Neologism in modern English

For example: televideo - appears to be an earlier version of video, which has several meanings (`tape', `recorder', `cassette'). Not however that most of these words are virtually context-free.

But we should note the medical neologisms.

Example: `chronopharmacology' and etc., particularly approved chemical names of generic drugs can often be reproduced with a naturalized suffix (French -ite, English -itis; French -ine, English -in). But bear in mind that Romance languages do this more easily than others, since it is their home territory, and you should not automatically naturalize or adopt a word like `anatomopathologie' (1960).

Romance languages combine two or more academic subjects into a single adjective thus medico-chirurgial, medico-pedagogique, etc, in a manner that Shakespeare was already satirizing in Hamlet (II.2) (`pastoral-comical', `tragical-historical', `tragical-comical-historical-pastoral' etc) such combinations should normally be separated into two adjectives in the translation.

Example: `medical and surgical', `both medical and surgical', but `physio' - (from physiology), `physico' - (physics) and `bio' - are common first components of interdisciplinary subjects.

3) Abbreviations

Abbreviations have always been a common type of pseudo-neologisms, probably more common in French and German that in English. Example: Uni, Philo, sympa, Huma, fac, fab, video; they are normalised (i.e. translated unabbreviated), unless there is a recognized equivalent (e.g. bus, metro, plus science-technical terms).

Abbreviations, one of the most noticeable features of present-day English linguistic life, would for ma major part of any super dictionary. Often thought to be an exclusively modern habit, the fashion for abbreviations can be traced back over 150 years. In 1839, a writer in the New York Evening Tatler comments on what he calls `the initial language… a species of spoken shorthand, which is getting into very general use among loafers and gentlemen of the fancy, besides Editors, to whom it saves much trouble in writing…'. He was referring to OK (`all correct'), PDQ (`pretty damn quick') - two which have lasted - GT (`gone to Texas'), LL (`liver loafers'), and many other forms introduced, often with a humorous or satirical intent, by society people.

The fashionable use of abbreviation - a kind of society slang - comes and goes in waves, though it is never totally absent. In the present century, however, it has been eclipsed by the emergence of abbreviations in science, technology, and other special fields, such as cricket, baseball, drug trafficking, the armed forces, and the media. The reasons for using abbreviated forms are obvious enough. One is the desire for linguistic economy - the same motivation which makes us want to criticize someone who uses two words where one will do. Succinctness and precision are highly valued, and abbreviations can contribute greatly to a concise style. They also help to convey a sense of social identity: to use an abbreviated form is to be `in the know' - part of the social group to which the abbreviation belongs. Computer buffs the world over will be recognized by their fluent talk of ROM and RAM, of DOS and WYSIWYG. You are no buff if you are unable to use such forms, or need to look them up (respectively, `read-only memory', `random-access memory', `disk operating system', `what you see is what you get'). It would only irritate computer-literate colleagues and waste time or space (and thus money) if a computer-literate person pedantically expanded every abbreviated form. And the same applies to those abbreviations which have entered everyday speech. It would be strange indeed to hear someone routinely expanding BBC, NATO, USA, AIDS, and all the other common abbreviations of contemporary English. Indeed, sometimes (as with radar and AIDS), the unabbreviated form may be so specialized that it is unknown to most people - a point not missed by the compilers of quiz games, who regularly catch people out with a well-known (sic) abbreviation. As a test, try UNESCO and UNICEF, AAA, SAM and GI (context: military), or DDT and TNT (context: chemistry).

There are 6 types of abbreviation: initialisms, acronyms, clipping, blends, awkward cases, facetious forms.

Initialisms - items which are spoken as individual letters, such as BBC, DJ, MP, EEC, e.g., and USA; also called alphabetizes. The vast majority of abbreviations fall into this category. Not all use only the first letters of the constituent words: PhD, for example, uses the first two letters of the word philosophy and GHQ and TV take a letter from the middle of the word.

Acronyms - initialisms which are pronounced as single words, such as NATO, laser, UNESCO, and SALT (talks). Such items would never have periods separating the letters - a contrast with initialisms, where punctuation is often present (especially in older styles of English). However, some linguists do not recognize a sharp distinction between acronyms and initialisms, but use the former term for both.

Clipping - a part of word which serves for the whole, such as ad and phone. These examples illustrate the two chief types: the first part is kept (the commoner type, as in demo, exam, pub, Gill), and the last part is kept (as in bus, plane). Sometimes a middle part is kept, as in fridge and flue. There are also several clippings which retain material from more than one part of the word, such as maths (UK), gents, and specs. Turps is a curiosity, in the way it adds an -s. Several clipped forms also show adaptation, such as fries (from French fried potatoes), Betty (from Elizabeth) and Bill (from William).

Blends - a word which is made up of the shortened forms of two other words, such as brunch (breakfast+lunch), heliport (helicopter+airport), smog (smoke+fog), and Eurovision (European+television). Scientific terms frequently make use of blending (as in the case of bionic), as do brand names (a device which cleaned your teeth while you used the phone might be called Teledent) and fashionable neologisms.

