The main sources and functioning of neologisms in english and kazakh languages

Compounding by mere juxtaposition of free forms has been a frequent pattern since the Old English period and is so now, сf. brains-trust ‘a group of experts’, brain drain ‘emigration of scientists’, to brain-drain, brain-drainer, quiz-master ‘chairman in competitions designed to test the knowledge of the participants’. In the neologism backroom boys ‘men engaged in secret research’ the structural cohesion of the compound is enhanced by the attributive function. Cf. redbrick (universities), paperback (books), ban-the-bomb (demonstration). The change of meaning, or rather the introduction of a new, additional meaning may be illustrated by the word net-work ‘a number of broadcasting stations, connected for a simultaneous broadcast of the same programme’. Another example is a word of American literary slang — the square. This neologism is used as a derogatory epithet for a person who plays safe, who sticks to his illusions, and thinks that only his own life embodies all decent moral values.

As a general rule neologisms are at first clearly motivated. An exception is shown by those based on borrowings or learned coinages which, though motivated at an early stage, very soon begin to function as indivisible signs. A good example is the much used term cybernetics ‘study of systems of control and communication in living beings and man-made devices’ coined by Norbert Wiener from the Greek word kyberne-tes ‘steersman’+suffix -ics.

There are, however, cases when etymology of comparatively new words is obscure, as in the noun boffin ‘a scientist engaged in research work’ or in gimmick ‘a tricky device’ — an American slang word that is now often used in British English [17].

In the course of time the new word is accepted into the word-stock of the language and being often used ceases to be considered new, or else it may not be accepted for some reason or other and vanish from the language. The fate of neologisms is hardly predictable: some of them are short-lived, others, on the contrary, become durable as they are liked and accepted. Once accepted, they may serve as a basis for further word-formation: gimmick, gimmickry, gimmicky. Zip (an imitative word denoting a certain type of fastener) is hardly felt as new, but its derivatives — the verb zip (zip from one place to another), the corresponding personal noun zipper and the adjective zippy — appear to be neologisms.

When we consider the lexical system of a language as an adaptive system developing for many centuries and reflecting the changing needs of the communication process, we have to contrast the innovations with words that dropped from the language (obsolete words) or survive only in special contexts (archaisms and historisms).

Archaisms are words that were once common but are now replaced by synonyms. When these new synonymous words, whether borrowed or coined within the English language, introduce nothing conceptually new, the stylistic value of older words tends to be changed; on becoming rare they acquire a lofty poetic tinge due to their ancient flavour, and then they are associated with poetic diction.

Some examples will illustrate this statement: aught n ‘anything whatever’, betwixt prp ‘between’, billow n ‘wave’, chide v ‘scold’, damsel n ‘a noble girl’, ere prp ‘before’, even n ‘evening’, forbears n ‘ancestors’, hapless a ‘unlucky’, hark v ‘listen’, lone a ‘lonely’, morn n ‘morning’, perchance adv ‘perhaps’, save prp, cj ‘except’, woe n ‘sorrow’, etc.

When the causes of the word’s disappearance are extra-linguistic, e.g. when the thing named is no longer used; its name becomes an histograms. The histograms are very numerous as names for social relations, institutions and objects of material culture of the past. The names of ancient transport means, such as types of boats or types of carriages, ancient clothes, weapons, musical instruments, etc. can offer many examples.

Before the appearance of motor-cars many different types of horse-drawn carriages were in use. The names of some of them are: brougham, berlin, calash, diligence, fly, gig, hansom, landeau, phaeton, etc. It is interesting to mention specially the romantically metaphoric prairie schooner ‘a canvas-covered wagon used by pioneers crossing the North American prairies’. There are still many sailing ships in use, and schooner in the meaning of ‘a sea-going vessel’ is not an histograms, but a prairie schooner is. Many types of sailing craft belong to the past as caravels or galleons, so their names are histograms too.

