Ludicity in lexical innovation (I) – French (original) (raw)

Claudine Moulin, Ludicity in lexical innovation (II) – German

S. Arndt-Lappe, A. Braun, C. Moulin, E. Winter-Froemel (eds.), Expanding the Lexicon. Linguistic Innovation, Morphological Productivity, and the Role of Discourse-Related Factors, Berlin – Boston : De Gruyter 2018, 261-285, 2018

The paper explores ludic innovations as a specific subtype of linguistic innovation at the lexical level. I will discuss the phenomenon of linguistic ludicity in the context of lexicographic sources in German, taking into account contemporary and historical dictionaries as well as Early New High German sources of metalinguistic reflection. Different types of lexical innovation will be analysed, with a special focus on structural, semantic, and pragmatic features underlying the process of ludic expansion of the lexicon. Firstly, I will reflect on methodological challenges encountered when exploring linguistic ludicity from a lexicographic point of view. Subsequently, I will analyse the linguistic and lexical marking of ludicity in dictionaries of contemporary German (most importantly Duden online 2017) and in selected sources of the (Early) Modern period (Harsdörffer, Kramer, Adelung), in order to investigate general metalinguistic and lexicographic lines of depicting wordplay and ludic innovation leading to language change. There will be a particular focus on Johann Christoph Adelung’s Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart (1793–1801) and the tracing of relevant pathways of evolution of ludic innovations, especially in the predominant domain of nominal compounds. Overall, it will be shown that markedness plays a central role for ludic innovation and that the analysis of ludic use from a lexicographic point of view can uncover underlying dynamics of lexical expansion and change.

Expanding the Lexicon: At the crossroads of innovation, productivity, and ludicity

Expanding the Lexicon, 2018

Expanding the Lexicon: At the crossroads of innovation, productivity, and ludicity 1 The dynamic lexicon Traditionally, the creation of new lexical units and patterns-understood in a wide sense as not being necessarily limited to the word level-has been studied in different research frameworks. Whereas approaches focusing on morphological productivity are directed at system-internal ('grammatical') morphological processes, other approaches have aimed at identifying general types of lexical innovation and describing them in the larger context of lexical change, thus integrating system-external factors related to the historical background of the innovations and their diffusion. In this way, lexical change provides insights into general motives of language change and basic mechanisms of language processing. The aim of this volume is to discuss fundamental aspects of dynamic processes in the lexicon, including recent and ongoing changes as well as historical processes of change, and to bring new evidence to bear on the traditional dividing line between approaches oriented towards system-internal and system-external aspects. Current research in language change is marked by a renewed interest in the lexicon, as documented by recent international conferences and publications on structural, typological and cognitive approaches to the lexicon and on regularities of lexical change in the larger context of language change (see, among many others,

The Problem of Lexical Innovation

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2016

In a series of papers, Donal Davidson has developed a powerful argument against the claim that linguistic conventions provide any explanatory purchase on an account of linguistic meaning and communication. This argument, as I shall develop it, turns on cases of what I call lexical innovation: cases in which a speaker uses a sentence containing a novel expression-meaning pair, but nevertheless successfully communicates her intended meaning to her audience. I will argue that cases of lexical innovation motivate a dynamic conception of linguistic conventions according to which background linguistic conventions may be rapidly expanded to incorporate new word meanings or shifted to revise the meanings of words already in circulation. I argue that this dynamic account of conventions both resolves the problem raised by cases of lexical innovation and that it does so in a way that is preferable to those who-like Davidsondeny important explanatory roles for linguistic conventions.