A lexical blend, as its name suggests, takes two lexemes which overlap in form, and welds them together to make one. Enough of each lexeme is usually retained so that the elements are recognizable. Here are some longstanding examples, and a few novelties from recent publications.

Motor + hotel = motel

Advertisement + editorial = advertorial

Channel + Tunnel = Chunnel

Oxford + Cambridge = Oxbridge

Yale + Harvard = Yarvard

Slang + language = slanguage

Guess + estimate = guesstimate

Square + aerial = squaerial

Toys + cartoons = toytoons

Breath + analyser = breathalyzer

Affluence + influenza = affluenza

Information + commercials = informercials

Dock + condominium = dockominium

In most cases, the second element is the one which controls the meaning of the whole. So, brunch is a kind of lunch, not a kind of breakfast - which is why the lexemes are brunch and not say lunkfast. Similarly, a toytoon is a kind of cartoon (one which generates a series of shop toys), not a kind of toy.

Blending seems to have increased in popularity in the 1980s, being increasingly used in commercial and advertising contexts. Products are sportsational, swimsational, and sexsational. TV provides dramacons, docufantasies, and rockumentaries. The forms are felt to be eye-catching and exciting; but how many of them will still be around in a decade remains an open question.

Awkward cases - abbreviations which do not fall clearly into the above four categories. Some forms can be used either as initialisms or acronyms (UFO - `U F O' or `you-foe'). Some mix these types in the one word (CDROM, pronounced `see-dee-rom'). Some can form part of a lager word, using affixes (ex-JP, pro-BBC, ICBMs). Some are used only in writing (Mr, St- always pronounced in full in speech).

Facetious forms: TGIF - Thank God It's Friday, CMG - Call Me God (properly, “Companion of St Michael and St George”), GCMG - God Calls Me God (properly, “Grand Cross of St Michael and St George”), and above al AAAAAA - Association for the Alleviation of Asinine Abbreviations and Absurd Acronyms (actually listed in the Gale Dictionary).

4) Collocations

Where there is an accepted collocation in the SL, the translator must find and use its equivalent in the TL, if it exists. A collocation consists basically of two or three lexical (sometimes called full, descriptive, substantial) words, usually linked by grammatical (empty, functional, relational) words, e.g. `a mental illness'. The collocates within a collocation define and delimit each other by eliminating at least some of their other possible meanings; the defining may be mutual and equally balanced, but more often it is closer for one collocate than for the other. Thus `to pay attention', since it reduces the number of senses in which `pay' can be used to one. The word `attention' is not so radically affected, but it excludes `attention' in the sense of `care, solicitude'. `To buy a hat' is not a collocation, since it does not appreciably delimit the sense of `buy' or `hat'. However, collocations shade off into other grammatically linked word-groups without a sharp division.

A collocation is the element of system in the lexis of a language. It may be syntagmatic or horizontal, therefore consisting of a common structure; or paradigmatic or vertical, consisting of words belonging to the same semantic field which may substitute for each other or be semantic opposites. These become collocations only when they are arranged syntagmatically.

Syntagmatic collocations can be divided into seven main groups:

a) Verb plus verbal noun. Examples: pay attention, suffer a defeat, run a meeting, make a speech. The verb is the collocate for which the translator must find the appropriate equivalent. The verbs in these collocations merely have an operative function (they mean `do') and no particularized meaning since the action is expressed in the noun. Some verbal nouns have a small range of collocates; others, like discourse, Lob, Dients, have one obvious collocate (pronouncer, spenden, leisten).

b) Determiner plus adjective plus noun. The appropriate adjective has to be found for the noun. There is a much wider range of choices than in (a), and the force of this category of collocation is usually only established by contrast with another language. Thus `a large apple' but une grosse pomme; `a tall man' but un home grand; un grand home but `a great man'; un beau garcon but `a good looking man'; `a pretty girl' but not (usually) a `pretty boy'. Some nouns have one particularly suitable adjective in an extensive variety of areas, particularly for physical qualities (e.g. woman: dark, slim, middle-aged, short, young) which, for other objects, would require different adjectives, whilst other nouns (e.g. `criticism') have a narrow sheaf of adjectives for each segment of a variety of areas (approfondi/grundlich; anodine/nichtssagend).

c) Adverb plus adjective. The most suitable adverb must be looked for. These collocations tend to clichй (e.g. `immensely important'). The collocation is much rarer in Romance languages, where its equivalent transposition is `adjective plus adjectival noun', e.g. d'une immense importance. Note however: vachement dur, `damn hard' or `bloody hard'. This collocation, which is more restricted and less frequent (therefore far less important) than (a) and (b) is much at the mercy of fashion.

d) Verb plus adverb or adjective. This is much smaller category: the adverb or adjective must be looked for. Examples: work hard, feel well, shine brightly, and smell sweet.

