OCCASIONAL WORDS AS A LINGUISTIC PHENOMENON

INTERNATIONALSCIENCES, EDUCATION AND NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 10 | 2025 https://internationalsciences.org/ | Social Sciences and Humanities | December, 2025 163 DOI: https://10.5281/zenodo.17968389 OCCASIONAL WORDS AS A LINGUISTIC PHENOMENON Мutallapova Elena Ruslanovna Teacher at Mamun university E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT The present article examines occasionalisms as a dynamic mechanism of lexical innovation in modern language use. Focusing on their structural, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics, the study analyzes how such formations emerge and function across diverse communicative contexts. Particular attention is paid to the role of creative word-formation strategies and their interaction with sociocultural conditions shaping contemporary discourse. The research demonstrates that occasionalisms serve not only to name new or nuanced concepts but also to convey evaluation, individuality, and stylistic markedness. The findings highlight the significance of occasional lexical formations as indicators of ongoing linguistic change and as reflections of speakers’ creative engagement with language. Keywords: occasional words, language, charasteristics, lexical formation, individuality. INTRODUCTION Occasionalisms are a long-standing occurrence in the language system, but there has been a discernible intensification of their production processes during the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Fiction, journalism, mass media, Internet discourse, and colloquial speech are only a few of the domains in which sporadic formations operate, as well as the variety of word-formation models. Numerous linguistic and extralinguistic elements contribute to this tendency. These include the urge to enhance the expressive and emotional intensity of an utterance, the author's drive for individual self-expression, and the need to highlight a personal assessment of what is being expressed. THE DEFINITION OF THE CONCEPT OF OCCASIONALISM There are certain differences among scholars in defining the concept of occasionalism. This phenomenon was first examined in the work of N. I. Feldman [Feldman 1957], who introduced the term into scholarly use and identified the main features of occasional words as follows: INTERNATIONALSCIENCES, EDUCATION AND NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 10 | 2025 https://internationalsciences.org/ | Social Sciences and Humanities | December, 2025 164 1. constant novelty; 2. derivational character; 3. non-integration into the language system; 4. attribution to a specific author; 5. close connection with the context; 6. special expressiveness and attachment to a particular communicative situation. Later, V. N. Lopatin (1973) refined the conceptual framework by distinguishing between individual words, one-time neologisms, and general neologisms, highlighting the ephemeral, system-independent nature of occasionalisms, which contrasts with more conventional neologisms that may gradually enter standard language usage. L. P. Namitokova (1986) extended this research to literary contexts, examining the ways in which occasionalisms function as stylistic devices, enhancing expressiveness, emotional impact, or humor in artistic texts. This distinction highlights the spectrum of authorial creativity, ranging from words that could be understood by a wider audience to those whose meaning is entirely confined to a specific textual or situational context. In reference to occasionalisms, other designations have also been used. For example, they have been referred to as individual words, one-time neologisms, selfmade words, poetic neologisms, stylistic neologisms, createmes, and others [Feldman 1957, p. 66; Lopatin 1973, pp. 63–64; Namitokova 1986, pp. 18–19; Shakhovsky 2016]. Such a diversity of terms is explained by scholars’ attempts to emphasize those features of these words that they consider most significant. The term occasionalism (from Latin occasio – “chance, occasion”) appears to be the most appropriate, as it highlights the spontaneity and incidental nature of the formation of such words. TWO LEVELS OF OCCASIONALISMS In contemporary studies, A. V. Shakhovsky (2016) proposed a modern classification that differentiates between more usual (usuable) occasionalisms – relatively transparent, contextually less bound, and occasionally reusable – and proper (pure) occasionalisms, which are highly individual, context-dependent, and designed for a single communicative or artistic effect. More usual (usuable) occasionalisms are words that originated as occasionalisms but are formed according to familiar word-formation patterns; are relatively easy to understand without extensive context; can be reused by different authors and sometimes lie on the border between an occasionalism and a neologism. Such words appear “almost normal” within the language and may eventually enter general usage. INTERNATIONALSCIENCES, EDUCATION AND NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 10 | 2025 https://internationalsciences.org/ | Social Sciences and Humanities | December, 2025 165 For example: a poet coins the word moonlitness to describe the quality of being lit by the moon. The derivation is transparent (moon + lit + -ness), so readers can understand it immediately, even without the full context. Proper (pure) occasionalisms are unique, author-specific creations that are created once for a particular situation; are tightly bound to the context; often have heightened expressiveness; are difficult or impossible to understand outside the original context; are not intended to enter the standard language system. For example: in a novel, an author invents whisperstorm to describe a sudden burst of whispered gossip. Without the story’s context, the meaning is unclear; the word exists solely as a creative expression. CHARACTERISTICS OF OCCASIONAL WORDS A. G. Likov distinguishes nine features characteristic of occasional words. These features include: 1) speech specificity; 2) single use; 3) non-acceptance into the language system; 4) formation on the basis of word-formation processes; 5) abnormality or deviation from conventional norms; 