the study of neology.