Chapter і General information

It is well-known that a language is a living and a dynamic body, with a continuous development, and permanently subject to innovation. This phenomenon of development in a language is linked with the fact that any language has to change (phonetically, graphically, lexically, semantically, morphologically) in order to reflect and respond to the needs of native speakers. Consequently, the pace of change in the structure of a language is dictated by the evolution of society, by social, economic and historical factors. Theories have emerged trying to explain this concept of innovation: a) naturalist theories explain the linguistic change by means of climate and geographical background; b) the theory of tendencies - promoted by the French linguist Antoine Meillet – state that languages which belong to the same family of languages are characterized by identical tendencies which can bring about identical linguistic changes even when the relationships between these families of languages cease to exist. Language renewal differs from country to country; for instance, in countries with a powerful industry and economy, new words are obtained internally:

1. Using the already existing sources;

2. Modifying the existing resources by

   1. a narrowing of meaning,

   2. an extension of meaning;

1. Change in the morphological value rather than external borrowings.

Language serves as a means of communication, not only within society, but also with societies outside of the language community, and consequently some of them transgress the borders of a country, as it now happens with English which has become the new lingua franca in business, IT, and media. As far as Romanian vocabulary is concerned, it has lately been enriched mainly by external means: by borrowings of fashionable and technical neologisms, mostly from English. The areas most subject to lexical innovations are specialized languages, such as media, IT, and economics. The neologisms, that have been introduced in Romanian at certain points in its evolution, account for these needs of development; not only has it been enriched by means of borrowing neologisms but it has also borrowed so-called "international" terms, words which gained international use. Each country has to adopt (or not) these terms, if it wants to globalize and internationalize its economy, being aware (or not) of the fact that the pressures of competition force companies and economies to internationalize, otherwise they begin to wither.

1. . Definition of neologisms

A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word") is a word that, although devised relatively recently in a specific time period, has been accepted into a mainstream language. By definition, neologisms are "new", and as such are often directly attributable to a specific individual, publication, period, or event. The term neologism was coined around 1803 and can also refer to an existing word or phrase which has been assigned a new meaning. Neologisms are especially useful in identifying inventions, new phenomena, or old ideas which have taken on a new cultural context. Thus the basic purpose of new words is to fill representational gaps new meanings or new mental concepts open on a special step of technological, scientific or social development.

Neologisms are called “nonce” words (from the 16th century phrase meaning ′for the once′). A “nonce-word” is one that is constructed to serve a need of the moment. The writer is not seriously putting forward his word as one that is to have an independent existence for the future; he merely has a fancy to it for this once. The motives of word creation can be of two types: pragmatic and esthetic. The first one implies social or technological development: changes in society, whether material or intellectual, call for new words; and the more intense the social change, the more need we have to name new things or rename old one, whereas the latter one defines the creative feature of a language: we use some new words because we take delight in them. [15]