Neologisms in Revitalizing Indigenous Languages in Northeast Brazil

This paper compares neologism formation in five Indigenous languages of Northeastern Brazil that are currently undergoing revitalization or post-dormancy recovery. With a focus on the coining of nouns and numerals, the study categorizes neologisms according to morphological (e.g. compounding, derivation, borrowing) and semantic processes (e.g. extension) and assesses their distribution of these across languages of different levels of endangerment. The analysis shows that while compounding and borrowing are broadly preferred strategies, the type of borrowing and other coining strategies vary substantially and correlate with sociolinguistic history rather than typological constraints. Languages with uninterrupted transmission display neologism profiles closer to those of fully living languages, whereas languages with prolonged interruption rely more heavily on borrowed or engineered forms. These findings highlight the importance of sociolinguistic context in shaping lexical innovation in revitalized languages.