From Praiar to Jobar

Conceptual Integrations in the Creation of Verbs in Brazilian Portuguese

Abstract

This study explores linguistic-cognitive aspects in the emergence of verbal neologisms — novel lexical constructions expressed as verbs to denote actions. Our subject includes neologisms related to leisure activities such as bebemorar, canastrar, noronhar, praiar, resenhar, rolezar, turistar, brifar, and professional activities such as jobar, performar, schedular, teletrabalhar, and tradar. Our hypothesis is that the creation of these words reflects the need to blend encyclopedic knowledge into a single lexical construction, which expresses a specific action concept composed of a set of activities related to the semantic frame of an object concept, organized through conceptual blending. The research is based on Construction Grammar (Croft, 2022; Hoffmann, 2022a) and the concepts of Frame Semantics (Fillmore, 2006) and Conceptual Blending (Fauconnier & Turner, 2006). The data were collected from public profiles on social networks such as Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and YouTube, and confirmed as neologisms due to their significant absence in our reference lexicographical corpora. The analysis reveals a tendency to combine different world knowledge to create an action concept by blending at least two distinct domains contained within a common semantic frame of an object concept. The neologism praiar, for example, blends several groups of activities captured in the Leisure frame, directly involved in the locative object beach: rest activities (sunbathing, reading), aquatic activities (swimming, diving), physical activities (walking, playing sports), social activities (flirting, visiting bars), among others. These activities are cognitively evoked through sociocultural and individual knowledge.