neologisms

[Troike, Rudolph C - (rtroike)]

Joshua Fishman once said that the dictionary created by
"experts" for Hebrew in advance of reviving the language
for use in Israel, ignored the fact that people were already
using many words of their own creation, and fully half
of the invented words were never adopted. I heard a
similar story from Nigeria some years ago regarding
efforts to "modernize" one of the languages there.

    Rudy

    Rudy Troike
    University of Arizona

From: ilat-request at list.arizona.edu [ilat-request at list.arizona.edu] on behalf of Daniel W. Hieber [dwhieb at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 12:05 AM
To: ilat at list.arizona.edu
Subject: RE: [ilat] neologisms

Helping language communities create neologisms is something I’ve had to do a lot in creating language-learning software. In my experience, acceptance really comes down to what language communities consider appropriately authentic, and this varies widely from one community to the next, or even one social group within the community to the next. I have a brief chapter coming out on just this topic, based on a talk I gave at Tulane’s conference on Sleeping & Awakening Languages of the Gulf South. An early draft of the paper is attached. A longer version with some more specific word-formation techniques is also available if anybody is interested.

In the case of the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana, because the language is awakening and the dictionary (rather than other fluent speakers) is the primary source of information about the language for learners, the community is definitely using all the newly-coined words. But for other groups I’ve worked with, it’s only the students who are using the language-learning software we made that are using the neologisms. And Tīmoti Kāretu of the Māori community, for example, often talks about the problem with creating new words when there are already perfectly good words out there being used by people.

I think ‘new words’ are necessary for language revitalization in the sense that, as a language is awakening, it’s expanding into new social domains that it wasn’t used in before (or hasn’t been for a long time). So at the very least, language revitalization involves using existing words in new ways, and it’s important for revitalization teams to think about this just as carefully as they would think about neologisms. But as to the question of whether it’s really necessary to have a language committee creating new words for the community, I don’t think this is necessary. It just depends on the particular linguistic and sociopolitical situation in that community, and what works best for everyone involved. I try to address some of these issues in my chapter.

Joshua Hinson of the Chickasaw tribe has also given some excellent talks and workshops on this subject, so I’d encourage anybody wrestling with this topic to reach out to him for valuable advice as well.

Other good sources are:

Hinton, Leanne & Jocelyn Ahlers. 1999. The issue of “authenticity” in California language restoration. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 30(1). 56–67.

Rice, Keren. 2012. “Our language is very literal”: Figurative expression in Dene Sųɬiné [Athapaskan]. In Anna Idström, Elisabeth Piirainen & Tiber F. M. Falzett (eds.), Endangered metaphors, 21–76. (2). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

very best,

Danny


Daniel W. Hieber
Graduate Student in Linguistics
University of California, Santa Barbara
www.danielhieber.com<http://www.danielhieber.com>

Omnis habet sua dona dies. ~ Martial



From: ilat-request at list.arizona.edu [mailto:ilat-request at list.arizona.edu] On Behalf Of Hammond, Michael - (hammond)
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2014 7:32 PM
To: ilat at list.arizona.edu
Subject: [ilat] neologisms

Subject: Re: [ilat] Neologisms and Indigenous Languages
Date: August 26, 2014 9:40:05 AM MST
To: Adrienne Tsikewa <miss_adrienne7 at yahoo.com<mailto:miss_adrienne7 at yahoo.com>>
Cc: ILAT <ilat at list.arizona.edu<mailto:ilat at list.arizona.edu>>

Hi Adrienne

I know for Welsh there is at least one group that does this as contract work for the government or private companies. For example, some company might want to have Welsh terminology, for recording studios. This group goes in and surveys the recording community about existing words that might already be used, proposes new ones where needed. I believe they do surveys again about whether the new ones work.

Of course, it's an evolving thing, so the words may or may not catch on. It's what you might expect. They might propose some morphologically complex form for a novel item, but the English borrowing is more appealing, or vice versa.

Is it necessary? I would think definitely so. If, for example, there were no Welsh words for the things in a recording studio, otherwise fluent Welsh speakers would turn to English in that setting...and it would be one more area where the language could lose ground.

mike h.

On Aug 26, 2014, at 9:17 AM, Adrienne Tsikewa wrote:


Good morning ILAT,

I am interested in learning more  on how Indigenous Language communities not only create new words in their respective languages ( I did find an article by Ryan Denzer-King), but also how these communities may feel about these neologisms.

Are the communities actually using them? How were they introduced to the community? Is this necessary for language maintenance/revitalization?

Thanks/Elahkwa,

Adrienne Tsikewa

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20140828/bf8a24af/attachment.htm>