Semantic Neology: factors favoring and hindering linguistic change

Abstract

The need to name new realities has developed linguistic strategies of a truly diverse nature, sometimes creating new forms and meanings; sometimes generating or adapting new forms for existing meanings; and sometimes updating or recovering heritage forms that acquire new meanings, supposedly in accordance with these new realities.

This last strategy, semantic neology, is the object of study of this paper, especially from the point of view of its benefits and detriments for linguistic progress. Semantic neology can be at the forefront of semantic change, thanks to its relative independence from formal neology, its agility or its expressiveness, but it can also show shortcomings, such as the problems of detection by automatic search engines or the problems of detection by automatic search engines (a technological and lexicographical challenge because search engines are designed to locate new forms, but not so much meanings) or the imbalances between the word and the thing, both because of the ephemeral nature of such neologisms and because of the gap between the new realities and the words that should name them, what we call the denominative deficit.