The history of costume forms an interesting topic by itself. It is reflected in the history of corresponding terms. The corresponding glossaries may be very long. Only very few examples can be mentioned here. In W. Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, doublets are often mentioned. A doublet is a close-fitting jacket with or without sleeves worn by men in the 15th-17th centuries. It is interesting to note that descriptions of ancient garments given in dictionaries often include their social functions in this or that period. Thus, a tabard of the 15th century was a short surcoat open at the sides and with short sleeves, worn by a knight over his armour and emblazoned on the front, back and sides with his armorial bearings. Not all historisms refer to such distant periods. Thus, bloomers — an outfit designed for women in mid-nineteenth century. It consisted of Turkish-style trousers gathered at the ankles and worn by women as “a rational dress”. It was introduced by Mrs Bloomer, editor and social reformer, as a contribution to woman rights movement. Somewhat later bloomers were worn by girls and women for games and cycling, but then they became shorter and reached only to the knee.

A great many historisms denoting various types of weapons occur in historical novels, e. g. a battering ram ‘an ancient machine for breaking walls’; a blunderbuss ‘an old type of gun with a wide muzzle’; breastplate ‘a piece of metal armour worn by knights over the chest to protect it in battle’; a crossbow ‘a medieval weapon consisting of a bow fixed across a wooden stock’. Many words belonging to this semantic field remain in the vocabulary in some figurative meaning, e. g. arrow, shield, sword, vizor, etc [18].

                                     

1.2 The appearance of neologisms during the English Renaissance

 

Peter Newmark proposed to review twelve types of neologisms and discuss the translation of particular instances by the way of the appropriate contextual factors. Every time neologisms appeared in our life. The 16^th century was the period of the great course in literature called “Renaissance”. A lot of writers used new words in their poems and stories in order to “enrich” the English language. But some of neologisms are short-lived. They appeared and disappeared.

Neologisms are perhaps the non-literary and the professional translator's biggest problem. New object and processes are continually created in technology. New ideas and variations on feelings come from the media. Terms from the social sciences, slang, dialect coming into the mainstream of language, transferred words, make up the rest. A few years ago, three hundred “new” words were said to be counted in four successive numbers of the French weekly language express. It has been stated that each language acquires three thousand new words annually. In fact, neologisms cannot be quantified, since so many hover between acceptance and oblivion and many are short-lived individual creations. What is obvious is that their number is increasing steeply and as we become more language as well as self-conscious, articles, books and specialist and general dictionaries devoted to them appear more commonly. Since they usually arise first in a response to a particular need, a majority of them have a single meaning and can therefore be translated out of context, but many of them soon acquire new (and sometimes lose the old) meanings in the Target Language. Neologism is any word which is formed according to the productive structural patterns or borrowed from another language and felt by the speakers as something new. Example: tape-recorder, supermarket

During the 16^th century there was a flood of new publications in English, prompted by a renewed interest in the classical languages and literatures, and in the rapidly developing fields of science, medicine, and the arts. This period, from the time of Caxton until around 1650, was later to be called the “Renaissance”, and it included the Reformation, the discoveries of Copernican, and the European exploration of Africa and the Americas. The effects of these fresh perspectives on the English languages were immediate, far-reaching and controversial.

The focus of interest was vocabulary. There were no words in the language to talk accurately about the new concepts, techniques, and inventions which were coming from Europe, and so writers began to borrow them. Most of the words which entered the language at the time were taken from Latin, with a good number from Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. Then, as the period of word-wide exploration got under way, words came into English from over 50 other languages, including several indigenous languages of North America, Africa, and Asia. Some words came into English directly; others came by way of an intermediate language. Many came indirectly from Latin or Italian via French [1, 35p.].

Some writers, such as Thomas Elyot, went out of their way to find new words, in order (as they saw it) to `enrich' the language. They saw their role as enabling the new learning to be brought within the reach of the English public-whether this was access to the old classical texts, or to the new fields of science, technology, and medicine. There were many translations of classical works during the 16^th century, and thousand of Latin and Greek terms were introduced, as translators searched for an English equivalent and could not find one. Some, indeed, felt that English was in any case not an appropriate vehicle for the expression of the new learning. English, in this view, did not compare well with the tried and tested standards of Latin or Greek, especially in such fields as theology or medicine. It was a language fit for the street, but not for the library.

