Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
ISBN: 978-607-9015-22-0
Abstract
Languages are in constant change and new words spring all the time, and even
though not all of them stick, some come to be part of the languages vocabulary
as full-right members. What is aimed for is to contrast the mechanisms English
and Spanish have for coining words that prior did not belong to the language, to
describe and exemplify each of them and to determine the frequency and
productivity they have in each language.
INTRODUCTION
One intrinsic characteristic of living languages is that of changing; their
speakers get rid of unnecessary or unfashionable elements and give way to new
ones. Similarly, languages have the inner capacity as proclaimed by language
universals- of expanding themselves through a series of mechanisms in order to be
more specific, to name new objects or ideas, to express a non-systemic meaning,
to make distinctions in register and, sometimes, because it just happens to strike
the fancy of a person or a group. This is true for syntax. To illustrate this point,
Spanish speakers have come to place an attribute anteceding the subject as a
resource for expressing irony, and thus Pedro es un hombre menudo has a very
different meaning from menudo hombre es Pedro (Lorenzo, 1994: 346-347); for
semantics, since the very same word may drastically change its meaning over time
and so something that was awful back in the 17th century was referred to as
deserving of awe and it did not have the nowadays quite opposite meaning
(Bryson, 1990: 70); for morphology, for users of a language may overlook certain
established patterns or create new ones in order to express something different, for
example, we can affix twice (or more) the same element and get away with a
dissimilar meaning, like in tatara tatara abuela; for phonetics and intonation, as
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seen in the change English speakers have made to the pronunciation of asked by
removing the /k/ phoneme; indisputably it is true for pragmatics and just as well for
the lexicon of a language. In this paper, the attention will be focused on this latter
element.
What is aimed for is to contrast the mechanisms English and Spanish have
for coining words that prior did not belong to the language, to describe and
exemplify each of them and to determine the frequency and productivity they have
in each language. The way in which I will proceed to do this is by consulting
specialized books on linguistics for both languages, other books with a broader
view on what concerns languages, dictionaries and webpages. Many examples
have been taken from documentary sources and are duly quoted; those which are
not have been taken from my own experience as a speaker of both languages and
from what reasonable intuition I deem fitting.
In a later section of the paper song lyrics -both in English and Spanish- are
going to be used as a source for finding neologisms and corroborating (or not) the
results of my documentary research. It is important to highlight that the intention is
not that of being exhaustive, but rather use them as an excuse to discover some of
the latest neologisms that have sprung up and are yet to be accepted formally by
the authorities of the English and Spanish languages as full-right members of the
language.
It is my believe that this topic deserves the attention of our fellow soon-to-be
teachers of EFL in particular because want it or not we live on the realm of
interlanguage, and knowing the word-formation processes and other particularities
exposed in this paper will probably clarify some of our doubts and help us identify
what belongs to each language separately from what belongs solely to Spanglish
(there goes a portmanteau). In addition to this, the research may very well be
worthy of the attention of linguists in general since despite the copious literature on
English and Spanish coinage there is very little work done in comparing them.
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specific mechanisms associated with subtracting from the words are clipping, and
then we have borrowings, mistakes (backformation or misspelling), and combining
them, which can be subdivided into acronyms and blending (or portmanteaus).
Derivation
Languages can get really specific sometimes, creating words with really
complex meanings such as arachibutyrophobia meaning to have a morbid fear of
peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth (Bryson, 1990: 60) or the still
unaccepted des-desintoxicar (Lorenzo, 1994: 220). The author does not give us a
context in which this word can be used but I figure that a suitable meaning would
be that of city person intoxicated with the noise and smog going to the countryside
to get clean from them and afterwards having to go back to the polluted city. If this
meaning sticks, we can later on derive the adjective des-desintoxicado for the
person who returns to the city after being in the countryside and the noun desdesintoxicacin to name the process. The specific meanings of these two words
have changed from their roots by a process of affixation, which not only changes
the original sense but can also change their grammatical category.
Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams (2003: 83) explain derivational morphology as
the process of derivational morphemes being added to a root morpheme or stem.
Each speaker of a language has a mental stock of affixes and the ways they are
used. In Spanish we would not use the English prefix un- to denote not but we
would rather use in- (or its allomorphs ir- and i-), as in shown in the pair
unnecessary/innecesario. Likewise, all speakers of Spanish know that we can add
the suffix mente to an adjective and thus form and adverb as in rpidamente
(even if they are clueless of what adjectives or adverbs are) and not to nouns like
in ranamente. If a person were determined to express the meaning of doing
something like a frog, he or she would probably come up with something like the
adjective ranesco which in turn can be made an adverb in ranescamente. This
word does not exist (yet) but is possible accordingly with Spanish rules for deriving
and would be understood by the rest of the speakers. Similarly, English speakers
might want to have one word for saying that someone is an only child without
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actually saying that phrase; according to English rules, a possible solution for the
problem would be the creation of the word siblingless and for the general
condition the word siblinglesshood or siblinglessness. They know, in turn that
they cannot say dreamish to mean that they were sort of dreaming, since the
suffix ish is attached to either nouns or adjectives, but not to verbs.
Usually, when people borrow or calque a derived word from another
language that word is going to be adapted to have their own affixes, for instance,
the Spanish equivalent to the French word mcontentement is descontento not
mecontentamiento, because the prefix m- has no meaning in Spanish and
saying descontentamiento, although possible, still sounds too forced when we
already have the noun contento. I cannot be sure which word came from what
language but, either way, what is certain is that there was a change in the affixes
used. However, this general principle is being confronted with a tendency in
Spanish to import and use freely foreign affixes, as noted by Lorenzo (1994). Why
do we have to say in Spanish that oil is a recurso no renovable (non-renewable
resource) when we could have said desrenovable, irrenovable or even
arenovable? The same happens with the suffix landia, which comes directly from
the English word land. It is still more interesting that in English, I believe, is used
as a compound whereas in Spanish it was adapted as a suffix. This proves the
reluctance of Spanish words to form compounds.
The wide productivity of derivation as a process to create new words is
proven by the fact that there are over 240 accepted Spanish words ending in azo
(Lorenzo, 1994: 217) which is not even the most prolific affix. In English occurs the
same, as it can be inferred by the fact that it is has over one hundred common
prefixes and suffixes (Bryson, 1990: 74). Virtually any content word (noun, verb
and adjective) is susceptible of being derived, so the possibilities are limitless. In
Spanish it goes even further and in some dialects people even derive prepositions
and adverbs, for example, encimar is a verb derived from the preposition encima
and it is quite used in Mexican dialect.
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Compounding
Contrary to derivation that is a highly prolific mechanism for the creation of
new words in both languages, compounding is extremely used in English (most
content words have the inner ability to be compounded) but much less frequent in
Spanish. The process in English entails no further complication that deciding
whether use a hyphen, a space or nothing, because the words are added up
without undergoing any changes. Of course there is logic to this; nouns can be
compound with other nouns (goldfish), with verbs (skateboard), with adjectives
(greenhouse), adverbs (nowadays) and even sometimes with prepositions
(upstairs), as well as the combination of the other components. Nonetheless, we
cannot put them in whatever order we want and expect to convey the meaning we
intended; as a general rule the last word is the headword and so we translate
cornfield as campo de maz and not as maz de campo. Although, as Bryson
(1990: 76) points out, English does have
the nifty refinement of making the elements reversible, so that we can
distinguish between a houseboat and a boathouse, between basketwork and a
workbasket, between a casebook and a bookcase.
