Lexical innovation through translation: sociolinguistic factors[edit]
It is sometimes the case that a given author consciously avoids loan-words or the creation of neologisms (where a term is lacking in her language) and instead aims to rely more upon the existing resources of her native lexicon. This was the case in Ancient Rome, where Latin authors were often reticent to introduce foreign words from Greek (e.g. Caesar's De Analogia 1.10.4: ut tamquam scopulum, sic fugias inauditum atque insolens verbum 'and you ought to avoid a word that is strange and unfamiliar as if it were a rock'). Such attitudes, common among Roman elites, led to a preference in translation techniques against literalism or fidelity to the source (e.g. neologisms, morphological calques, etc.), and in favor of a more conceptual renovation using the existing terms of the Latin lexicon (semantic augmentation, derivation, etc.). This practice changed dramatically over time, as later Latin authors favored literal translation techniques when introducing new technical terms into the language, e.g. Boethius' technical translations of Aristotle's logical works in the early 6th century A.D.[5]
In a similar vein, while many modern languages have directly imported technological terms such as 'computer' into their lexicon (e.g. Danish, Dutch, Italian), others have avoided the English term entirely and relied on neologisms based on native morphemic material of their language or existing terms (e.g. Chinese 电脑, which literally means 'electric brain'; or Icelandic tölva—a compound of tala 'number' and völva 'prophetess').
Importance of lexical innovation in technical writing[edit]
Innovation in a given language, most particularly in the prose of specialized subjects, does not normally occur in a vacuum; that is, so-called nonce-formations and compounding predominantly arise in more literary modes, such as epic poetry or drama (tragic or comic, etc.) rather than technical prose. Instead, novel technical terms are introduced most commonly as a result of language contact, e.g. the influence of a source language on a target language (Ancient Greek on Latin, German on English, etc.). This novelty is not always formal, e.g. neologisms or loan-words, but conceptual too, augmenting the existing meaning of words in the target language so as to accommodate or include new concepts introduced exogenously into the target language's lexicon.
This phenomenon is an ancient one, proving to be decisive in the origins of Western Europe's philosophical and scientific vocabulary, for example. Many of the Ancient Greeks' original neologisms and novel meanings came to generate continual and permanent influence on Latin writers and, thence, on local languages across Europe in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.