e) Subject plus verb. There are two groups: first, the noun and verb may mutually attract each other: `the dog barks', `the cat purrs', `the bell rings', and `teeth chatter'. In some cases, particularly when referring to animals, the verb usually has no other subject. In the second group, there is merely a fairly high expectation that a particular verb will follow the subject: `the door creaks', le clocher pointe, les champs se deroulent, and here the right verb must be looked for. In French, some of these verbs are often found as past participles or in adjectival clauses qualifying their subjects (used as etoffement with low semantic content), and then they require no translation in English: la maison qui se drese sur la colline, `the house on the hill'.

f) Count noun plus `of' plus mass noun. This restricted collocation consists of a term denoting a unit of quantity and the word for the substance it quantifies. The appropriate unit must be looked for in the TL, e.g. `a loaf of bread', `a cake of soap', `a pinch of salt', `a particle of dust', etc, if it exists.

g) Collective noun plus count noun. The collective noun has to be discovered: e.g. `a bunch of keys', `a flock of geese or sheep', `a pack of cards or hounds'.

Wider and less easily categorized collocations include nominalizations (in particular, nouns premodified by one or more nouns), introducing the name of an object (or unit of quantity) by a term for its size, composition, purpose, origin, destination, etc., which is now rapidly superseding the `noun plus “of” plus noun' collocation; the whole range of phrasal verbs, and various items of a sequence including activity/agent/instrument/object/attribute/source/place, etc.: e.g. `bake/baker/oven/bread/fresh,new,stale,musty/flour,yeast/bakery'.

Stylistically and semantically, clichйs are a subgroup of collocations in that one of their collocates has diminished in value or is almost redundant, as often in `grinding to a halt', `filthy lucre', etc., and the translator may be entitled to replace a clichй with a less common collocation, if it clarified the content without distorting it.

Paradigmatic collocations may be based on well-established hierarchies such as kinship (`fathers and sons'), colours (`emerald is a bright green'), scientific taxonomies and institutional hierarchies where the elements of the culture for each language often have their own distinct linguistic likeness (Abbild), although the extralinguistic object may be the same. Alternatively they may consist of the various synonyms and antonyms that permeate all languages.

Antonyms may be classified under three heads:

a) Objects which complement each other to form a set (`land, sea, air'), or a graded series (`ratings, petty officers, officers').

b) Qualities (adjectives or adjectival nouns) which are contrary, which may have middle term (e.g. `interested/disinterested/uninterested'), or are contradictory. Contradictory polar terms are shown formally, i.e. through affixes: `perfect/imperfect, loyal/disloyal'. (Suffixes have much stronger force than prefixes: cf. `faithless/unfaithful'). Contrary polar terms are usually shown lexically: `hot/cold, young/old, faithful/treacherous'. In a text, such collocations usually appear as alternatives, e.g. `hard or soft; clear, obscure or vague'.

c) Actions (verbs or verbal nouns). In two-term collocations, the second term is converse or reciprocal: `attack/defend; action/reaction'. In three-term collocations, the second and third terms represent positive and negative responses respectively: `offer/accept/refuse, besiege/hold out/surrender/. Actions may also complement each other as in (a); `walk/run, sleep/wake'.

There are two types of synonym collocation. The main type is the `inclusive' collocation which include (a) the hierarchies of genus/species/subspecies, etc., and may indicate the degree of generality (or particularity) of any lexical item, and with in the appropriate category (Oberbegriffe or super ordinates): e.g. `the brass in the orchestra'; `pump or grease-gun'; `equity on the market'. Fleche is a generic term for `spire', and a specific term for fleche (slender spire perforated with windows); (b) synecdoche, where part and whole are sometimes used indiscriminately with the same reference (e.g. chariot/prote-outil, `strings/violins'); (c) metonymy, where `Bonn” and `the West German government', `the City' and `British bankers' may again be interchanged. The second type of synonym collocation is usually an old idiom such as `with might and main' and `by hook or by crook' - which is likely to have a Germanic (auf Biegen oder Brechen) but not a Romance (coute que coute) one-to-one equivalent.

Collocations are the lexical (not grammatical) tramlines of language. Where a translator finds current and equally common corresponding collocation in source and TL texts, it is mandatory to use them; they are among the invariant components of translation. They may be factual or extralinguistic, denoting institutional terms (e.g. le President Republique) as well as linguistic. A translator must be conversant with them not only to follow them but also to know when to `break' them (going off the tramlines) when they are broken in the SL text.

New collocations (noun compounds or adjective plus noun) are particularly common in the social sciences and in computer language. Thus, `lead time', `sexual harassment', `claw back', `cold-calling', `Walkman' (brand name for `personal stereo'), `acid rain', `norm reference testing', `rate-capping', `jetlag', `lateral thinking', `narrow money', `graceful degradation', `hash total'.

The above represents varying problems. The computer terms are given their recognised translation - if they do not exist, you have to transfer them (if they appear important) and then add a functional-descriptive term - you have not the authority to devise your own neologism.

