TY - JOUR
AU - Kernerman, Ilan
AB - Abstract: This introduction summarizes general issues combining lexicography and neology in the context of the Globalex Workshop on Lexicography and Neology series. We present each of the six papers composing this Special Issue, featuring two Slavic languages (Czech and Slovak) and two Romance ones (Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish in its European and Latin American varieties) and their diverse lexicographic research and representation, in specialized dictionaries of neologisms or general language ones, in monolingual, bilingual and multilingual lexical resources, and in print and digital dictionaries. 1. Background This special issue of International Journal of Lexicography focuses on lexicographic neology and neological lexicography, featuring papers originally submitted to the second Globalex Workshop on Lexicography and Neology (GWLN 20201). GWLN 2020 was to be held in Alexandroupolis, Greece as part of Euralex 20202, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was postponed to 2021, and then had to be altered to virtual mode. However, part of the workshop went online in November 2020, presenting six of the 15 papers and posters to a global audience3. GWLN began as a single event at the 22nd Biennial Meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America at Indiana University Bloomington in 20194, and included thirteen invited papers from around the world, of which eight formed a special issue of the DSNA’s journal Dictionaries, published the following year5. The third iteration of GWLN6 is held in conjunction with Australex 20217 (also online), and is entirely devoted to Coronavirus-related neologisms in lexicographic context. Lexicography has been around for thousands of years, and has always had to adapt to developments in society and language, apparently more than ever in the last generation, with its notably fast and fundamental changes. Neology has been there forever, driving language from the start and so-to-speak inciting lexicography. Likewise, in the last decades, it has attracted more attention in research communities and practical applications, such as at university observatories or the language technology industry, as well as with the public. The speed of novelty in daily life accelerates and the volume of innovations grows exponentially—all defined by language, and both affected by and affecting language. There is greater interest in neologisms and in the role of lexicographic resources to capture and communicate them to the world. Our overall aim of GWLN and its corresponding publications is to explore this intersection of neology and lexicography worldwide, uncover the common factors and highlight individual features, expose and share the findings with each other and enhance mutual understanding, professional competence, and user satisfaction. The main relevant issues range from the identification of neologisms through their categorization and lexicographic treatment and representation. As such, the description in our introduction to the special issue of Dictionaries (Klosa-Kückelhaus and Kernerman 2020) is appropriate here too and we reproduce it with slight adjustments: ‘Neology constitutes a natural, dynamic and multilateral part of all living human languages, whether as a reflection or for facilitation of linguistic communication, and lexicographic interest in neologisms is as old as dictionaries themselves. There is a vast field of research of neologisms, pertaining to their origin (stemming from the given language as in new word formation, or loan words from other languages including the dominance of English, as well as combining both), distribution (in general language and in domain-specific language, that is terminology), identification (applying corpus linguistics methods, editorial methods, user generated candidates, and comparison of different methods), evaluation (such as in blogs and chats), and more. The general definition of neologisms as applied here refers to new words, new multiword units, new elements of word formation, and new meanings of either of them, and addresses lexicography-driven or -oriented aspects, including: How to interoperate lexicographic datasets with online resources and incorporate neologisms into dictionaries (the media, formatting, labelling, etc.) How to deal with grammatical/orthographic/pronunciation variation (descriptive vs. prescriptive approaches) How to explain meaning with/without encyclopedic information, and how to use illustrations and audio-visual media How well are neologisms that are integrated in dictionaries accepted by the community (issues of rejection of new words and language purism) How differently, if at all, should neologisms be treated in different dictionary types (e.g. in historical comprehensive ones as opposed to those focusing on current usage; in monolingual vs. bilingual dictionaries; in special dictionaries of neologisms, in special domain dictionaries) How to deal with neologisms that are no longer new and with those no longer used How can dictionary users help with finding and informing about neologisms? The papers in this special issue discuss some of these aspects, presenting state-of-the-art research into neology and ideas on modern lexicographic treatment of neologisms in various dictionary types.’ 