Introduction I. Chapter. The theory of word formation

Conclusion
Not surprisingly, these days many new words entering the world languages come from other cultures, as can be seen in Spanish which is integrating and adapting a high number of words coming from English. 4.1.4. Conversion in the OED during 2020 Conversion is the fourth source of new words during 2020 with 52 words. As stated by Carter and McCarthy (2010), the most productive type of conversion is the change from nouns to verbs or from verbs to nouns and this is the case of this study. The verb LOL, used in the language of the internet, is an example of a concept formed by conversion since the noun or interrogative LOL –an initialism of laughing out loud– was already in the dictionary. All the words formed by conversion, as expected, have a form already included in the OED with a different category. The OED labelled those words that have its origin in a proper noun as words coming from proper nouns. Nevertheless, in this analysis, these words are going to be classified as conversion since Brinton and Brinton (2010) and Plag (2003) put forward that conversion also includes these terms. This is the case of the verb Zoom or zoom, first attested in Twitter in 2014, which comes from the proper name Zoom and means to video-chat using the Zoom application. 34 It is curious that in section 4 none of the articles and different sources consulted gave much importance to the process of conversion, and this does not really agree with my study where conversion is essential for the formation of new words. Thus, it is quite easy to form words via conversion since no change is needed to have a new term. Ease is a key point in the formation of new words and conversion is a simple and practical word-formation process. 4.1.5. Blending in the OED during 2020 30 words were formed by blending. As was mentioned in the overview, there are different patterns for the formation of blends. In this study, the most productive ones are, in this order: the first base remains unchanged and the second base keeps the final part; the first part of the first base is kept and the second base is kept in a whole; finally, the beginning of the first base and the final part of the second base remain. Most of them are formed by a noun + noun, the same as compound nouns. Shero is formed by blending under the criteria that I am using to classify these 712 words; however, the OED classifies it as compounding. Shero is a colloquial term that combines she and hero and is a synonym for heroine. Athleisure is formed by the blending of athletic, an adjective, and leisure, a noun, and is used to refer to a type of clothing that is “casual, comfortable […] designed to be suitable for both exercise and everyday wear”. Another interesting word formed by blending is Jewfro referring to the characteristic hair of a Jewish. This word is considered by the OED as a variant or alteration of another lexical item, in particular, from the word afro after Jew; nevertheless, according to the explanation of the first section, this word is a blending of Jew and afro10. It is worth stating that only over a 10 Of the 712 words, 22 are variants of another lexical item according to the OED. In this paper, this label was eliminated and these words were included under different labels: some of them are blending –adorkable, Kollywood and Segway–, others compounding, conversion, clipping or affixation. Some of them are words of unknown or uncertain origin as I was not able to classify them under any other label.