Institutionalization Process in Turkish

Abstract

Institutionalization is defined as the process of bringing a new word in the society speaking the language. Nonce words are the first step of the institutionalization process. Words that appear in a language at least once in a particular context, yet are not adopted by language speakers, are called nonce formations. A nonce word is institutionalized if it becomes widespread to a certain extent. No comprehensive and detailed study exists on the process of institutionalization and the scaling of this process in the literature. To this end, this study aims to find out words which are in the process of institutionalization, to reveal how close they are to the lexicalization process, and to determine whether the word formation methods and derivational morphemes in the words in this process are parallel to the typological data by a statistical measurement applied on the frequency of use. First, words in the institutionalization process have been determined, and then in order to determine the institutionalization ratios of the words examined, the Turkish National Corpus 3.0. has been used. Institutionalization ratios are divided into three basic sets by means of a quartile analysis applied on the frequency values of the words. Q1 set with geyikle- and ebelemeç covers those that are relatively least institutionalized; Q2 covers a set moderately institutionalized such as tırcı and negzel, words; The set of Q3 covers the words that are the closest analysis value to lexicalization in the process of institutionalization, such as tırsak and terso. Of the words in the sample, 52.9% have been derived by affixation, evenly with 7.8% by borrowing, clipping, compounding and onomatopoeia. The most common derivative morphemes are -CI and -lIk, but these morphemes have not been among the words in the final stage of institutionalization.

Keywords

• lexical institutionalization
• lexicalization
• nonce formation
• derivational morpheme
• word formation