Neology and Grammar: between lexical neologism and syntactic neologism

Abstract

Abstract: This work is an attempt to clarify the concept of syntactic neology with the aim of finding a working taxonomic device. My proposal is to use the label syntactic neologism to refer to those changes in verbal government that are not linked to semantic change (which would qualify as semantic neologism), nor to other word formation procedures. Thus, a syntactic neologism is not a lexical neologism, a new word, as indeed is the case with semantic neologism. Nevertheless, when we say that syntactic neologism excludes semantic changes, we do not refer to the meaning related to the structural properties (thematic roles and aspect) that determine regular syntactic alternations in verb classes. Therefore, if a new transitive causative variant is formed upon an unnacusative verb (which previously did not have that use) the result would be a case of syntactic neology. So syntactic neology reclassifies verbs, but does not create new verbs. In addition to that, syntactic neology can provide the verb with a new variant that places the verb outside established syntactic classes. In this case we would be approaching the sphere of syntactical change.

Key words: neology, lexical morphology, semantics, syntactic change, verb alternations.