Beyond Frequency: On the Dictionarization of New Words in Spanish

The most recent literature on neology has discussed the criteria that must be taken into account in order to include new words in dictionaries (Metcalf 2002, Ishikawa 2006, O'Donovan and O'Neill 2008, Cook 2010, Freixa 2016, among others). Although there are other factors that must be considered, such as morphologic features and semantic transparency (Adelstein and Freixa 2013, Bernal et al. 2018), authors broadly agree that frequency plays a central role, given that high corpus frequency may be taken as evidence of the institutionalization of a lexical unit. However, it has also been pointed out that frequency is a complex criterion in itself, and, therefore, aspects such as stabilization in use (Cook 2010) or a possible longitudinal change in frequency (Metcalf 2002, Ishikawa 2006) must also be taken into account when measuring frequency in corpora.

In this paper, we approach lexical frequency as a criterion to evaluate whether neologisms should be included in Spanish dictionaries from a new perspective. Specifically, we compare data concerning change in frequency of neologisms through time with speakers' perceptions about their novelty, known as "neological feeling" in the specialized literature (Gardin et al. 1974, Sablayrolles 2003). Data about speakers' perceptions is obtained from online questionnaires carried out within the framework of the Neómetro project (Bernal et al. in press). A set of questionnaires was launched in which 100 subjects evaluated their perceptions of 130 neologisms in Spanish according to four different criteria (correct formation, frequency, novelty and necessity of inclusion in dictionaries). Frequency data is taken from an extensive corpus of texts from the press, Factiva, which provides histograms of frequency through time.

For this study, we analyze the neologisms that were perceived as the most and the least frequent in the questionnaires. We analyze their frequency curve through time in Factiva to find correlations between stabilization in time and speakers' perceptions of their institutionalization. The data allows us to improve the predictive capacity of frequency as a measure to decide which neologisms should be included in dictionaries, as it introduces factors (formal, semantic or usage) that favor or hinder institutionalization into the equation.