LEXICOFOCUS

 

Introduction to the Special Section of Papers from the 6th GLOBALEX Workshop on Lexicography and Neology

 

 

Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus^I; Ilan Kernerman^II

^ILeibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, Germany (klosa@ids-mannheim.de) (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4529-9432)
^IILexicala by K Dictionaries, Israel (ilan@lexicala.com) (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9052-8217)

 

 

1. Background

This special section of Lexikos focuses on lexicographic neology and neological lexicography, featuring seven of the papers presented at the sixth Globalex Workshop on Lexicography and Neology (GWLN-6),¹ which was held in conjunction with the 28th International Conference of the African Association for Lexicography, AFRILEX 2024, at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.²

The GWLN series began as a one-time event conjugated with the 22nd Biennial Meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA) at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2019.³ The first event included thirteen invited papers from around the world, relating to the detection, selection, representation, and research of neologisms in lexicographic contexts. Of these, eight formed a special issue of the DSNA's journal Dictionaries, published the following year as volume 41, issue 1 (2020).⁴ However, in view of the successful workshop and corresponding publication, we decided to continue regularly on an annual basis, relocating each iteration with the conference of a different continental association for lexicography. GWLN-2⁵ was planned to be held in conjunction with the congress of the European Association for Lexicography (Euralex 2020, Alexandropoulos, Greece),⁶ but due to the COVID-19 pandemic the onsite event was cancelled. Instead, some of the papers were presented in a standalone online workshop that year,⁷ while others were included in another online session of Euralex 2020 the following year,⁸ with selected papers from both online sessions published in volume 34, issue 3 as a special issue of International Journal of Lexicography (2021).⁹ GWLN-3 was also held online, as a pre-conference workshop of the Australasian Association for Lexicography (Australex 2021),¹⁰ focusing on neologisms arising in relation to COVID-19, with thirteen papers published as a volume of Lexicographica. Series Maior entitled Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms (2022).¹¹The same year, GWLN-4¹² was held at the Euralex 2022 Congress (Mannheim, Germany),¹³ with all six papers published as part of the conference proceedings.¹⁴ GWLN-5¹⁵ took place in conjunction with the 16th International Conference of the Asian Association for Lexicography (Asialex 2023, Seoul, South Korea),¹⁶ with the main topic of unregistered words. Following the conference, six of the papers were published that year as a special issue of Lexicography. Journal of Asialex in volume 10, issue 2 (2023).¹⁷

As stated in our Introduction to the Lexicographica, Series Major volume (Klosa-Kückelhaus and Kernerman 2022), lexicography has existed for millennia and has continuously adapted to societal and linguistic developments, particularly in the recent decades with their intensively profound transformations. The phenomenon of neology, the creation of new lexical items, has been constantly present throughout history, playing a pivotal role in the evolution of language and, by extension, in the development of lexicography. In the last decade, neology has garnered increased attention from research communities, as evidenced also by the establishment of the COST Action European Network on Lexical Innovation (ENEOLI, CA22126, 2023).¹⁸ This heightened focus has led to the emergence of novel practical studies and applications in various domains, including academia, language institutes and observatories, the language technology industry, and the general public. The pace of novelty in daily life is accelerating, and the number of innovations is growing exponentially - all of which are defined by language and affect language in turn. Consequently, there is a growing interest in neologisms and in the role of lexicographic resources in recording and disseminating them to the world.

The overarching objective of GWLN meetings and publications is to investigate the nexus of neology and lexicography on a global scale. This endeavor entails the identification of common factors and the exposition of distinctive characteristics. Furthermore, it involves the dissemination of findings among diverse members, with the aim of fostering mutual exchange and comprehension, enhancing professional proficiency, and attaining user satisfaction. The primary issues under consideration are initiated with the detection of neologisms and are subsequently pursued through their categorisation, lexicographic treatment, and representation. As such, the description in our Introduction to the special issue of Dictionaries (Klosa-Kückelhaus and Kernerman 2020) is overall appropriate here too and we reproduce it with slight adjustments:

"Neology constitutes a natural, dynamic, and multilateral part of all living human languages, whether as a reflection or for facilitation of linguistic communication, and lexicographic interest in neologisms is at least as old as dictionaries themselves. There is a vast field of research of neologisms, pertaining to their origin (stemming from the given language as in new word formation, or loan words from other languages including the dominance of English today, as well as combining both), distribution (in general language and in domain-specific language, that is terminology), identification (applying corpus linguistics methods, editorial methods, user generated candidates, and comparison of different methods), evaluation (such as in blogs and chats), and more. The general definition of neologisms as applied here refers to new words, new multiword units, new elements of word formation, and new meanings of either of them, and addresses lexicography-driven or -oriented aspects, including:

- How to interoperate lexicographic datasets with online resources and incorporate neologisms into dictionaries (the media, formatting, labelling, etc.)