Then as now, the influx of foreign vocabulary attracted bitter criticism, and people leaped to the language's defense. Purists opposed the new `inkhorn' terms, condemning them for obscurity and for interfering with the development of native English vocabulary. Some writers (notably, the poet Edmund Spenser) attempted to revive obsolete English words instead - what were sometimes called `Chaucerisms' - and to make us of little-known words from English dialects. Algate (`always'), sicker (`certainly'), and yblent (`confused') are examples. The scholar John Cheke used English equivalents for classical terms whenever he could, such as crossed for `crucified' and gainrising for `resurrection'.

The increase in foreign borrowings is the most distinctive linguistic sign of the Renaissance in English. Purist opinions did not, in the event, stem the influx of new words - nor have it ever, in the history of this language [2].

                   

           1.3 Some Renaissance loan words in English

 

Absurdity, adapt, agile, alienate, allusion, anachronism, anonymous, appropriate, assassinate, atmosphere, autograph, benefit, capsule, catastrophe, chaos, climax, conspicuous, contradictory, crisis, criterion, critic, delirium, denunciation, disability, disrespect, emancipate, emphasis, encyclopedia, enthusiasm, epilepsy, eradicate, exact, exaggerate, excavate, excursion, exist, expectation, expensive, explain, external, extinguish, fact, glottis, habitual, halo, harass, idiosyncrasy, immaturity, impersonal, inclemency, jocular, larynx, lexicon, lunar, malignant, monopoly, monosyllable, necessitate, obstruction, pancreas, parasite, parenthesis, pathetic, pneumonia, relaxation, relevant, scheme, skeleton, soda, species, system, tactics, temperature, tendon, thermometer, tibia, tonic, transcribe, ulna, utopian, vacuum, virus.

From other languages: Bamboo (Malay), bazaar (Persian), caravan (Persian), coffee (Turkish), cruise (Dutch), curry (Tamil), easel (Dutch), flannel (Welsh), guru (Hindi), harem (Arabic), horde(Turkish), keelhaul (Dutch), ketchup (Malay), kiosk (Turkish), knapsack (Dutch), landscape (Dutch), pariah (Tamil), raccoon (Algonquian), rouble (Russian), sago (Malay), sheikh (Arabic), shekel (Hebrew), shogun (Japanese), troll (Norwegian), trousers (Irish Gaelic), turban (Persian), wampum (Algonquian), yacht (Dutch), yoghurt (Turkish) [3].

1. Lexical creation

Anglo-Saxon forms, borrowings, and the use of affixes account for most of what appears within the English lexicon, but they do not tell the whole story. People do some creative, even bizarre things with vocabulary, from time to time, and a fascinating topic in lexicology is to examine just what they get up to. The general term for a newly-created lexeme is a coinage: but in technical usage a distinction can be drawn between nonce words and neologisms.

A nonce word (from the 16^th-century phrase for the nonce, meaning ‘for the once’) is a lexeme created for temporary use, to solve an immediate problem of communication. Someone attempting to describe the excess water on a road after a storm was head to call it a fluddle – she meant something bigger than a puddle but smaller than a flood. The new-born lexeme was forgotten (except by a passing linguist) almost as soon as it was spoken. It was obvious from the jocularly apologetic way in which the person spoke that she did not consider fluddle to be a ‘proper’ word at all. There was no intention to propose it for inclusion in a dictionary. As far as she was concerned, it was simply that there seemed to be no word in the language for what she wanted to say, so she made one up, for the nonce. In everyday conversation, people create nonce-words like this all the time.

But there is never any way of predicting the future, with language. Who knows, perhaps the English-speaking world has been waiting decades for someone to coin just this lexeme. It would only take a newspaper to seize on it, or for it to be referred to in an encyclopedia, and within days (or months) it could be on everyone’s lips. Registers of new words would start referring to it, and within five years or so it would have gathered enough written citations for it to be a serious candidate for inclusion in all the major dictionaries. It would then have become a neologism – literally, a ‘new word’ in the language.

