A MORPHO-SYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL MEDIA NEOLOGISMS

Abstract

New words in the early phase of their life cycle are called neologism. Neologisms are new words expressions, innovations in language. Neologism is more linguistically defined as any word or set of expressions formed according to the productive word formation rules in English. Social media is any means, platform or activities where humans shared stories and influenced others. Social media neologisms are words coined by the use of social media networks to ease communication or to suit user groups or age groups. This study intends to find out how these words are formed and what grammatical class do they belong to and how they are used syntactically. The study reveals that most of the social media neologisms are coined through semantic extension -the word exists and is given another meaning. Others are formed through blending and affixation. Syntactically, they belong to different grammatical classes and can be correctly used in sentences.