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Clipping
Clipping or abbreviation is a quite handy resource that comes from deleting
part (usually the last bit, though not always) of a word. I reckon that clipping is far
more common than what dictionaries lead us to believe, since it is usually done
while speaking and dictionary word researches need abundant written evidence so
that they can be included as separate words. Nevertheless, many clipped words
have stuck and are already part of the lexicon such as gym, exam, lab (Bryson,
1990: 76), info, bro, cab (from cabriolet), maths, etc. In Spanish we have tele,
radio, foto, refri (or frigo in Spain), uni (for university), lic, profe, biblio (for
biblioteca), cine, porfa, etc. Most of the times these words do not change the
original meaning of the word, although sometimes the new word has come to mean
something different, for example cab which is synonym to taxi and cabriolet that
is a brand of cars.
In both languages there is a tendency to clip proper names, to illustrate: Ben
for Benjamin, Will for William, Sam for either Samuel or Samantha, Matt for
Matthew, and in Spanish Bere for Berenice, Lupe for Guadalupe, Marijo for Mara
Jos (here we have also a case of blending), Beto for Roberto or Alberto, Neto for
Ernesto, etc.
Borrowings
Languages that are in contact tend to adopt terms they lack from each other.
According to Bryson (1990: 68) at least half of English common words come from
non-Anglo-Saxon stock. This is a massive amount if we consider that English total
number of words in use collected by the 2nd edition of the Oxford dictionary
amounts to 301, 300 main entries and that number is constantly outdated by the
language itself. Examples of borrowed words are ranch and rancher (slightly
changed from the Spanish word rancho), kindergarten from German, pizza from
Italian, shampoo from and Indian language, rendezvous from French and so on.
Spanish also has a great number of originally foreign words and although I could
not find which percentage, lex Grijelmo (2006) and Mario Len (2000) think they
are already too many.
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Backformation
Backformation has been over the centuries the word-formation process that
language purists have fought the most. The online Oxford dictionary defines
backformation as a word that is formed from what appears to be its derivative (e.g.
edit from editor). Evidently, this process relies on the speakers internalization of
the language system. Aware or not, we see patterns in language, that is why we
can give a good guess at a word we have not seen before, lets say manliness, if
we understand the root and know what the suffixes ly and ness are for.
However, sometimes words resemble a pattern while they actually are exceptions
to it; people then generalize the rule and make up a logical word out of it. Of
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Acronyms
The online Oxford definition for acronym is a word formed from the initial
letters of other words (e.g. laser, Aids). The DRAE version, however, distinguishes
two meanings:
1. m. Tipo de sigla que se pronuncia como una palabra; p. ej., o(bjeto)
v(olante) n(o) i(dentificado). 2. m. Vocablo formado por la unin de elementos
de dos o ms palabras, constituido por el principio de la primera y el final de la
ltima, p. ej., ofi(cina infor)mtica, o, frecuentemente, por otras combinaciones,
p. ej., so(und) n(avigation) a(nd) r(anging), Ban(co) es(paol) (de) (crdi)to.
The sense given to the second meaning is what we call blending. In spite of
the fact that the English entry makes no allusion to the pronunciation of acronyms,
it is also possible to read them out if the resulting word compels to English phonetic
system. So UFO, radar (not longer capitalized) and AIDS are pronounce like they
would pronounce any other word and UNDP, OAS, UCLA, etc. are spelt out. The
same applies for Spanish although we prefer to read them out so many
organizations manipulate their names to be suitable for pronouncing, like
MERCOSUR (Mercado Comn del Sur). The common thing is that neither
prepositions nor connectors are taken into account to figure in the acronym but
sometimes this is overseen in favor of a smoother pronunciation like in the
acronym SEyC (Secretara de Educacin y Cultura).
