Aproximación teórico-práctica al procesamiento lingüístico de neologismos léxicos

Abstract

The recognition of neologisms can be analysed through lexical decision tasks that function as a special kind of pseudo-word, whose effects on the accessing process are very different from those shown by units considered real words. In the case of formal neology, the phonological sequence of these units does not exist as such in the lexicon. In the case of semantic neology, although the units are phonologically present in the lexicon, they have meanings that do not appear in the series of content associated to each lexical entry in question. Thus, in this paper we deal with the linguistic processing of lexical neologisms, addressing issues such as the problem of representation of these units and the models created to explain it. Futhermore, we present an experimental study for determining the cognitive mechanisms involved in the processing of neological units and the differences between their various types. This approach allows us to note a series of experimental effects that help characterise this phenomenon from the psycholinguistic perspective. © 2013 PUCV, Chile.