Recognition as a factor in language change

Abstract

The aim of this presentation is to draw attention to an understudied cause of language change: recognition. Traditionally, mainly immanent structural causes, incomplete or imperfect intergenerational transmission, language contact, language variation and prestige have been identified as causes for language change, next to internal factors such as analogy and reanalysis. However, the analysis presented here of some non-morphemic word-formation processes shows that recognition must be added to this list of possible explanations for language change, in particular for lexical change.
The processes discussed here at length are suffix reinterpretation, clipping and (pseudo-) embellished clipping, and libfixing. Since recognition also plays a role in blending, some attention will be paid to this process, although blending is less central to language change than the other processes discussed.

At the end of this presentation, the question will also be answered what the difference is between the notion of recognition presented here and more accepted concepts such as analogy and reanalysis/reinterpretation. Suffice it here to indicate that re-recognition is a purely cognitive process, whereas analogy and reanalysis focus rather on language structure.