WORD COMPOUNDING AND WORD BLENDING AS WAYS OF FORMATION OF THE COVID‑19 PANDEMIC NEOLOGISMS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article substantiates the expediency of studying neologisms of modern English, which represent the conceptual sphere “COVID‑19 pandemic”. The relevance of the study is explained by the increased attention to the influence of coronavirus on linguistic processes, including the emergence of common language and occasional innovations, which are not only of scientific interest but also of social importance. The investigation attempts to analyze ways to enrich modern English with coronavirus language units on the examples of neologisms selected from English-language sites and online publications of the British and American press. By neologisms are meant new words that are fixed in the language and created by the act of nomination, may appear to denote new concepts, or to denote in a new way already existing concepts. The study of practical material proves that the increase in the vocabulary of the English language is mainly due to changes in the meaning of existing concepts and word formation. In addition, it was found that the neologisms of the COVID‑19 pandemic are dominated by those formed by compounding and blending, while the most productive components for the newly formed blend words are coronavirus/corona, COVID, quarantine, lockdown. Recently, there is a tendency to increase the lexical units-blends, and the method of word-blending is moving from the category of secondary to the category of basic. Pandemic blends (contaminants) not only name new concepts and realities in a concise form, but also perform an emotional function, as a result of which innovations often receive a negative connotative meaning due to a disapproving emotional attitude to the pandemic as such. Note that the proposed article does not claim to be exhaustive, as the COVID‑19 pandemic is still ongoing, which causes the daily evolution of new words.