THE DYNAMICS OF SCIENTIFIC DESCRIPTION OF INDIVIDUALLY COINED AUTHOR’S NEOLOGISMS: FROM ‘VIOLATING’ THE LANGUAGE SYSTEM TO REALIZING ITS POTENTIAL

Abstract

The description of author’s neologisms (occasional words) by linguistics demonstrates the dynamics of their scientific understanding: initially perceived as ‘violators’ of language standards, they eventually acquire the status of speech units that reveal the potential of the linguistic word-formation subsystem. In this regard, the canonical markers of occasionalisms need to be reconsidered. The most complicated marker of the author’s neologism is non-normativity: the very fact of its occurrence or inconsistency (structural or semantic) with the language word-formation standards could be considered non-normative. The question of the normativity/non-normativity of an occasional word in academia could be considered within the framework of diachronic and synchronic approaches. The study of the non-normativity markers of author’s neologism is most productive if carried out on the basis of a single semantic family realized in the text: within this approach occasional expressions that seem individually non-normative often form a coherent system that fits perfectly into linguistic word-formation standards. Within the academic perception discourse author’s neologism as a realized potential of the word-formation system should be distinguished from actual neologism - the result of word formation. In fact, the criteria for distinguishing neologisms from occasional words are not always clear, the boundaries are unsteady: there are many cases when an occasionalism starts to reproduce itself and enters the language vocabulary which might indirectly indicate that native speakers perceive it as a standard lexical unit. The change in the status of an occasional word in linguistics as well as general attention to the functioning of language noted in modern linguistics led to the fact that the author’s neology began to be studied at school: educational information about it is included in contemporary school Russian textbooks and workbooks.