
|
There were 220 actual answers to the question (from the total of 268 responses received), and the results show a trend of semantic narrowing in progress stemming from the wider term "google". In total, 36 lexical variants were used. These variants arise by analogy from existing terms ("youggling", "me-googling", "meeping", "mearch", "ego-searching", "egosurfing", and others). There is a degree of "bobbing" up and down between the variants, until a winning variant will be selected (or potentially, altogether abandoned if the activity goes out of fashion and speakers no longer need to talk of it). This is typical of language evolution processes that we see in word formation. Interestingly, it also answers the question of how it is that languages can "speak" about everything they are required to, even when they do not have specific words for the notions in question. |

Back
to main page