6) expressiveness; 7) nominative function; 8) synchronic–diachronic ambiguity; and 9) individuality or authorial distinctiveness. Likov emphasizes that speech specificity is the central feature of occasional words, stating that “all other signs serve only for the clear reflection of this common sign in particular”. This means that occasional words are inherently contextdependent and tied to the act of speech, emerging as spontaneous, creative lexical units designed for immediate communicative or stylistic purposes. Each of the other features elaborates on how occasionalisms function in language. The single-use property underscores the uniqueness of these words, which are typically created for one specific context and often do not recur. Their non-acceptance reflects the fact that they remain outside the standard language system, contrasting with neologisms that may eventually gain wider recognition. The word-formation basis indicates that while occasionalisms rely on familiar morphological and derivational patterns, they often combine these elements in novel or unpredictable ways. Abnormality highlights their deviation from conventional norms, making them stylistically marked or striking. Expressiveness and nominative function underline the communicative and referential role of occasionalisms, as they often convey subtle nuances, emotions, or metaphoric meaning. Synchronic–diachronic ambiguity refers to the difficulty of situating these words temporally within language development – they may appear timeless, yet are tied to the immediate speech context. Finally, individuality marks the strong authorial imprint, as these words reflect the unique creativity and linguistic intuition of their creator. Occasionalisms can be used to increase the impact of the text on the reader, disrupt the habitual automatism of linguistic perception, and draw the addressee's attention to INTERNATIONALSCIENCES, EDUCATION AND NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 10 | 2025 https://internationalsciences.org/ | Social Sciences and Humanities | December, 2025 166 the word's meaning. They are distinguished by strong stylistic marking, an unusual form, and heightened imagery. In contrast to standard neologisms, occasionalisms typically serve an expressive and evaluative purpose rather than a nominative one. They are designed to express the author's subjective, emotional, and personal attitude toward what is being described rather than to signify novel objects or phenomena of objective reality. Language play, which gives the text uniqueness and inventiveness and aids in the development of a distinct authorial style, is another significant catalyst for the genesis of occasionalisms. As a result, occasionalisms serve as an important tool for artistic and communicative expressiveness, expressing both the speakers' creative potential and the dynamics of the contemporary language. One characteristic of occasionalisms is that their word-formation aspect must be described in inseparable unity with the semantic one. This is because it is impossible to accurately identify an occasionalism's word-formation type and the word-formation formants used to create the new occasional word without knowing its meaning. Occasionalisms are words that are generated in speech; in the absence of the proper context, they may be ambiguous both from a word-formation viewpoint and in terms of meaning. CONCLUSION Occasionalisms represent a unique and highly expressive layer of the lexicon, distinguished by their spontaneity, contextual dependence, and strong authorial imprint. The analysis of these words demonstrates that their formation is not arbitrary but follows recognizable word-formation mechanisms – such as affixation, compounding, conversion, semantic shift, clipping, and phonetic or graphic innovations – while simultaneously reflecting the creative and stylistic intentions of the speaker or author. The distinction between more usual occasionalisms, which are relatively transparent and sometimes reusable, and proper occasionalisms, which are unique and tightly bound to specific contexts, highlights the spectrum of linguistic innovation and the interplay between conventionality and creativity. The theoretical frameworks provided by N. I. Feldman, V. N. Lopatin, L. P. Namitokova, A. V. Shakhovsky, and A. G. Likov allow for a comprehensive understanding of the formal, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics of occasionalisms. These studies underscore the importance of considering both the structural and functional aspects of such words, as their meaning, expressiveness, and communicative impact are inseparable from the contexts in which they arise. In sum, occasionalisms provide a valuable lens for exploring lexical creativity, stylistic expressiveness, and the dynamic interaction between language norms and individual innovation. Their study contributes not only to lexicology and stylistics but INTERNATIONALSCIENCES, EDUCATION AND NEW LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES VOLUME 2 | ISSUE 10 | 2025 https://internationalsciences.org/ | Social Sciences and Humanities | December, 2025 167 also to broader insights into language evolution, the limits of word-formation productivity, and the ways in which authors manipulate linguistic resources to achieve specific communicative or aesthetic effects. REFERENCES: 1. Feldman 1957 – Feldman N.I. (1957) Occasional words and lexicography. Voprosy Jazykoznanija = Topics in the Study of Language, no. 4, pp. 64–73. 2. Shakhovskiy 2016 – Shakhovsky V.I. (2016) Kreatems in Russians’s language consciousness model. Journal of Psycholinguistics, no. 28, pp. 324–333. 3. Lopatin 1973 – Lopatin V.V. (1973) Birth of the word: neologisms and occasional word formations. Мoscow: Nauka, 152 p. 4. Namitokova 1986 – Namitokova R.Yu. (1986) Author’s neologisms: word-formation aspect. Rostov-on-Don: Izdatel’stvo Rostovskogo universiteta, 156 p 5. Popova 2007 – Popova T.V. (2007) Graphoderivation in the Russian word formation of the late XX – early XXI century. In: Russian language: historical destinies and present: 3rd International congress of Russian language researchers: proceedings and materials (Мoscow, March 2007). Мoscow: Maks Press, pp. 230–231