Semantic Aspects of National Varieties of Spanish in a Dictionary of Neologisms, theAntenario (original) (raw)

Beyond frequency: On the dictionarisation of new words in Spanish

Globalex 2019 Workshop Proceedings, 2019

The most recent literature on neology has discussed the criteria that must be taken into account in order to include new words in dictionaries (Metcalf 2002, Cook 2010, Ishikawa 2006, O'Donovan and O'Neill 2008, Freixa 2016, among many others). Although there are other factors that must be considered, such as morphologic features or semantic transparency (Adelstein and Freixa 2013, Bernal et al. 2018), authors broadly agree that frequency plays a central role, given that high corpus frequency may be taken as evidence of the institutionalization of a lexical unit. However, it has also been pointed out that frequency is a complex criterion in itself, and, therefore, aspects such as stabilization in use (Cook 2010) or a possible longitudinal change in frequency (Metcalf 2002, Ishikawa 2006) must also be taken into account when measuring frequency in corpora. In this paper, we approach lexical frequency as a criterion to evaluate whether neologisms should be included in Spanish dictionaries from a new perspective. Specifically, we compare data concerning change in frequency of neologisms through time with speakers’ perceptions about their novelty, known as ‘neological feeling’ in the specialized literature (Gardin et al. 1974, Sablayrolles 2003). Data about speakers’ perceptions is obtained from online questionnaires carried out within the framework of the Neómetro project (Bernal et al. in press). A set of questionnaires was launched in which 100 subjects evaluated their perceptions of 130 neologisms in Spanish according to four different criteria (correct formation, frequency, novelty and necessity of inclusion in dictionaries). Frequency data is taken from an extensive corpus of texts from the press, FACTIVA, which provides histograms of frequency through time. For this study, we analyze the neologisms that were perceived as the most and the least frequent in the questionnaires. We analyze their frequency curve through time in Factiva to find correlations between stabilization in time and speakers’ perceptions of their institutionalization. The data allows us to improve the predictive capacity of frequency as a measure to decide which neologisms should be included in dictionaries, as it introduces factors (formal, semantic or usage) that favor or hinder institutionalization into the equation.

La función comunicativa de los neologismos: caracterización a partir de criterios basados en el uso

Proceedings of the 12th Conference of the European Association of Specific Purposes (AELFE) = Actas del XII Congreso de la Asociación Europea de Lenguas para Fines Específicos (AELFE), 240-251, 2014

A principios del siglo pasado Tappolet (1916) propuso la distinción entre préstamos necesarios y préstamos “de lujo”. También Guilbert, en su obra fundamental de 1975, retomó y actualizó esta distinción aplicada a la neología léxica: neologismos denominativos y neologismos estilísticos. En las últimas décadas, sin embargo, no se ha avanzado mucho en los criterios para objetivar esta dicotomía. El objetivo principal del presente artículo es establecer una plantilla metodológica con una serie de parámetros e indicadores que, de acuerdo con la bibliografía sobre neología, nos permita clasificar los neologismos en un mismo eje según sus características referenciales, en un extremo, e inherentemente expresivas, en el otro. En esta línea, los parámetros utilizados en el análisis son principalmente lingüísticos basados en el uso. Con esta propuesta se pretende avanzar en la caracterización de los neologismos más allá del criterio lexicográfico normalmente utilizado para la identificación de neologismos porque, aunque la metodología es coherente, los resultados que proporciona son limitados. Por este motivo, Cabré (2009: 7) afirma que a la hora de considerar si una unidad léxica es neológica se debería intentar “matizar el carácter absoluto del criterio de exclusión lexicográfico utilizado hasta ahora”.