- How to deal with grammatical/orthographic/pronunciation variation (descriptive vs. prescriptive approaches)

- How to explain meaning with/without encyclopaedic information, and how to use illustrations and audio-visual media

- How well are neologisms that are integrated in dictionaries accepted by the community (issues of rejection of new words and language purism)

- How differently, if at all, should neologisms be treated in different dictionary types (e.g. in historical comprehensive ones as opposed to those focusing on current usage; in monolingual vs. bilingual dictionaries; in special dictionaries of neologisms; in special domain dictionaries)

- How to deal with neologisms that are no longer new and with those no longer used

- How can dictionary users help with finding and informing about neologisms."

In addition to the substantial growth in international and cross-lingual research in neology and its implications for lexicography during the short five-year span since the description quoted above was published, we would like to highlight the rapid and fundamental game-changing advent of generative AI and large language models (LLMs), whose massive impacts have had only their first glimpses in this special section. However, at the time of writing this Introduction (April 2025), the submissions to the seventh iteration of GWLN,¹⁹ which will take place in conjunction with the eLex 2025 conference,²⁰ already indicate a surge in the interest in the roles of AI in finding, describing, and generating neologisms and their interaction with lexicography.

 

2. This volume

The first paper in this section offers an overview of the aims and work of the new European Network in Lexical Innovation (ENEOLI), which brings together researchers, practitioners, teachers, students, translators, and other language professionals in the field of neology. Among other things, the network concerns terminology in the field and carries out comparative studies of lexical innovation in different languages. Its presentation here leads directly to issues that are explored in more detail in the other six papers, which concern six languages: English, Georgian, German, Modern Greek, Korean, and Spanish. Two of the papers deal with methods for detecting neologisms (in Korean and Georgian), using both automated and editorial means. Two other papers look at specific elements of word formation (combining forms in English and the suffix -ing in Modern Greek) that are used to create new words. One paper presents an in-depth study of the lexicographic treatment of two new verbs in Spanish, and the paper on German neologisms focuses on their role in critical discourse.

Giovanni Tallarico, Rute Costa, Ana Salgado, Judit Freixa, Kris Heylen, John Humbley, Ilan Kernerman, Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus, Ana Ostroski Anic, Federica Vezzani, Vincent Balnat, Petar Bozovic, Spela Arhar Holdt, and Weronika Wozniak-Zak (Lexicography and Neology: Building Bridges through a Multilingual Approach with ENEOLI) examine the work of the European Network on Lexical Innovation (ENEOLI) COST Action, launched in 2023 to address key gaps in the study of lexical innovation, in the context of lexicography. The authors' "focus is on the description and the methodology developed within the Action for creating a glossary that compiles and defines the meta-terminology of neology". After presenting the aims and structure of ENEOLI, the "state of neology research at the intersection with lexicography" is discussed. In particular, research and methods for determining which of the new words, senses, and multiword units "will eventually become part of the language and, therefore, should be included in the general dictionary" are presented. Neologism dictionaries face other challenges, as "neologisms in a dictionary of neologisms are doomed to disappear either by their incorporation into the general dictionary (and the consequent loss of their neology status) or by disappearance from use". One of the main tasks of ENEOLI is the development of a multilingual glossary of the meta-terminology of neology, based on corpora specifically created for the project. The objective is "to create a platform that enables users to access, explore, and understand terminology used in the field of neology across different languages efficiently". The workflow for this specific terminology project is not different from that of lexicographic projects, as three main phases can be identified: the selection of candidates for inclusion in the database, their description on the basis of specific microstructural components, and the follow-up and possible updating of the entries. The glossary is intended to "serve as a practical resource while also advancing the understanding of how neology is approached within lexicography, both in practice and in theory."

In her discussion of Neologisms and their Functions in Critical Discourse, Petra Storjohann takes a discourse-oriented rather than a terminological approach. As "neologisms introduce new ways of thinking by embodying novel conceptual knowledge and influencing collective thought processes", these functions challenge lexicographers. Traditionally, key discourse aspects of new words are not part of the lexicographic description. However, neologisms do not appear in isolation, but within discourses. Thus, a usage-based approach (based on corpus linguistics) can support the analysis of "lexical patterns that define the immediate context of a given term". By presenting detailed information on the German neologism Greenflation, the author discusses two methods that "should be employed complementarily to investigate discourse, neologisms, and their meanings, roles, and functions": the corpus-based analysis of collocations as well as syntagmatic patterns and methods for identifying lexical-semantic relations at the paradigmatic level. The author concludes: "Greenflation and its associated discursive potential are integral to its semantics. Accordingly, this paper posits that lexicographic descriptions should take this into account." Detailed information is given on a proposal for a discourse-oriented type of lexicographic treatment in a new resource on German neologisms of the 2020s, while also discussing the limitations of discursive descriptions: "Still, any attempt to document discourse within a dictionary remains fragmentary, just as any corpus represents only a portion of the broader discourse it reflects." Nevertheless, this paper provides valuable food for thought for lexicographers working on neologisms and will hopefully inspire the inclusion of information on discourse-related aspects in other dictionaries.

