Lexicogenesis and language vitality

Abstract

As exemplified in the case of Contemporary Metropolitan French, spontaneous indigenous lexical creativity is a natural adaptive survival strategy for a language in the earlier (and intermediate) stages of its domination with regards to a competing language and culture. Indigenous lexicogenesis can also include convergent types, as exemplified in the case of Malinche Mexicano, where borrowings are subjected to indigenous processing using native inflectional and derivational morphology. For declining languages, on the other hand, the circumstances of language shift correlate with indigenous lexicogenetic failure and very often to its replacement with a ‘peripheral’ type, namely reliance on code switching (which, in some cases, may actually be ‘code-intermediate’ in nature) as the main strategy for generating vocabulary, as exemplified by Louisiana French. In some cases, however, even in the midst of general decline, in order for the language to function in its remaining registers, some indigenous ‘compensatory’ lexicogenesis can take place, as exemplified by Restricted Hungarian. Lexicogenetic failure, initial or evolving, may be attributable to either extreme purism or lack of language loyalty, as well as to other co-occuring factors. Certain connections can also be drawn between spontaneous and planned corpus enrichment.

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