Review of the book Ejercicios de lexicología del español by Florencio del Barrio de la Rosa

SUMMARY The proposed audience of Ejercicios de lexicología del español is a beginner Spanish linguistics course. Though not offering original research, the main purpose is to make available a new way of learning and practicing lexicology. This book has six sections. They are General Concepts, Morphology, Word Formation, Grammatical Categories, Semantics and Lexicosemantic Relations. Though distinct, the sections tend to overlap considerably. The General Concepts section seeks to refute prescriptive ideas as well as introduce concepts, such as competence and performance, which drive many of the mechanisms of lexicology. The section also touches on sociolinguistic factors that affect attitudes toward prescriptivism, as well as performance across registers. Lastly, it further defines some general terms, most importantly what certain concepts, such as lexicology, do not entail. In the Morphology section, beyond explaining the types of morphemes in Spanish and their combinations, the author introduces morphological analysis; he uses the analysis as a springboard to effectively describe word formation and why analysis must take a specific order. The Word Formation section explores how words change syntactic categories with affixes as well as looking at the types of combinations. Also, there is a brief, welcome mention of how register and sociolinguistic factors play into word formation. The section on Grammatical Categories explains not only what they are but also what morphosyntactic constraints they exhibit. The section on Semantics is a rich section that dissects semantic function, semantic change, and the often confusing distinction for beginning students between reference, sense, and extension. The concluding section, Lexico-Semantic Relations, is probably the lightest section, touching on homonyms, hyponyms/hypernyms, synonyms and antonyms, which are arguably the most intuitive notions of the book for a beginner, but still a valuable addition. At the end of every section, there are annotated bibliographies of the subsections. These are useful for immediate reference to research which influenced the author's arguments or which he refuted. The entire bibliography is also provided at the end of the book. The sources cited are immediately familiar to those in the field of Hispanic linguistics and include seminal works (e.g. Bosque and Gutiérrez-Rexach, 2009). Additionally, the question index is rather helpful because one can easily find related exercises that are spread out among the chapters. However, since many of the questions cannot be answered as an open question without a set of options, the utility of the question index is limited.

Comparison of the macro/microstructure of the Iberian Academy Dictionaries

Travel Grant Reports Call I, 2018

Since I am the person in charge of the coordination of the new Portuguese Academy Dictionary, specifically as regards planning the macrostructure and microstructure of this dictionary, it is crucial that I learn how other structures are devised, such as the Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE) published by an analogous academy – Real Academia Española. This research is aimed at defining guidelines for the inclusion and description of terms in general language dictionaries in order to help lexicographers in this specific task. Combining lexicographical and terminological methods is definitely a plus for the planning of a dictionary’s macrostructure and microstructure, improving the organization and description of lexicographical articles as a whole.

Lexicographic detection and representation of Spanish neologisms in the COVID-19 pandemic

De Gruyter eBooks, 2022

The syntagma gel hidroalcohólico 'hydroalcoholic gel' or the noun hidroalcohol 'hydroalcohol' cannot be found in Diccionario de la lengua española (DLE) of the Real Academia Española ('Royal Spanish Academy') or other general reference dictionaries of the Spanish language. This is so despite the fact that, for well over a year and to this very day, we have not been able to do anything without first sanitising our hands with this product. It is one of the many neologisms that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought us, and these have become commonly used words that dictionaries should consider as candidates for future updates. By looking at the dictionarisability of these neologisms, in this work we try to set their boundaries on the continuum along which they fall. "Dictionarisability" means, in our context, the greater or lesser interest of these unities regarding the updating of general language dictionaries. At both ends of this continuum, there are surprising nonce words, as well as neologisms that have recently lost their status as such because they have now been incorporated into the dictionary. To identify different groups on the continuum of pandemic neologisms, we take into account the criteria proposed in the current literature and, by so doing, we are able to assess the extent to which they are discriminatory. This will allow us to address the neological process and to reflect on the various stages of it, from the time a neologism is born until the moment it ceases to be one because it has been dictionarised. Before that, however, we present the framework of our study and refer to the mechanisms available for detecting neologisms in general and pandemic neologisms in particular.