In The Role of Combining Forms in Creating New English Compounds: Data-Driven and Construction Approaches, Jin-Hong Huang and Yongwei Gao focus on combining forms (CFs), such as auto- or -preneur, that are very productive in contemporary English in forming new lexical items. They are defined as "a form of a word normally used in compounds in combination with another element to form a word" and can have either a native or neoclassical origin. The authors use data-driven and constructional approaches to study the material and they also discuss their treatment in dictionaries. Their approach to analyse the for-mational mechanisms of new compounds by using the method of construction morphology (CxM) is fruitful; in this theory, "a word is conceptualised as a pairing of form and meaning, with words in the lexicon understood as systematic form-meaning correspondences." It is used to show how the "systematic nature of syntactic constraints in CxM shows that CFs combine only bases that conform to specific word class patterns". Productivity is defined quantitatively, i.e., "the number of new compounds included in dictionaries over specific periods" is used to analyse the productivity of a particular CF, and it is classified as "highly productive, moderately productive, or low in productivity". Three English-Chinese neologism dictionaries and Oxford English Dictionary are the data sources for the study of 11 CFs of Classical Greek or Latin origin. The CFs's dates of first use, their formal properties, the word classes of new compounds formed with the CF, and the semantic properties of the new compounds, as well as the semantic changes of the CFs in new compounds, are all analysed in detail. Of particular interest to practical lexicographers is the discussion of the results concerning "demarcation between compounds and others and their lexicographic treatment" (cf. 6.3). The authors invite dictionary compilers "to propose a standardised lexicographical annotation for CF compounds, distinguishing them clearly from derivatives and blends to ensure the authority and accuracy of dictionaries".

New meanings emerge not only for some of the words used as CFs mentioned above, but also for lexemes. In their article Semantic Verbal Neology in Spanish Dictionaries: Case Study of the Lexicographic Representation of anestesiar and coreografiar, Marina Berri and Victoria de los Ángeles Boschiroli discuss two Spanish verbs that are in fact semantic neologisms, but are not treated as such in "widely used online general dictionaries". The problem with treating semantic neologisms in general dictionaries is that "they require the modification of an existing article, either by adding a sense, in the case of the emergence of a new meaning, or by modifying an existing sense, which may be necessary in the case of extensions, restrictions or other types of displacements". The authors also note that "in dictionaries of neologisms, defining a semantic neologism implies referring in some way to a previous meaning that this dictionary does not include". Based on Patrick Hank's Theory of Norms and Exploitations (TNE), new senses or new meanings can be "discriminated by identifying phraseological patterns" and are then recorded in a dictionary according to their frequency. TNE is also "relevant to study neologicity", since the exploitation of norms is a gradual phenomenon. The case studies of anestesiar and coreografíar show in detail how TNE can be used to find information about new meanings as well as pragmatic values that should be recorded in a dictionary entry. One of the results of the study is that the structural and semantic reality of semantic neologisms differs significantly from their representation in general language dictionaries. Therefore, the authors propose to "adopt a systematic approach for the inclusion of VSN [verbal semantic neologisms] that anticipates how to deal with the grey area between exploitations and secondary/new norms" (i.e. new senses).

Anna Vacalopoulou presents an in-depth study of the treatment of Anglicisms in general dictionaries of Modern Greek in Digging for -ings: A Survey of Selected (Pseudo)-Anglicisms in Dictionaries of Modern Greek. Anglicisms are defined as "lexical items borrowed from English and integrated into the lexicon of another language", and pseudo-Anglicisms are defined as "words that seem English but do not exist in the same form or meaning in English". Anglicisms (particularly nouns ending in -ing) can be "adopted verbatim, spelled out in the Latin alphabet, or may be transliterated into the Greek alphabet". In the early stages of the integration process, both methods are used, but later it often occurs that a "hybrid approach to incorporating new terms" is also common, which is problematic for lexicographic treatment. Five Modern Greek dictionaries were selected for analysis and all nouns ending in -ing were extracted and classified (Anglicisms and pseudo-Anglicisms). The lexicographic treatment of these nouns varies in terms of inclusion and treatment - for example, the orthographic information, where "a notable disconnect between prescriptive rules and actual usage" can be found. The study may inspire practical lexicographers of other languages to aim for a more systematic treatment of Anglicisms/ Pseudo-Anglicisms in their dictionaries.

