Between error and new usage: recent paths of Italian words

Abstract

Semantic change, conceived as the rise of new meanings for existing words, can be studied while it happens. We present here some cases of Italian words whose recent non-canonical and in principle incorrect meanings are gaining such a high frequency also in diastratically and diaphasically high contexts, that it is no longer possible to consider them as bare errors. We will describe them by using examples from written language corpora, adding information on their frequency and proposing the causes, in the language system and in discourse contexts, that may have triggered the changes.

Keywords

• New meanings
• Neologism
• Italian Lexicon
• Bridge contexts
• Reanalysis
• Analogy
• Errors and new usage
• Semantic lightening