COMPLEX “COVID VOCABULARY”: POTENTIAL OF SPANISH WORD FORMATION

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Abstract. The current research deals with the coronavirus neologisms appeared in Spanish over the past year as a result of word formation of complex language units. Since the pandemic disease activated nomination processes in many languages, the neologisms that arise in this era around the world has become relevant for linguistic studies. The purpose of this study is to identify the main models of building complex words, and the semantic groups concerning the COVID-19 thematic field in the modern Spanish language. Methodologically, we applied structural and semantic analysis of the 111 language units, which form the so-called “Covidcionario” – a kind of “folk” dictionary containing the coronavirus neologisms from Spanish Internet mass media (Covidcionario, 2020. URL: www.covidcionario.com). All the analyzed units proved to fulfil both nominative and expressive, or evaluative functions, reflecting the Spaniards’ attitude towards COVID-19 and the related restrictions. As a result, word composition, abbreviation and blending were identified as the ways of building complex pandemic neologisms, blends being the most popular one (56 language items of 111). Among them, we distinguished four blending models, such as partial blends (covidnoico = covid + paranoico – “a person who has paranoia about everything connected with coronavirus”), haplological formations (cuarentrena = cuarentena + entrenamiento – “physical exercises which one does at home during the quarantine period”), “matryoshka” blends (videoyayada = videollamada ‘videocall’ + yaya ‘granny’ – “communication with the 65+ relatives”) and hybrid blends (crossfitamiento = Eng. crossfit + Span. confinamiento – the same as cuarentrena). The main motivating components of the Spanish coronavirus neologisms are parts of such lexical items as covid, coronavirus, pandemia, cuarentena, confinamiento. Among the most popular semantic groups to which they belong are the names of coronavirus and its restrictions; nomination of people who cause negative emotions by their actions in the pandemic era; food, drinks and related activities (gaining and losing weight, eating while distance working, etc.); feelings and emotions towards the current situation. In conclusion, we consider a number of coronavirus blending neologisms to be likely included into the normative dictionaries of the Spanish language in the future.

Keywords: Spanish language, coronavirus neologisms, complex lexical units, blending

Evgeniya A. Popova1, Zoya N. Ignashina2

1Moscow State Linguistic University
Moscow, Russia
2Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation Moscow, Russia
1e-mail: o-genia@yandex.ru

1ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1056-5406

2e-mail: tirroleland@mail.ru

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