Corpora: neologisms in Japanese

[Bob Krovetz]

Dear Wolfgang,
  I would expect that some neologisms in Japanese are formed via morphology
(expressed in hiragana?), and some as novel compounds of kanji.  For example,
I once asked a Chinese person how they expressed the word "laser", and they
said they used the kanji for "powerful light".  I believe they use katakana
for "laser" in Japanese.  Sometimes neologisms are expressed as morphological
variants, such as using "intended" to mean "fiance'".  I expect it would be
relatively easy to identify neologisms in katakana, but much more difficult
for kanji.  I know that John Algeo has done work on neologisms for English
(see  "Where do All the New Words Come From?", John Algeo, American Speech,
Vol. 55, pp. 264-277, 1980).  There is also a special issue of the journal
Dictionaries (Vol. 16, 1995) that was devoted to neologisms.

Bob