`Sexual harassment' is a universal concept at least in any culture where there is both greater sexual freedom and a powerful women's movement. For a German it will come out as Sexualschikane;

`Lead time' - a term for the time between design and production or between ordering and delivery of a product, has at present to be translated in context;

`Claw back' (retrieval of tax benefits) may not last;

`Narrow money' (money held predominantly for spending), is contrasted with `broad money' (for spending and/or as a store of value).

This brief discussion shows incidentally the difficulty of translating English collocations which appear arbitrarily to juxtapose nouns with verb-nouns because they indicate the two most significant meaning components, but have varied and sometimes mysterious case relations. Languages cannot convert verbs to nouns but, in the case of the Romance languages at least, suppress prepositions in such ruthless way, cannot imitate this procedure. For this reason, the English collocations are difficult to translate succinctly and an acceptable term emerges only when the referent becomes as important (usually as a universal, but occasionally as a feature of the SL culture) that more or less lengthy functional-descriptive term will no longer do.

In linguistics, a collocation is typically defined as the `habitual co occurrence of individual lexical items'. For the translator, for whom the collocation is the most important contextual factor collocation, in as far as it usefully affects translation, is considerably narrower; it consists of lexical items that enter mainly into high-frequency grammatical structures. Here are some examples if this in English and German languages.

1. Adjective + noun

a. heavy labour - schwere Arbeit

b. economic situation - Konjunkturlage

2. Noun +noun (i.e. double-noun compound)

a. nerve cell - Nervenzelle

b. government securities - Staatspapiere

c. eye ball - Augapfel

3. Verb + object, which are normally a noun that denotes an action, as in `read a paper'.

a. pay a visit - einen Besuch machen

b. score (win) a victory - einen Sieg erzielen

c. read an (academic) paper - ein Referant halten

d. attend a lecture - eine Vorlesung horen or besuchen

There are various degrees of collocability. Some words such as `bandy' and `rancid' may only have one material collocate (`legs', `butter') but figuratively they open up more choice (appearance, taste). They are always linked with the concept of naturalness and usage, and become most important in the revision stages of translation.

Now I would like to give some examples of collocations from the dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by Eric Partridge.

Little House: is Australian coll., 1939. Another yard in which were the

pigsty, the henhouse, the toolshed and what they called

jocosely `the little house'.

Pitch it mild: usually in imperative, don't exaggerate: a Canadian col.,

Variant of draw it mild.

Raw tea: tea without milk or sugar; coll., 1925

5) The translation of eponyms

Eponym, as P.Newmark thinks, is any word derived from a proper name (therefore including toponyms), are a growth industry in Romance languages and a more modest one in the English media. When derived from people's names such words (`Audenesque', `Keynesian', `Laurenthian', `Hallidayan', `Joycean', and `Leavisite') tend to rise and fall depending on the popularity or vogue of their referent and ease of composition. When they refer directly to the person, they are translated without difficulty, but if they refer to the referent's ideas or qualities, the translator may have to add these. In Italian, `Thatcherism' can sometimes (temporarily) be naturalised as Il Thatcherismo without comment. The `Fosbury flop', a technical term for a method of high-jumping, can be transferred for specialist and succinctly defined for non-specialists. When derived from objects, eponyms are usually brand names, and can be transferred only when they are equally well known and accepted in the TL (e.g. `nylon', but `Durex' is an adhesive tape in Australian English). Such generalized eponyms as `Parkinson's Law' (work, personnel, etc. expands to fill the time, space etc. allotted to it), `Murphy's or Sod's Law (if something can go wrong, it will) have to be reduced to sense. Brand name eponyms normally have to be translated by denotative terms (`ball point').

In general the translator should curb the use of brand name eponyms. New eponyms deriving from geographical names (the tasteless `bikini' has not been repeated) appear to be rare - most commonly they originate from the products (wines, cheeses, sausages etc.) of the relevant area - in translation the generic term is added until the product is well enough known. Many geographical terms have connotations, the most recent for English being perhaps `Crichel Down' (bureaucratic obstruction) with further details depending on context. Since such eponyms are also metonyms and therefore lose their `local habitation' (Midsummer Night's Dream) they also lose their `names' and are translated by their sense.

Peter Newmark proposes to divide eponyms into three categories, those derived from persons, objects and places.

Persons. In the first category, eponyms denoting objects usually derive from their inventors or discoverers; in translation, the main difficulty is that they may have an alternative name (e.g. `Humboldt Current' or `Peru current'), the authenticity of the discoverer may be implicitly disputed (`Arnold's fold' - valvule de Krause; `Denson's disease' - maladie de Grancher), or more commonly, replaced by a technical term (Rontgenographie - `radiography'; `Hutchinson's angioma' - angiome serpigineux). In this category, there is a tendency for eponyms to be gradually replaced by descriptive terms (`Davy lamp' - Grubensicherheitslampe).

