The paper is focused on classes of lexical units which arise as a result of derivational processes – word formation and semantic transfers, acting either in isolation or together, on the basis of common semantic foundations that bind targets and sources of derivation. The lexical items which constitute the classes under study vary in their denotative characteristics and due to their categ...

Neologism dictionaries celebrate the influence of science and technology on language – how scientists and technologists add to the stock of words, and occasionally, add new grammatical structures. There are two claims made in the literature on neologisms: First, that borrowings, from classical languages and ‘prestige’ languages are widespread in the science and technology literature. Second tha...

Where does word formation information play a role in computational linguistics? Think of information retrieval where the parts of a word might contain the important information. If we want to find information in German on relaxation techniques, we need to look for the verb entspannen 'to relax' as well as for the derived noun Entspannung 'relaxation' and compounds containing Entspannung, such a...

The goal of this investigation is to show how neuropsychological dissociations in aphasic language disorders can be explained with reference to explicit linguistic theories and how aphasiological data can help to find an optimal linguistic theory supposing, of course, that linguistic theory considers itself part of the study of cognition. Our topic is the interplay of lexical and nonlexical kno...

The idea that processes of second language acquisition (SLA) are highly relevant to an account of creole genesis is far from new or original (see Plag (2008a) for some discussion and further references). However, it is still controversial which kinds of SLA processes are relevant, and how much of a given creole’s structures can be attributed to such processes. In my previous three Columns (Plag...