Social Media Neologisms: A Borrowed Affix as a Case of Pseudo-Anglicisms

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate a novel affix prevalently and productively used in social media, which is assumed to be borrowed from English into Korean loanblens. The novel affix is composed of a prefix-like and a suffix-like elements, but it seems to be distinguished from other regular combinations of a prefix and a suffix. In analyzing the affix, we attempt to highlight its peculiarities of the affix with empirical data. First, the seemingly borrowed affix does not behave like affixes found in the donor language (English) or the recipient language (Korean) from a linguistic point of view. Both languages have circumfixation rarely available in productive word-formation processes. Second, no regular assimilation rules of Korean apply to the affix boundary, which would otherwise be mandatory to such syllable contact contexts. Last but not least, the affix form has no correspondence to the donor language, and therefore it is claimed to be derived through secretion and taken as a case of pseudo-anglicisms.