The biggest growth-point in eponyms in many European languages is the conversion of prominent persons' names to adjectives (-ist) and abstract nouns (-ism) denoting either allegiance to or influence of the person, or a conspicuous quality or idea associated with them. This has always been common for French statesmen and writers (not artists or composers) where phrases like une preciosite giralducienne (`like Giraudoux's') have a certain vogue. It extends now to statesmen whose name lends itself readily to suffixation - often the eponym declines with the personality's fame (e.g. `Bennite'). Thus we have `Thatcherism', `Scargillism', `Livingstonian' - Reagan has to make do with `Reaganomics' (i.e., economic policy) - others are hampered by their names, e.g. Kinnock. Sometimes, mainly in French (gaullien, gaulliste), occasionally in English (Marxian, Marxist) a distinction is made between value-free and value-loaded eponyms through the suffixes -ian and -ist respectively. Sometimes one eponym, say `Shakespearean', `Churchillian', has many potential meanings which can be reduced to one only by considering the collocation and the context.

The main problem in translating eponyms derived from persons is whether the transferred word will be understood; thus the noun or adjective `Leavisite' is useful in English to summarize certain principles of literary criticism, but it would mean little in most TLs unless these were stated and, usually, related to F.R.Leavis. Such connotations (e.g., for `Shavian', wit, irony, social criticism) need recording. In other cases, e.g., Quisling, Casanova, Judas, where not much else is known of the character, the eponym has a single connotative meaning and is often transferred. In such cases, if the readership is unlikely to understand an eponym, footnotes are usually unnecessary, but you have to decide whether it is worth transferring the name as well as the sense, depending on its cultural interest and its likelihood of recurrence or permanence in the TL. In some cases, where the interest of the proper name is purely `local' and probably temporary, only the contextual sense is translated; in others (Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe), the eponym is naturalized, though the connotation may differ somewhat between the source and target language.

Objects. In the second category, that of object, we are firstly discussing brand names which tend to `monopolise' their referent first in the country of their origin, then internationally, e.g. `aspirin', `Formica', `Walkman', which in translation require additional descriptive terms only if the brand name is now known to the readership. Secondly, you have to consciously resist subliminal publicity for manufacturers of products such as `Pernod', `Frigidaire', `Durex' (adhesive tape in Australia), `Tipp-Ex', `Velcro', `Jiffy bag', `bic', `biro', `Tesa', sellotape' (two pairs of cultural equivalents), `Scotch' (tape and whisky), translating them by a brief descriptive term (which is not always easy) rather than transferring them. Often it is too late. You have to accept TL standard terms, whether they are eponyms or recognised translations; jargon you must fight, either by eliminating it or by slimming it down.

Geographical names. Thirdly, geographical terms are used as eponyms when they have obvious connotations: firstly the towns and villages of Nazi horrors (Belsen, Dachau, Vel'drome, Drancy, Terezen, and Oradour), which you should transfer and, where necessary, gloss, since this is basic education. Secondly, beware of idioms such as `meet your Waterloo' - faire naufrage; il y aura du bruit a Landerneau - `it's just tittle-tattle'; `from here to Timbuktu' - d'ici jusqu'a Landerneau. Lastly you should note the increasing metonymic practice, mainly in the media, or referring to governments by the name of their respective capitals or locations and institutions or ministers by their residences or streets (`Whitehall' - the British government; `the Pentagon' - US military leadership; `Fleet Street' - the British press).

6) New coinages

It's a well-known hypothesis that there is no such thing as a brand new word; if a word does not derive from various morphemes then it is more or less phonaesthetic or sunaesthetic. All sounds or phonemes are phonaesthetic, have some kind of meaning. Nevertheless, the etymology of name words, in particular, dialect words, is not known and can hardly be related to meaningful sounds.

The best known exception to the hypothesis is the internationalism `quark', coined by James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake (the word exists in German with another sense), a fundamental particle in physics.

Nowadays, for instance the computer term `byte', sometimes spelt `bite', is also an internationalism, the origin of the `y' being obscure. Both these words have phonaesthetic qualities - quark is humorously related to `quark'.

Nowadays, the main new coinages are brand or trade names (`Bistro', `Bacardi', `Schweppes', `Persil', `Oxo') and these are usually transferred unless the product is marketed in the TL culture under another name; or the proper name may be replaced by a functional or generic term, if the trade name has no cultural or identifying significance. Thus Revlon may be transferred by a selection of various components (`Revlon', `lipstick', `fashionable American').

In principle, in fiction, any kind of neologism should be recreated; if it is a derived word it should be replaced by the same or equivalent morphemes; if it is also phonaesthetic, it should be given phonemes producing analogous sound effects. For this reason, in principle, the neologisms in Finnegan's Wake (`riverrun', `from over the short sea', `to wielderfight his penisolate war') must be re-created systematically and ingeniously, always however, with the principle of equivalent naturalness in mind, whether relating to morphology (roots and inflexion) or sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, assonance).

neologism semantic sociolinguistic mathematical

CHAPTER II

2.1 SOCIOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF MATHEMATICAL EDUCATION BASED IN NEOLOGISMS.

1) The notion of a `developed' language

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of human language is the range of purposes it served, the variety of different things that people make language do for them. Casual interaction in home and family, instruction of children, activities of production and distribution like building and marketing and more specialized functions such as those of religion, literature, law and government - all these may readily be covered by one person on one day's talk.

