Borys D. Slang Neologisms in the English Language of the Early 21st Century: Structure and Semantics

The paper is concerned with the formation of slang neologisms in the English language of the early 21st century that are grouped according to their structure and semantics into neoforms with novelty of the signifier, neosemants with novelty of the signified and neoformosemants resulting from alteration of both the signifier and the signified. Slang neoforms are created by means of rhyming substitution, initial abbreviation, clipping, phonetic mimicry, suffixed clipping and ellipsis. Neosemants are formed by virtue of metaphor, metonymy, metaphtonymy, semantic extension / restriction and amelioration / pejoration. The sources of slang neoformosemants include derivation based on affixation, conversion, blending, reduplication as well as regressive derivation, and borrowing.