New verbs and dictionaries: A method for the automatic detection of neology in Spanish verbs

Abstract

The appearance of new verbs can be observed regularly, but verbs are not frequently investigated in neology, and they are difficult to detect automatically. In this study, a corpus-based method is proposed to detect Spanish verbs with a series of algorithms that analyse the morphology of regular verbs. The vocabulary was drawn from a large corpus and contrasted with a major dictionary of Spanish. Then, a series of filters were applied to distinguish between valid neologism candidates and spelling mistakes. Around 88% of the neologisms proposed by the method were correct and we estimate that the system detected 76% of the neologisms present in the corpus. This procedure can be included in the workflow of a lexicographic project as a regular part of the task, as a systematic way of collecting new verbs from the data and avoiding under-representation or bias.