Archive for Lexicalization

Calendrical semantics

June 27, 2020 @ 1:56 pm· Filed by under Lexicalization

There are a few years whose meaning everyone knows, like 1492. This song invokes 1918 (for the flu pandemic, not the end of WWI), 1930, and 1968:

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Tribes

March 10, 2015 @ 7:35 am· Filed by under Borrowing, Language and culture, Language and society, Lexicalization, Words words words

Bob Bauer writes:

Yesterday I discovered that the concept 'person who is continuously looking at or obsessively interacting with his/her smartphone or other type of electronic handheld device' has been lexicalized in Cantonese as 低頭族 dai1 tau4 zuk6 (literally, 'head-down tribe') (according to an article by Mark Sharp in the South China Morning Post).

[VHM:  See "Beware the smartphone zombies blindly wandering around Hong Kong" (3/2/15)]

Have you heard of this word?  It may have originated in Taiwan Mandarin.

"低頭族" 853,000 Ghits (on March 4, 2015)

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