The Life and Death of Neologisms: On What Basis Shall We Include Neologisms in the Dictionary?

By November 23, 2016,
Page 389-393
Author Kilim Nam, Soojin Lee, Hae-Yun Jung, Jun Choi
Title The Life and Death of Neologisms: On What Basis Shall We Include Neologisms in the Dictionary?
Abstract This research analyzes web crawling corpora and examines how many of the neologisms that are coined every year are dying out and how many endure. It seeks to grasp what implications the results of the analysis have for the inclusion of these neologisms in the dictionary. The Korean government initiated the investigation into neologisms in 1992 and has been supervising this research project ever since. Some 400 to 500 coinages that meet definite criteria are being extracted every year, compiled and printed out in the form of a glossary. This paper focuses on the years 2005 and 2006, for which 408 and 530 respectively, that is, 938 new words in total, were recorded. The study turns then to the analysis of the usage changes in the Korean mass media which these neologisms have been undergoing for the past decade. On a quantitative level, the investigation shows that 27% of those neologisms have been in consistent usage for the last ten years.
Session Lexicography and Corpus Linguistics
Keywords neologisms; usage changes; web crawling corpus; frequency; news articles
BibTex
@InProceedings{ELX2016-041,
author={Kilim Nam, Soojin Lee, Hae-Yun Jung, Jun Choi},
title={The Life and Death of Neologisms: On What Basis Shall We Include Neologisms in the Dictionary?},
pages={389-393},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th EURALEX International Congress},
year={2016},
month={sep},
date={6-10},
address={Tbilisi, Georgia},
editor={Tinatin Margalitadze, George Meladze},
publisher={Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi University Press},
isbn={978-9941-13-542-2},
}
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