The English language neologisms’ word-building patterns (Based on the internet vocabulary)

Abstract

The current paper aims to study the patterns and subpatterns for constructing neologisms in modern English. The data obtained demonstrate that the most productive patterns are shortening, compounding, affixation, words combining and conversion. Meanwhile, the most productive shortening types are blending, abbreviation and acronyms. In the material, 4 compounding patterns were identified: N+N (noun + noun), Adj.+N (adjective + noun), N+V (noun + verb), Adj.+V (adjective + verb) with N+N being the most frequent. Affixation turned out the most common type for nouns and adjectives. The most typical noun suffixes were ­ism, ­ian. Adjectives were mainly formed by adding ­ed, ­ing, ­y. Prefixes were rare. Only audio­ and de­ were involved in the constructing process. Conversion appeared to be the least productive pattern.