The ludic aspect of lexical inventiveness

2013

In this paper we argue that coining new words is inherently ludic. We hypothesize that naming (the onomasiological part of the creation of words) functions as a modern form of aporia (the riddle). We propose to interpret nonce formations as the initial stage of any new word both as a temporal and as a spatial notion. Once used in communicative interaction, a word is launched on its paths of socialization, instantiated by institutionalization and lexicalization. As there are no grounds for a sharp distinction between ‘ludic’ and ‘ordinary’ words, we postulate ludicity as a third dimension of socialization for which each word is characterized

Lexical inventions: French interlanguage as L2 versus L3

Applied Linguistics, 19, 4, 471-490, 1998

The usual source of crosshnguistic influence in the interlanguage of a person learning a first foreign language (L2) is quite obviously his/her LI Pinpointing the source of crosshnguistic influences in the interlanguage of a multilingual speaker is less straightforward The main source of crosshnguistic influence m the L3 of a speaker is not automatically, as the present study shows, the LI of the speaker This paper investigates this phenomenon in the context of nontarget-like lexemes ('lexical inventions') in the advanced oral French mterlanguage of 39 Dutch LI speakers, 32 of whom had French as an L2 and English as an L3, the remaining 7 speakers having English as an L2 and French as an L3 Our results show that a higher proportion of lexical inventions produced by the French L2 speakers derive from creative (non-standard) use of target language rules compared to the French L3 speakers Crosshnguistic influence is visible in the lexical inventions of both groups, but the French L2 speakers seem to rely more on information attached to their Dutch LI lemmas, whereas the French L3 speakers draw more on their English L2 lemmas This suggests principles' blocking LI transfer in L3 learners in terms of spreading activation (cf Green 1986, Pouhsse and Bongaerts 1994)

Lexical tectonics: Mapping structural change in patterns of lexification

François, Alexandre. 2022. Lexical tectonics: Mapping structural change in patterns of lexification. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 41/1: 89‒123., 2022

Whether it is based on philological data or on reconstruction, historical linguistics formulates etymological hypotheses that entail changes both in form and in meaning. Semantic change can be understood as a change in "patterns of lexification", i. e., correspondences between forms and senses. Thus a polysemous word, which once lexified senses s1-s2-s3, evolves so it later encodes s2-s3-s4. Meanings that used to be colexified are now dislexified, and vice versa. Leaning on empirical data from Romance and from Oceanic, this study outlines a general model of historical lexicology, and identifies five types of structural innovations in the lexicon: split, merger, competition, shift, and relexification. The theoretical discussion is made easier by using a visual approach to structural change, in the form of diachronic maps. Semantic maps have already proven useful to represent synchronic patterns of lexification, outlining each language's emic categories against a grid of etic senses. The same principle can be profitably used when analysing lexification patterns in diachrony: lexical change is then viewed as the reconfiguration of sense clusters in a semantic space. Maps help us visualize the "lexical tectonics" at play as words evolve over time, gradually shifting their meaning, gaining or losing semantic territory, colliding with each other, or disappearing forever. ___________________ François, Alexandre. 2022. Lexical tectonics: Mapping structural change in patterns of lexification. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 41/1: 89‒123.

Extra Linguistic Factors Behind Lexical Change in Modern English, Spanish and German

2020

This paper aims to present the reasons for lexical change in modern English, Spanish and German. Grammar and phonetics within a language are relatively closed systems, whereas the lexicon of any language is determined and adapted to the constant changes from both the community where the language is used, but also from the global influence. Therefore, the lexical system is a rather open system, which is a logical consequence of our ever-changing world. This paper will present and discuss both internal (linguistic) and external (extra linguistic) factors as reasons for language change. The focus, however, will be on exploring the extra linguistic factors related to lexical change, lexical addition and loss in an era of increasing global technological improvements and mobility. The sociolinguistic, political, contact induced influence, historical, technological motivation and other external factors will be discussed in the paper as the extra linguistic motivation that lies behind this process of language change in the mentioned three languages. The reasons for the constant change of languages is difficult to determine. The same global influence often serves as different factor in different languages or communities. The paper will compare the motivation for lexical change in these three languages and it would finally provide an insight of the most influenced fields and spheres of life where innovations and alterations occur.