A neologism stays new until people start to use it without thinking, or alternatively until it falls out of fashion, and they stop using it altogether. But there is never any way of telling which neologisms will stay and which will go. Blurb, coined in 1907 be the American humorist Gelett Burgess (1866-1951), proved to meet a need, and is an established lexeme now. On the other hand his coinage of gubble, ‘to indulge in meaningless conversation’, never caught on. Lexical history contains thousands of such cases. In the 16^th century – a great age of neologisms – we find disaccustom and disacquaint alongside disabuse and disagree. Why did the first two neologisms disappear and the last two survive? We also find effectual, effectuous, effectfull, effectuating, effective. Why did only two of the five forms survive, and why those two, in particular? The lexicon is full of such mysteries.

2) Bagonizing Bagonize - to wait anxiously for suitcase to appear on the baggage carousel (coined by Neil Mc Nicholas)

However many words there are in English, the total will be small compared with those which do not yet exist. Native speakers, however, seem to have a mania for trying to fill lexical gaps. If a word does not exist to express a concept, there is no shortage of people very ready to invent one. Following a ten-minute program about neologisms on BBC Radio 4 in 1990, over 1000 proposals were sent in for new English lexemes. Here are a dozen of the more ingenious creations.

3) Literary neologizing

The more creative the language context, the more likely we are to encounter lexical experiments, and find ourselves faced with unusual neologisms. The stretching and breaking of the rules governing lexical structure, for whatever reason, is characteristic of several contexts, notably humor, theology, and informal conversation, but the most complex, intriguing and exciting instances come from the language of literature.

These pages illustrate the range of neologisms used by several modern authors, with pride of place given to the chief the compare (or `dream-pun-namer' - the term is Anthony Burgess's), James Joyce. Joyce himself called Finnegan's Wake `the last word in stolen telling', a remark which seems to recognize that the extraordinary lexical coinages in his novel have their roots in perfectly everyday language. Certainly, it is our grassroots linguistic awareness which enables us to disentangle some of the layers of meaning in a Joyce an neologism. However, untutored native intuition will not sort everything out, as considerable use is also made of elements from foreign languages and a wide range of classical allusions.

The style largely depends on the mechanisms involved in the simple pun, but whereas puns generally rely for their effect on a single play on words, it is usual for Joyce's forms to involve several layers of meaning, forming a complex network of allusions which relate to the characters, events, and themes of the book as a whole. There is also a similarity to the `portmanteau' words of Lewis Carroll, though Carroll never tried to pack as much meaning into a portmanteau as Joyce routinely did.

In Joysprick (1973), Anthony Burgess presents an illuminating analysis of the linguistic processes involved in the development of what he calls Joyce's `jabberwocky'. These successive drafts (a-c) of Finnegan's Wake, published in the 1920s, show that the style is carefully engineered, despite its apparent randomness and spontaneity. Each version introduces extra connotations, puns, and allusions, and a growing intricacy of lexical structure. The version, which appears in the book (d), is included for comparison [4].

(a) Tell me, tell me, how could she can trough all her fellows, the daredevil? Linking one and knocking the next and polling in and petering out and clyding by in the east way. Who was the first that ever burst? Some one it was, whoever you are. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, Paul Pry or polish man. That's the thing I always want to know.

(b) Tell me, tell me, how could she can through all her fellows, the nectar she was, the diveline? Linking one and knocking the next, tapping a flank and tipping a jetty and palling in and petering out and claying by on her east way. Wai-whou was the first that ever burst? Someone he was, whoever they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat. Tinker, tailor, soldier, Paul Pry or polishman. That's the thing I always want to know.

(c) Tell me, tell me, how can she can in trough all her fellows, the neckar she was, the diveline? Linking one and knocking the next, tapting a flank and tipting a jutty and palling in and pietaring out and clyding by on her eastway. Waiwhou was the first thurever burst? Someone he was, whuebra they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat. Tinker, tilar, souldrer, salor, Pieman peace or Polistamann. That's the thing want to know.