Usually, technical terms and organization names are put into an acronym
(this works for both languages), but common phrases can also follow this pattern,
for example asap (as soon as possible), R.I.P. (rest in peace), btw (by the way),
omg (oh my god), lol (laughs out loud) and so on. The latter two may be well in
their way to become standard words. In Spanish we can also make an acronym out
of a common phrase, for instance Q.D.T.B. (que Dios te Bendiga), although it is
rather rare. In general English speakers seem keener on creating acronyms than
Spanish speakers. The possibilities for acronyms are limitless in both languages; it
depends only in the need for them and the general acceptance of its use.
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Blending
Also called portmanteaus; a blend results from combining two words, usually
the beginning of one and the ending of the other although this may vary. From
what I have noticed this is a very popular process for brands and advertising, as
well as when the intention is satirical or comical, but recently they have being used
more and more in technical papers or by some witty journalists. Some well-known
blends in English are smog (smoke + fog), glocal (global + local), Spanglish
(Spanish + English), knankles (knees + ankles), replubicrat (republican +
democrat, from Oxford online), etc.
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Crunk
The word crunk, a blend standing for crazy drunk, was first introduced by
musician Lil Jon in his album Get crunk, who u wit in 1997. The term was so
successful that it has inspired the name of a music genre that combines electro
and hip-hop and the Oxford dictionary has already accepted it to form part of the
next edition.
ero
ero (clipping of compaero) is a popular slang word in the central part of
Mexico. It was spread to other parts of Mexico and abroad thanks to the son ero
by Molotov (1999). As it was a term used mainly in low social classes it has also
come to be a pejorative way to call its users.
Picker
The English band Artic Monkeys (2007) released the song (and instant hit)
Teddy picker referring to a game. Even though to derive picker from the verb
pick seems like a quite acceptable thing to do, the Oxford dictionary still does not
recognize the validity of that word.
Corazonado
Ricky Martin (1998) released the single corazonado, which is a very creative
derivation. To me it seems to be backformation, because we have the term
descorazonado (still not recognized by the DRAE for being a calque of English
heartless) which evidently means to be cruel. However, there is no evident
meaning to corazonado except what we can infer from the antonym of
descorazonado which would be something like compassionate.
Frengers
The word frengers is a portmanteau of friends + strangers popularized by
the rock band Mew (2003) in the album carrying the same name.
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Even though the examples that I show you here are very scarce, there is a
vast number of coined words in songs, which I dont have the time or analytical
means to further analyze. Nevertheless, what I have found more in songs -besides
borrowings and compounds (in English) that are only too common- are blends and
derivation, both aiming at giving an attractive twist to a word. So creativeness is a
premise for neologisms in songs.
CONCLUSION
As Grijelmo (2006: 301) says una lengua que nunca cambiara slo podra
hablarse en un cementerio. Languages are constantly changing and in order to
expand they have a series of word-formation processes. In English and Spanish
we have corresponding coinage mechanisms, although they vary in frequency and
productivity. These processes are derivation, compounding, clipping, borrowing,
backformation, acronyms and blending. Derivation and borrowing are highly prolific
mechanisms in both languages; compounding is very much used in English but not
so common in Spanish; the rest are less prolific and more or less equally frequent
in both languages.
From the literature revised, I can conclude that Spanish is more reticent to
neologisms, particularly those who have entered the language from foreign words.
English, on the other hand, on the overall praises itself for being so receptive and
having such a wide lexicon.
The particular status of English nowadays gives it much more freedom. As
music, science, politics and other fields are predominantly monopolized by the
English speaking world other languages feel defensive for such a heavy load of
terms that can be barely assimilated by the language and so there is a tendency
for acquiring needless words and expressions in detriment for their mother tongue.
Talking about the reason behind word-formation and especially about the
use and frequency of certain mechanisms says a lot of the culture, and even
though it is not my intention to go any further in this essay, it is important to
highlight the social, political and cultural factors that influence the change in word
coinage over time. But that is material for another study.
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Biodata
Mara del Mar Moure Pea is currently an undergraduate student of the majors of
English Language and International Relations at the University of Quintana Roo.
Contact: 0708927@uqroo.mx
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