Tracking the acceptance of neologisms in German: Psycholinguistic factors and their correspondence with corpus-linguistic findings
- Neologisms, i.e., new words or meanings, are finding their way into everyday language use all the time. In the process, already existing elements of a language are recombined or linguistic material from other languages is borrowed. But are borrowed neologisms accepted similarly well by the speech community as neologisms that were formed from “native” material? We investigate this question based on neologisms in German. Building on the corresponding results of a corpus study, we test the hypothesis of whether “native” neologisms are more readily accepted than those borrowed from English. To do so, we use a psycholinguistic experimental paradigm that allows us to estimate the degree of uncertainty of the participants based on the mouse trajectories of their responses. Unexpectedly, our results suggest that the neologisms borrowed from English are accepted more frequently, more quickly, and more easily than the “native” ones. These effects, however, are restricted to people born after 1980, the so-called millenials. We propose potential explanations for this mismatch between corpus results and experimental data and argue, among other things, for a reinterpretation of previous corpus studies.
Author: | Sascha WolferORCiDGND, Annette Klosa-KückelhausORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-120888 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-01977-4 |
ISSN: | 2662-9992 |
Parent Title (English): | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications |
Publisher: | Springer |
Place of publication: | Berlin |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first Publication: | 2023 |
Date of Publication (online): | 2023/09/04 |
Publishing Institution: | Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS) |
Publicationstate: | Veröffentlichungsversion |
Reviewstate: | Peer-Review |
GND Keyword: | Datenanalyse; Deutsch; Entlehnung; Korpus <Linguistik>; Neologismus; Psycholinguistik |
Volume: | 10 |
First Page: | 1 |
Last Page: | 10 |
Note: | Finanzierung über Springer-DEAL-Vetrag |
DDC classes: | 400 Sprache / 400 Sprache, Linguistik |
Open Access?: | ja |
Leibniz-Classification: | Sprache, Linguistik |
Linguistics-Classification: | Lexikografie |
Program areas: | L1: Lexikographie und Sprachdokumentation |
Program areas: | L3: Lexik empirisch und digital |
Licence (English): | Creative Commons - Attribution 4.0 International |