Incipient diffusion of lexical innovations

现代语言学至今未能回答这样一个问题，即哪些因素决定了词汇创新（新词）被言语社区成员采用、开始传播并在语言词汇中确立的程度。这个问题将由本项目参考英语来解决。在现有的关于词汇创新扩散的研究中，一系列的语言内部和语言外部因素都被认为对新词的扩散有影响：新词形成的规律性;新词结构的透明度;与现有同义词的竞争;新词对命名新事物和事态的效用;新词创造者和早期使用者的声望;词汇在大众媒体传播中的突出性;词汇产生的社交网络的密度。目前，这些因素都是假设的状态，尚未得到适当的检验。到目前为止，还没有系统的研究，可以发挥作用的因素的数量和性质，或在何种程度上，他们可以促进或阻碍词汇创新的扩散，更不用说在如何相互作用和相互影响。最重要的原因是，迄今为止还没有进行这种研究的方法工具，拟议的项目是在参与研究的研究人员在方法和理论方面取得重大进展的基础上进行的。它旨在通过收集大量关于互联网上最新新词的使用和传播的数据来填补现有的空白。一个特制的网络爬虫已经开发出来，它可以半自动地识别互联网上的新词，并将它们存储在数据库中。然后，它会以每月一次的间隔识别所有包含这些新词的新网页，并将其存储起来。这些网页上的所有新词证明都是根据其直接上下文提取的，并为进一步的语言分析做好准备。数据存储在数据库中，根据上述因素进行编码，并在统计方法的帮助下进行分析，这些方法检查因素及其相互作用的影响大小。此外，在项目期的第一年和第三年，将在英国和美国进行问卷调查研究，以便用一个独立的数据集来补充互联网数据，该数据集表明说话者对新词的熟悉程度及其对新词实用性的评估。这些数据也将被输入统计模型。该项目的总体目标是建立经验上合理的模型，这些模型可以对决定新词成功或失败的因素的影响大小做出现实的预测。此外，该项目旨在促进语言学经验方法的发展，并在语言扩散，变异和变化的研究中建立语言理论。

Modern linguistics has so far failed to answer the question as to which factors determine the degree to which lexical innovations (neologisms) are adopted by the members of a speech community, begin to spread and are established in the lexicon of a language. This question will be addressed by the present project with reference to English. In the existing research on the diffusion of lexical innovations a wide range of language-internal and language-external factors have been claimed to have an effect on the diffusion of neologisms: the regularity of the formation of neologisms; the transparency of their structures; the competition with existing synonyms; their utility for naming new objects and states of affairs; the prestige of the coiner of a word and its early users; the salience of the word in mass media communication; the density of social networks from which words emerge. Presently, these factors have the status of hypotheses which have not been tested properly. So far there is no systematic research on the number and nature of the factors that can play a role, or on the degrees to which they can foster or hinder the diffusion of lexical innovations, let alone on the ways in which they interact and influence each other. The most important reason for this is that the methodological tools for carrying out such research have not been available so far.The proposed project builds on substantial methodological and theoretical advances made by the participating investigators. It aims to fill the existing gap by collecting large amounts of data on the use and spread of very recent neologisms on the Internet. A tailor-made webcrawler has been developed which semi-automatically identifies neologisms on the Internet and stores them in a database. It then identifies all new web pages that contain these neologisms at monthly intervals and also stores them. All attestations of the neologisms on these pages are extracted with their immediate context and prepared for further linguistic analysis. The data are stored in the database, coded with respect to the factors mentioned above and analyzed with the help of statistical methods that examine the effect sizes of the factors and their interactions. In addition, questionnaire studies will be carried out in the UK and the USA in the first and third years of the project period in order to complement the Internet data with an independent dataset indicating the familiarity of speakers with the neologisms and their assessment of the utility of the new words. These data will also be fed into the statistical models. The overarching aim of the project is to create empirically sound models which produce realistic predictions concerning the effect sizes of the factors determining the success or failure of neologisms. In addition, the project aims to contribute to the development of empirical methods in linguistics and to linguistic theorizing in the study of linguistic diffusion, variation and change.