New Concepts and New Words – How Do Languages Cope With the Problem of Neology?

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that languages react differently when foreign words denoting new concepts have to be integrated into the native system. The procedure mostly depends on the degree of purism present in a linguistic community: some languages are rather open to foreign influences and do not demonstrate any special hostility towards new words which are easily accepted and adapted to the phonological and morphological systems of the receiving language. Languages, which have a strong puristic tradition, usually channel their borrowings into the loan translation field using internal word formation resources as a means of creating neologisms. Regardless of whether they are built of native elements or appear as loans, neologisms are necessarily the result of linguistic changes

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