Structural and semantic characteristics of food-related neologisms in modern English

Abstract

The present article deals with an increasing number of words which have recently appeared in the English language due to the drastic changes in social, political, economic realms as well as science and technology. Constant technological and scientific progress as surely as active development of cultural, spiritual and everyday spheres of life may be a powerful stimulus for the continual enrichment of English lexicon. The English language is monthly enriched by new lexical units which are introduced into official dictionaries and thesauri in order to extend its vocabulary. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide comprehensive linguistic research of innovative food-related lexical units, collocations, expressions and notions as well as to observe productive word-building patterns used for coining new words. Firstly, we examine fundamental works on the subject of neology, neologisms and their word-formation types as a linguistic phenomenon. Secondly, the focus of attention is on structure and semantics of food-related coinages which have recently come into use. Moreover, we concentrate on blending as the most frequently occurring word-formation type used to create neologisms in the sphere of gastronomy and related domains. In addition, various types of lexical blends are discussed as well as their high degree of productivity. Finally, we make conclusions and suggestions for further linguistic investigations