(d) Tell me, tell me, how can she camlin trough all her fellows, the neckar she was, the diveline? Casting her perils before our swains from Fonte-in-Monte to Tidingtown and from Tidingtown Tilhavet. Linking one and knocking the next, tapting a flank and tipting a jutty and palling in and pietaring out and clyding by on her eastway. Waiwhou was the first thurever burst? Someone he was, whuebra they were, in a tactic attack or in single combat. Tinker, tilar, souldrer, salor, Pieman Peace or Polistamann. That's the thing I'm elways on edge to esk.

A good way of developing an understanding of how Joyce's neologisms wok is to try to imitate them, or parody them.

Burgess suggests a game to fill long winter evenings. In response to an instruction to `punbaptise the names of the months from the viewpoint of a confirmed drunkard', he gives us:

ginyouvery

pubyoumerry

parch

grapeswill

tray

juinp

droolie

sawdust

siptumbler

actsober

newwinebar

descendbeer

Al this means that a lot of writers use literary neologizing in their novels and stories.

4) Neologistic compounds

A lot of writers and poets used Neologistic compounds. Some Liverpool poets as Adrian Henry (b.1932), Roger McGough (b.1937), and Brian Patten (b.1946) can show Neologistic compounds in their poems.

Joycean lexicoining is but one of the several techniques described in earlier pages available to any author who wishes to neologize. For example, there may be a novel use of affixes:

Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house

The gentleman lay graveward with his furies;

(Dylan Thomas, “Altarwise by Owl-light”, 1935-6)

Or an unusual word-class conversion:

we slipped thro' the frenchwindows

and arminarmed across the lawn

 

The resolve of the understanding and the term of `'neologism''

Till now doesn't exist an unique decision of the question. From what it can be fastening the understanding of neologism, which are the criteria's concerning this or that dictionary of neologism.

The resolving of understanding `'neologism'' by the different investigators becomes clear two points of view, concluding in that, that the term of `'neologism'' using in new style, as a creating on a new material of language in full corresponding with existing in language kinds of words or word combinations, meaning new, beforehand unknown, unexciting understanding, subject, branch of knowledge, profession and so on, f. e. reaction- ядролық реактор, biocide-биологиялық соғыс and so on, in such way as neologism, and exactly in new created synonyms already existing in a word language for the meaning of well known understanding almost semantic and stylistic colours of word, which are based on its general meanings, and already to words in new meaning: for example the word boffin (scientist) presented the synonyms of the word scientist, but it already has another semantic colour and so on. Almost marked some difference in contents of that lexical innovations by the cause of its result, of its stability in language, of its clearness of using, of its future destiny when few of them will fast enter into the language, anothers will be less stabile and can be thrown out of using after some short time [5].

`'Also the presenting of new words connected with resulting of new associations, but the understanding is the same as the language in general, lexical appropriations doing their special actions as the method of connections, rebuilding, differences and clearing with what, that more correctly to show, present and fasten new comprehensions corresponding words and combinations.''

The new-foundation, if it results in periphery, as it gets more fasten demands and unchangeable in word fond. New-foundations, as a rule, presented in the language of science, techniques, art, politic, and in the same time as a neologism in speaking language.

 

      1.4 History and the development of neologisms in Kazakh and English

As a literary concept and term, neologism appeared in the early 18th century, at the time when the neoclassical practices of the French Generation of 1660 began to consolidate, throughout Europe, into a body of normative teaching. The idea that different domains of human experience should be represented in literature by distinct literary styles entailed the notion that each of these styles should operate within distinct vocabulary. Usage, i.e., specific usage of the «best Authors», «the Court», or «the City», determined the limits of this vocabulary, along with other grammatical and stylistic properties. Authors using words and expressions (as well as phrase structures) from outside this universe were said to use neologisms, new expressions. Critics of the time conceived of neologism in literature as analogous to the continuous creation and introduction of new lexical units into language, and they thought of language change in general as a process of decay. Thus neologism was condemned on both aesthetic and linguistic grounds and the term was used pejoratively only. This older meaning of neologism, and the attitude it reflects, is still alive today.