In Semi-Automatic Detection of New Words in Modern Georgian, Tamar Laluashvili and Tinatin Margalitadze provide information on the historical background ("rapid socio-political changes in the country [Georgia] after the collapse of the Soviet Union") that has led to an increase in neologisms in Georgian. The new realities of life after gaining independence as well as other events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the Russian-Ukrainian war, have left their mark on the language in the form of loanwords and blends (e.g. (IMAGEMAQUI / rashizmi 'Rushism') and new word formations (e.g. IMAGEMAQUI /indmets'arme 'individual entrepreneur'). The authors discuss methods and tools that were developed for semi-automatic detection of these neologisms in modern Georgian with the aim of finding candidates for inclusion in a neologism dictionary. As a first step, "a study corpus was composed and two lemmatisers were applied to it"; the corpus "served as an exclusion source" and the lemmatisers were "used for reducing the number of neologism candidates". Using this method, both neologism candidates and "undocumented words" were found, with the latter being cases where words cannot be considered neologisms "but are not documented in dictionaries". In total, "over 1 700 lexical neologisms in modern Georgian" were found, the majority of which are Anglicisms. Another category is "hybrid words, with borrowed and Georgian roots", and some new "word-forming components" that were also identified. Interestingly, some "new polysemous meanings of Georgian words, corresponding to like, share, page, wall, friend, and follower" have emerged. The material collected will form the basis for a new, explanatory online neologism dictionary, and for future monitoring of neologisms in modern Georgian. Overall, this paper provides insights into the methodology of semi-automatic neologism detection and its challenges for lexicographic purposes, which may be helpful to projects for other languages in their search for neologism candidates.

In the last paper of this section, Detection and Description of Neologisms in Korean Lexicography: Methodological Issues in Corpus Balance, Word Unit Bias and LLM Assistance, Kilim Nam, Soojin Lee and Hae-Yun Jung look into the future of lexicography, where LLMs can support "neologism extraction and dictionary compilation", even if there are still some limitations at present. The authors present information on the research background of the Korean Neologism Investigation Project and the chosen methodology (a large-scale collection of neologisms from different corpora) before discussing the current state of corpus-based neologism extraction and related corpus linguistic issues. The main challenge for the neologism collection is that it relies mainly on newspaper and news corpora, although "it is evident that news data cannot fully represent the linguistic reality of Korean native speakers". Other sources, such as instant messages or online posts, should also be used to find and describe neologisms. The authors ask "whether LLMs trained on large-scale data encompassing various sources, such as encyclopaedias like Wikipedia, books, academic articles, news, blogs, forums, and other websites, can serve as an alternative". They tested how LLMs performed when asked to identify and describe semantic neologisms and present their findings on how they "perform the task of recommending neologisms and unregistered words." They conclude: "The experimental results provided by ChatGPT and CLOVA X indicate that LLMs show potential as useful tools for detecting unregistered words and neologisms that are often omitted from traditional news-centred corpora. However, issues such as noise in the list of recommended neologisms, limitations in describing semantic neologisms, and duplicate outputs remain challenges to be addressed."

We hope that this closing paper provides food for thought and encourages further studies on the performance of LLMs for neologism detection in other languages as well. Moreover, as noted above, LLMs are already surging as detectors, describers, and generators of neologisms and are thus expanding our field of research to their impact on neology and lexicography (cf. GWLN-7, 2025).

 

Endnotes

1. https://globalex.link/gwln-6_2024/
2. https://www.afrilex.co.za/conferences
3. https://dictionarysociety.com/conference/dsna-22-in-bloomington-indiana/
4. https://dictionarysociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Dictionaries-41.1-Table-of-Contents.pdf
5. https://globalex2020.globalex.link/gw-euralex2020
6. https://euralex.org/conferences/euralex-2021/
7. https://globalex.link/gw-euralex2020/
8. https://euralex.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/EURALEX2021_ScientificProgramme-Preview-2-1.pdf
9. https://academic.oup.com/ijl/issue/34/3
10. https://www.australex.org/our-conferences/
11. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110798081/html
12. https://globalex.link/globalex2022euralex/
13. https://euralex2022.ids-mannheim.de/
14. https://euralex.org/category/publications/euralex-2022/
15. https://globalex.link/globalex2023asialex/
16. https://korealex.org/asialex_2023
17. https://utppublishing.com/toc/lexi/10/2
18. https://eneoli.eu/
19. https://globalex.link/gwln-7_2025/
20. https://elex.link/elex2025/

 

References

Klosa-Kückelhaus, A. and I. Kernerman. 2020. Global Viewpoints on Lexicography and Neologisms: An Introduction. Dictionaries. Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 41(1): 1-9.         [ Links ]

Klosa-Kückelhaus, A. and I. Kernerman. 2022. Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms: An Introduction. Klosa-Kückelhaus, A. and I. Kernerman (Eds.). 2022. Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms. Lexicographica. Series Maior 163: 1-10. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110798081-001