We can define a `developed' language as one that is used freely in all the functions that language serves in the society in question. Correspondingly an `undeveloped' language would be one that serves only some of these functions, but not all. This is to interpret language development as a functional concept, one which related to the role of a language in the society in which it is spoken.

In the Caribbean island of Sint Maarten, the mother tongue of the habitants is English. Education and administration, however, take place in Dutch; English is not normally used in these contexts. In Sint Maarten, English is an undeveloped language. The islanders find it hard to conceive of serious intellectual and administrative processes taking pace in English. They are, of course, perfectly well aware that English is used in al these functions in Britain, the USA and elsewhere. But they cannot accept that the homely English that they themselves speak (although dialectally it is of quite `standard' type that is readily understood by speakers from outside) is the same language as English in its national or international guise.

In the same way, English in medieval England was not a developed language, since many of the social functions of language in the community could be performed only in Latin or in French.

Not unnaturally, the members of a society tend to attach social value to their languages according to the degree of their development. A language that is `developed', being used in all the functions that language serves in the society, tends to have a higher status, while an undeveloped language is accorded a much lower standing, even by those who speak it as their mother tongue.

2) The notion of a register

The notion of `developing a language' means, therefore, adding to its range of social functions. This is achieved by developing new registers.

A register is a set of meanings that is appropriate to a particular function of language, together with the words and structures which express these meanings. We can refer to a `mathematics register', in the sense of the meanings that belong to the language of mathematics (the mathematical use of natural language, that is: not mathematics itself), and that a language must express if it is being used for mathematical purposes.

Every language embodies some mathematical meanings in its semantic structure - ways of counting, measuring, classifying and so on. These are not by themselves sufficient to form the natural language component of mathematics in its modern disciplinary sense, or to serve the needs of mathematics education in secondary schools and colleges. But they will serve as a point of departure for the initial learning of mathematical concepts, especially if the teaching is made relevant to the social background of the learner. The development of a register of mathematics is in the last resort a matter of degree.

It is the meanings, including the styles of meaning and modes of argument, that constitute a register, rather than the words and structures as such. In order to express new meanings, it may be necessary to invent new words; but there are many different ways in which a language can add new meanings, and inventing words is only one of them. We should not think o a mathematical register as consisting solely of terminology, or of the development of a register as simply a process of adding new words.

3) Development of a register of mathematics

Inevitably the development of a new register of mathematics will involve the introduction of new `thing-names': ways of referring to new objects or new processes, properties, functions and relations. There are various ways in which this can be done.

1. Reinterpreting existing words. Examples from mathematical English are: set, point, field, row, column, weight, stand for, sum, move through, even, random.

2. Creating new words out of native word stock. This process has not played a very great part in the creation of technical registers in English (an early example of it is clockwise), but recently it has come into favour with words like Shortfall, feedback, output.

3. Borrowing words from another language. This has been the method most favored in technical English. Mathematics examples include degree, series, exceed, subtract, multiply, invert, infinite, probable.

4. `Calquing': creating new words in imitation of another language. This is rare in modern English, though it is a regular feature of many languages; it was used in old English to render Christian terms from Latin, e.g. almighty calqued on omnipotens. (Latin omnipotens is made up of omni-meaning `all' and potens meaning `mighty'; on this model was coined the English word all-mighty, now spelt almighty).

5. Inverting totally new words. This hardly ever happens. About the only English example is gas, a word coined out of nowhere by a Dutch chemist in the early 18^th century.

6. Creating `locutions'. There is no clear line between locutions, in the sense of phrases or larger structures, and compound words. Expressions like right-angled, square on the hypotenuse, lowest common multiple are examples of technical terms in mathematics English that are to be classed as locutions rather than compound words.

7. Creating new words out of non-native word stock. This is now the most typical procedure in contemporary European languages for the creation of new technical terms. Words like parabola, denominator, binomial, coefficient, thermodynamic, permutation, approximation, denumerable, asymptotic, figurate, are not borrowed from Greek and Latin - they did not exist in these languages. They are made up in English (and in French, Russian and other languages) out of elements of the Greek and Latin word stock.

Every language creates new thing-names; but not all languages do so in the same way. Some languages (such as English and Japanese) favour borrowing; others (such as Chinese) favour calquing. But all languages have more than one mode of word-creation; often different modes are adopted for different purposes - for example, one method may be typical for technical words and another for non-technical. There is no reason to say that one way is better than another; but it is important to find out how the speakers of a particular language in fact set about creating new terms when faced with the necessity of doing so. The Indian linguist Krishnamurthi (1962) has studied how Telugu-speaking communities of farmers, fishermen and textile workers, when confronted by new machines and new processes, made up the terms which were necessary for talking about them.

Societies are not static, and changes in material and social conditions lead to new meanings being exchanged. The most important thing about vocabulary creation by natural processes is that it is open-ended; more words can always be added. There is no limit to the number of words in a language, and there are always some registers which are expanding. Language developers have the special responsibility of creating new elements of the vocabulary which will not only be adequate in themselves but which will also point the way to the creation of others.

4) Structural aspects

But the introduction of new vocabulary is not the only aspect of the development of a register. Registers such as those mathematics, or of science and technology, also involve new styles of meaning, ways of developing an argument, and of combing existing elements into new combinations.

Sometimes these processes demand new structures, and there are instances of structural innovation taking place as part of the development of a scientific register. For the most part, however, development takes place not through the creation of entirely new structures (a thing that is extremely difficult to do deliberately) but through the bringing into prominence of structures which already existed but were rather specialized or rare. Examples of this phenomenon from English can be seen in expressions like `signal-to-noise ratio', `the sum of the series to n terms', `the same number of mistakes plus or minus', `each term is one greater than the term which precedes it', `a set of terms each of which stands in a constant mathematical relationship to that which precedes it'. We can compare these with new forms of everyday expression such as `it was a non-event' (meaning `nothing significant happened'), which are derived from technical registers although used in nontechnical contexts.

There is no sharp dividing line, in language, between the vocabulary and the grammar. What is expressed in one language by the choice of words may be expressed in another language (or in the same language on another occasion) by the choice of structure. The `open-endedness' referred to earlier is a property of the lexicogrammar as a whole. There are indefinitely many meanings, and combinations of meaning, to be expressed on one way or another through the medium of the words and structures of a language; a more can always be added. This is a reflection of the total potential that every language has, each in its own way.

In the past, language development has taken place slowly, by more or less natural processes (`more or less' natural because they are, after all, the effect of social processes) taking place over a long period. It took English three or four hundred years to develop its registers of mathematics, science and technology, and they are still developing. Today, however, it is not enough for a language to move in this leisurely fashion; the process has to be speeded up. Developments that took centuries in English and French are expected to happen in ten years, or one year, or sometimes one month. This requires a high degree of planned language development. Not everyone involved in this work is always aware of the wide range of different resources by means of which language can create new meanings, or of how the language in which he himself is working has done so in the past. But there is, now, a more general understanding of the fact that all human languages have the potential of being developed for all the purposes that human society and the human brain can conceive.

2.2 NEOLOGISMS FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF SEMANTIC AND PHONETIC FACTORS

Stephen Ullmann is the professor of the Roman languages in the University of Oxford. In his book “Semantics and the Introduction to the Science of Meaning” described some phonetic factors that can be seen in some marginal elements of language - neologisms, place-names, foreign words.

Phonetic factors - the phonetic structure of a word may give rise to emotive effects in two different ways. The first of these is onomatopoeia. Where there is an intrinsic harmony between sound and sense, this may, in suitable context, come to the fore and contribute to the expressiveness and the suggestive power of the word.

Vangelas, for example, described the new word exactitude as a monster against which everybody protested at first, though in the end they became used to it. English words adopted into French have been subjected to a great deal of adverse criticism because of their alleged harshness: Keepsake, for instance, which was very fashionable in the early 19^th century, was denounced in a magazine article as a `hard word' whose perilous pronunciation will prevent it from becoming popular.

The Italian poet Alfieri went even further: he wrote an epigram on the sonorous quality of the Italian word capitano, which was deformed and `nasalised' in French capitaine, and reduced to a mere captain in harsh English throats.

Stephen Ullmann in his book also wrote about the loosing of emotive meaning of some words, and as an example, he took neologisms. He said that the more often we repeat an expressive term or phrase, the less effective it will be. This is particularly noticeable in the case of figurative language. When, a few years ago, the term bulge began to be used to denote an increase in the birth rate. It had the effect of an illuminating metaphor; now we are accustomed to it that we no longer visualize the image.

Hyperbolic terms are even more affected by the law of diminishing returns. We all know how quickly they go out of fashion. In our own time, modern forms of publicity and propaganda consume such words at an unprecedented rate and are constantly on the look-out for fresh alternatives: even such technical terms as supersonic have been drawn into their orbit.

Finally, words may lose their evocative power as they pass from a restricted milien into common usage. When the English term sport was introduced into French in 1828, the writer who first used it was at pains to explain that the word had no equivalent in his own language. For several decades, sport remained an Anglicism of limited currency in French; as late as 1855, the purist Viennet protested against it in a poem about English words, which he read to the Institut:

Faut-il, pour cimenter un merveilleux accord,

Changer I'arene en turf, et le plaisir en sport?

Since then, the word has become part of everyday French has lost all evocative force. The same has happened to many successful neologisms. The adjective international for instance, was formed in 1780 by Jeremy Benthan who apologized for his temerity in coining a new term: “The word international, it must be acknowledged, is a new one, though, it is hoped, sufficiently analogous and intelligible”. Subsequently the word became an indispensable element of our political vocabulary and lost any air of neologism it may have had in Bentham's day.

Rather more subtle are the movements of words up and social scale. One is quite surprised to learn that some ordinary English words such as joke or banter began their career as slang terms, and that many others - cajole, clever, fun, job, width, etc. - were stigmatized as `low' by Dr.Johnson.

Similarly, in the French la blaquer `to joke, to banter' is today a harmless colloquialism; yet little more than a century ago it must have had powerful social overtones.

2.3 DIFFERENTIATION WITH RESPECT TO TIME AXIS OF NEOLOGISMS (BASED ON WORD-BUILDING)

The vocabulary of any language does not remain the same by changes constantly.

In the ever-changing field of political life and affairs new words are constantly coined. In this connection it is interesting to pay attention to the process of coining political euphemisms. Unemployment is substituted by the down-toned expressions: unused or underused manpower or redundancy. The problem of starvation is the problem of adequate nourishment, and the poor are only the underprivileged.

A few examples of neologisms showing the patterns according to which they are formed may be of interest. Automation `automatic control of production' is irregularly formed from the stem automatic - with the help of the very production suffix -tion. The corresponding verb to automated is a back-formation, e.g. to re-equip in the most modern and automated fashion. Re- is one of the most production prefixes; the others are anti-, de-, un-, the semi-affixes self- and mini- and many more. Antiflash (serving to protect the eyes) or the jocular anti-everything: She (the nurse) was anti-everything, except such of the patients who were good for a gossip (M.Dickens). Deglamorise (to make less attractive), rejuvenate (to make young again), rehouse (to move a family, a community etc. to a new house).

The prefix un- increases its combining power, enjoys a new wave of fashion and is now attached even to noun stem. A literary critic refers to the broken-down “Entertainer” (in John Osborne's play) as a `contemporary unhero, the desperately unfunny Archie Rice'. `Unfunny' here means not amusing in spite of the desire to amuse. A freer use of semi- affixes can be illustrated by mini-budget, mini-car, mini-skirt, midi-coat, midi-frock, self-service of restaurant, shop, etc. in which customers help themselves to food or goods and many more neologisms with self-.

Compounding by mere juxtaposition of free forms has been a frequent pattern since the Old English period, e.g. `brainstrust' (a group of experts), `quiz-master' (chairman in competitions designed to test the knowledge of the participants). In the neologism `back-room boys' (men engaged in secret research) the structural cohesion of the compound is enhanced by the attribute function. `Redbrick' (universities), `paperback' (books).

A peculiarly English and steadily developing type is presented by nouns formed by a combined process of conversion and composition from verbs with postpositives, such as a hold up (armed robbery) from hold up (rob), fall out (airborne particles of radioactive matter), teach in (a student conference or a series of seminars on some burning issue of the day). This pattern is very frequent: read-in, sign-in, stay-in, and talk-in.

Many technical and scientific inventions and notions are named by using the so-called combining forms, e.g. aqualung (from Latin combining from aqua and lung) - a portable diving apparatus. The change of meaning, or rather the introduction of a new, additional of a new, additional meaning, may be illustrated by the word network (a number of broadcasting station, 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.

Conversion is quite frequent, e.g. to orbit the moon, to garage a cra, to service a car.

Very often two or more types of word-building combine in creating a neologism. Thus composition, substantiation and semantic change together are present in the personal name come back meaning a person who returns after a long absence.

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 being to function as indivisible signs. A good example is the much used term cybernetics (study of system of control and communication in living being and man-made devices), coined by Norbert Weiner from the Greek word kubernetes (steersman) + suffix -ics.

There are, however, cases when etymology 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. Etymology offered for the latter is only guesswork.

In the course of time the new word is accepted for some reason or the other and vanishes from the language. The fate of neologisms is hardly predictable, some of them are short-lived, others, on the contrary, become durable if they are liked and accepted. Once accepted, they may serve as a basis for further word-formation. Thus gimmick, gimmicky, gimmickry. Zip(an initiative word denoting a certain type of fastener) is hardly felt as new, but its derivatives, the verb to zip formed by conversion (to zip from one place to another) and the corresponding noun zipper appear to be neologisms.

The student of mass phenomena is naturally interested in appraising the number of units he has to deal with. It has proved no easy task. The difficulties confronting one in undertaking a word count are manifold. It is difficult to estimate the number of words in a language because of the so-called nonce-words that is words coined for one occasion. For example: I am sure I can help you publicity-wise with Beethoven's birthday. After all this is really big thing. We must do whatever is best Beethovenwise. Or: Yes, I said, admiring the fishes and already getting a little whiskified (CARY). The surgeon rubbed his hands and ha-ha'd. (M.Dickens).

Adous Huxley created very effective compound derivatives art-for-arter and trans-beasted (turned into beasts); …there was someone who could never believe that I was not an art-for-arter; as though our lives depended on getting there before the other trans-beasted passengers. And J.priestley Goes farther and derives a personal noun with the suffix -er out of a whole sentence: All they want to be is to be acquaintances, mere How-d'you-doers. Are we justified to count those as units of the vocabulary? It's a very difficult question for linguists.