2. This special issue The six papers in this issue focus on four languages – two Slavic (Czech and Slovak) and two Romance (Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish, both European and Latin American) – one paper regarding each of the first three languages and three papers regarding Spanish. Specialized dictionaries of neologisms are discussed as well as general language dictionaries, monolingual, bilingual and multilingual lexical resources, print and electronic dictionaries. In the first paper (‘Merging Professional and Collaborative Lexicography: The Case of Czech Neology'), Michal Škrabal and Martin Kavka discuss how lay lexicography and professional lexicography should join efforts to compile comprehensive and up-to-date information on neologisms. They present data on Czech neologisms from two different discourses: neologisms abusing the ex-president Vaclav Havel’s name and Covid-19-related neologisms, as well as a user-generated web dictionary (Čeština 2.0) with its printed spin-off (Hacknutá čeština) and a neology database compiled from corpus data by linguists (Neomat). As neologisms ‘generally enjoy a great deal of attention among language speakers’ and constitute ‘an area where amateurs can contribute most significantly’, it seems worthwhile to have a closer look at the results and contrast them to corpus-based findings. The authors discuss ways of merging the results of collaborative and professional lexicography for an update of Čeština 2.0 (possibly with a second edition), and present ideas on new types of lexicographic information (e.g. frequency data plus users’ rating and the popularity of a headword). Their conclusion is that ‘the synergy between lay-approaches and theory-based lexicography, supported by corpus frequency data, contributes to a richer description of (not only) neologisms’. While the Czech example highlights the advantages of combining data from corpora with user-generated content, the second paper (‘A Dictionary of Slovak Neologisms') by Martin Ološtiak and Soña Rešovská discusses ways of compiling lexicographic information on Slovak neologisms based on earlier dictionaries as well as corpus analysis. Their project Dictionary of Slovak Neologisms (DSN) adopts a synchronic-diachronic perspective, i.e. the ‘description of synchronic dynamism of the lexicon with regard to extra-linguistic reality’ based ‘upon historical turning points that motivate and affect changes in a language’. The Velvet Revolution of 1989 is the historical moment chosen, thus DSN comprises neologisms from the last three decades for which comprehensive lexicographic information (pronunciation, grammar, source language, register, definition, examples, translation equivalents to Czech, Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian) is given. As a ‘specialized restricted dictionary of a certain lemma type’, DSN’s main goal is to systematically document neological material of Slovak, thus addressing users’ needs as well as presenting material for linguistic research. In their paper ‘The Presence of Brazilian Neologisms in Dictionaries’, Ieda Maria Alves and Bruno Maroneze aim at ‘describing how Brazilian Portuguese dictionaries register new words and new meanings’, highlighting the positive impact ‘that systematic studies of collection and analysis of neologisms […] can bring to the introduction of new lexical units in language dictionaries’. Based on data collected by the Term Neo project (of the Observatory of Contemporary Brazilian Portuguese), the authors identify three representative new types of Brazilian Portuguese lexical morphology: morphemes of Greek origin that have acquired new meanings (e.g. -ódromo), prefixes with ‘recategorizing function’ (e.g. anti-), and metaphorically-used nouns in the second position of a compound (e.g. fantasma). A detailed analysis of their treatment in two general language dictionaries of Brazilian Portuguese illustrates that these dictionaries treat morphological neology unsystematically and ‘list isolated facts, without putting them into correspondence’. Thus, the authors’ findings can serve as an inspirational reminder to dictionary projects of any language how to achieve more consistency, especially in the treatment of neology. Against the ‘preeminence of the European or Peninsular standard variety over Latin American varieties’ in Spanish language and lexicography, the Antenario. Diccionario en línea de neologismos de las variedades del español (‘Online Dictionary of Spanish Neologisms and Varieties’) project aims at treating neological variation in Latin American Spanish-speaking countries by covering six national varieties. In their paper ‘Semantic Aspects of National Varieties of Spanish in a Dictionary of Neologisms, the Antenario’, Andreína Adelstein and Victoria de los Ángeles Boschiroli focus on the analysis of different degrees of neology (i.e. the ‘gradual property of lexical items’ with regard to ‘temporality, speakers’ perceptions, types of resources for lexical creation and frequency’), synonymy and polysemy, and how these are represented in dictionary entries. The authors describe their theoretical framework and discuss lexicographic practice regarding Spanish neologisms before presenting details on the data collection methodology, lemmatization criteria and the main characteristics of Antenario. The treatment of neology, synonymy and polysemy in the different entries is analyzed, specific challenges are discussed, and examples are given on how ‘to avoid the kind of biased homogenization pan-Hispanic approach often results in’. Thus, this project ‘reminds us that dictionaries are developed within a certain lexicographic tradition […] and should therefore be assessed from that perspective’. Focusing on peninsular Spanish, Nava Maroto and Miguel Sánchez Ibáñez (‘Beyond Timelines: The Challenges of Combining Theoretical Premises and Speakers – Insights about the Assessment, Validation and Inclusion of Spanish Neologisms in Dictionaries’) discuss ‘a methodology to rank neologisms in a more objective and quantitative way’ than basing the decision on inclusion or exclusion of a neologism on their treatment in other dictionaries. They suggest taking the ‘lexicographical exclusion filtering strategy’ as ‘a useful starting point’ besides engaging citizens in evaluating candidates using a neological scoring scale. After presenting the set-up and the results of their experiment, they come up with interesting conclusions, for example that participants in their experiment had overall difficulties in identifying semantic neologisms and were ‘more willing to accept and include in a dictionary neologisms formed by compounding Latin and Greek lexemes, whereas non-adapted loanwords tend to be left out’. Here, again, the ‘undeniable interest shown by speakers in matters related to the appearance of new words in a language’ and the value of user participation and how it could be integrated into the lexicographic process become evident. In their paper ‘New Verbs and Dictionaries: A Method for the Automatic Detection of Neology in Spanish Verbs’, Ana Castro, Rogelio Nazr and Irene Renau expound on a corpus-based method on finding new Spanish verbs and suggest how this procedure and its results could be ‘included in the workflow of a lexicographic project’ which would help to avoid ‘underrepresentation or bias’. After discussing theoretical and methodological considerations about neology, the authors present their methodology in detail, demonstrating a series of filters used to find true neologisms and discard spelling mistakes. Overall, ‘close to 88% of the final list of selected verbs are valid neologism candidates, resulting from different word formation mechanisms’. The top 100 most frequent candidates in their study are good candidates for inclusion into general language dictionaries of Spanish, as they are also ‘morphologically correct’ and ‘wide-spread across Spanish-speaking countries’. The method described helps lexicographers to make well-informed decisions on the inclusion of verb neologisms and yields new information types (i.e. frequency and verb dispersion) to enrich dictionary entries. Overall, the findings of the studies in this special issue focus on how lexicographic work regarding neology could be improved, either by exploring corpus data systematically, by incorporating users’ expertise into the lexicographic process, or by learning from the lexicographic practice of existing dictionaries. We hope that the discussion regarding these and other questions related to lexicography and neology will continue and that this issue contributes to it in a fruitful way. 3. Thank you We would like to express our many thanks to the Editor of IJL, Professor Robert Lew, for his great enthusiasm for this project, his patient guidance and constant support. We are most grateful to the anonymous referees for their huge dedication, sharing their expertise and making valuable recommendations. And we thank the authors, at the heart of this publication, for their contributions to this special issue and trust in us. (ilan@kdictionaries.com) Endnotes 1 https://globalex2020.globalex.link/gw-euralex2020/. 2 https://euralex2020.gr/. 3 https://globalex2020.globalex.link/globalex2020-online/ 4 https://dictionarysociety.com/ 5 https://dictionarysociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dictionaries-41.1-Table-of-Contents.pdf 6 https://globalex2021.globalex.link/ 7 https://www.adelaide.edu.au/australex/ Reference Klosa-Kückelhaus A. , Kernerman I.. 2020 . ‘ Global Viewpoints on Lexicography and Neologisms: An Introduction’ . Dictionaries. Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 41 . 1 : 1 – 9 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS WorldCat © 2021 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. 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TI - Converging Lexicography and Neology
JF - International Journal of Lexicography
DO - 10.1093/ijl/ecab018
DA - 2021-09-07
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/converging-lexicography-and-neology-eiBXtzpCR0
SP - 277
EP - 281
VL - 34
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -