271:'s "Wug test", in which children were presented with a novel object, called a wug, and then shown multiple instances of the object and asked to complete a sentence that elicits a plural form—e.g., "This is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two...?" The use of the plural form "wugs" by the children suggests that they have applied a plural rule to the form, and that this knowledge is not specific to prior experience with the word but applies to most English nouns, whether familiar or novel.
61:, created for a single occasion or utterance but not otherwise understood or recognized as a word in a given language. Nonce words have a variety of functions and are most commonly used for humor, poetry, children's literature, linguistic experiments, psychological studies, and medical diagnoses, or they arise by accident.
266:
in children, because they allow researchers to test how children treat words of which they have no prior knowledge. This permits inferences about the default assumptions children make about new word meanings, syntactic structure, etc. "Wug" is among the earliest known nonce words used in language
282:
used "blicket", "stad", "mell", "coodle", "doff", "tannin", "fitch", and "tulver" as nonce words when testing to see if children's knowledge of the distinction between non-solid substances and solid objects preceded or followed their knowledge of the distinction between
98:. Such invented words are used by psychology and linguistics researchers and educators as tools to assess a learner's phonetic decoding ability, and the ability to infer the (hypothetical) meaning of a nonsense word from context is used to test for
317:, which he understood to mean a water spillage between a puddle and a flood, invented by the speaker because no suitable word existed. Crystal speculated in 1995 that it might enter the English language if it proved popular.
226:(words, often stunt words, explicitly coined in the absence of any relevant dictionary word). Other types of misinterpretations or humorous re-wordings can also be nonce words, as may occur in
64:
Some nonce words have a meaning at their inception or gradually acquire a fixed meaning inferred from context and use, but if they eventually become an established part of the language (
209:: a nonce word intentionally coined to demonstrate the creator's cleverness or elicit an emotional reaction, such as admiration or laughter (as often noted in the works of
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199:: a nonce word that has achieved repeated usage, perhaps even by a small group but not beyond that (an intermediate step towards a
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of a particular language and is therefore pronounceable, feeling to native speakers like a possible word (for example, in
English,
521:
114:
128:, which are usually defined as words relatively recently accepted into a language's vocabulary; other analyses do not.
513:
339:
119:
242:, etc. Furthermore, meaningless nonce words can occur unintentionally or spontaneously, for instance through
900:
839:
778:"Ontological categories guide young children's inductions of word meaning: Object terms and substance terms"
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for instance were invented by researchers to be used in child language testing. Nonsense words often share
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31:
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68:), they stop being nonce words. Other nonce words may be essentially meaningless and disposable (
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is a nonword); thus, pseudowords follow a language's phonetic rules but have no meaning
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Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual
Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
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are used to demonstrate a connection between the sound of a word and its meaning.
94:, which make no sense but can still be pronounced in accordance with a language's
648:
Analogy in Word-formation : a Study of
English Neologisms and Occasionalisms
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Many types of other words can also be meaningful nonce words, as is true of most
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A variety of more specific concepts used by scholars falls under the umbrella of
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343:, is now used by many to mean "deeply and intuitively understand". The poem "
17:
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200:
125:
743:
Lise Menn; Nan
Bernstein Ratner (2000). "In the Beginning Was the Wug". In
539:(4th Edition). Oxford and Cambridge (Mass., USA): Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
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153:: a nonsense word that is not even pronounceable in a particular language
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The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the
Complex
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213:: "Sometimes I am quite certain there's a Jertain in the curtain")
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of real or fictional entities sometimes originate as nonce words.
776:
Soja, Nancy N.; Carey, Susan; Spelke, Elizabeth S. (1991-02-01).
732:. Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. 3 April 2019.
369:("three quarks for Muster Mark") as a nonce word; the physicist
329:
231:
188:
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729:
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Converging
Methods for Understanding Reading and Dyslexia
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Some analyses consider nonce words to fall broadly under
72:), but they are useful for exactly that reason—the words
113:" (i.e., for the time being, or this once), coming from
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similarity with (meaningful) words, as is the case with
835:
705:"DIBELS Nonsense Word Fluency, University of Oregon"
594:
Early
Reading Assessment: A Practitioner's Handbook
303:titled "Nonce Words" is included in his collection
267:learning studies, and is best known for its use in
506:The Cambridge Encyclopedia of The English Language
109:The term is used because such a word is created "
564:Raymond M. Klein; Patricia A. McMullen (1999).
140:, of which overlap is also sometimes possible:
755:. Lawrence Erlbaum associates. pp. 1–26.
183:: a nonce word authoritatively described in a
651:. Berlin/Boston, GERMANY: De Gruyter Mouton.
8:
262:Nonce words are sometimes used to study the
531:
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359:, have entered into common use. The novel
537:A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics
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499:
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187:that turns out to have originated from a
161:: a nonsense word that still follows the
753:Methods for Studying Language Production
683:. eBook edition. London & New York:
624:. Oxford University Press. p. 596.
347:" is full of nonce words, of which two,
467:
830:
828:
681:The Routledge Linguistics Encyclopedia
7:
27:Lexeme created for a single occasion
147:: a nonce word that is meaningless
25:
679:Malmkjaer, Kirsten. (Ed.) (2006)
621:Neuropsychological Assessment 4e
597:. Guilford Press. p. 138.
591:Natalie Wilson Rathvon (2004).
420:Examples of nonce-word articles
230:, such as certain examples of
1:
618:Muriel Deutsch Lezak (2004).
570:. MIT Press. pp. 67–68.
480:Cambridge Dictionaries Online
794:10.1016/0010-0277(91)90051-5
373:adopted it as the name of a
258:In child development studies
811:. Faber and Faber. no. 28.
218:Similar or related concepts
922:
860:Gell-Mann, Murray (1995).
645:Mattiello, Elisa. (2017).
514:Cambridge University Press
340:Stranger in a Strange Land
29:
250:or otherwise) or through
120:Oxford English Dictionary
840:Oxford University Press
807:Heaney, Seamus (2006).
535:Crystal, David. (1997)
264:development of language
399:Metasyntactic variable
53:), or any sequence of
45:—also called an
32:Nonce (disambiguation)
191:or other simple error
169:is a pseudoword, but
749:Nan Bernstein Ratner
132:Types of nonce words
49:—is any word (
30:For other uses, see
809:District and Circle
306:District and Circle
866:Henry Holt and Co.
375:subatomic particle
875:978-0-8050-7253-2
762:978-0-8058-3033-0
658:978-3-11-055141-9
631:978-0-19-511121-7
604:978-1-57230-984-5
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906:Word coinage
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843:. Retrieved
836:"OED online"
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730:"STUNT WORD"
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709:the original
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100:brain damage
84:orthographic
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896:Nonce words
446:Protologism
436:Jabberwocky
345:Jabberwocky
289:count nouns
276:Susan Carey
236:spoonerisms
196:protologism
138:nonce words
92:pseudowords
39:linguistics
890:Categories
715:2020-04-23
687:, p. 601.
522:0521401798
486:6 November
462:References
409:Pseudoword
299:A poem by
285:mass nouns
269:Jean Berko
252:keysmashes
207:stunt word
180:ghost word
158:pseudoword
126:neologisms
66:neologisms
43:nonce word
845:17 August
782:Cognition
745:Lise Menn
685:Routledge
667:988760787
313:reported
228:word play
211:Dr. Seuss
201:neologism
751:(eds.).
551:, 2001,
456:Pompatus
451:Runcible
381:See also
224:sniglets
88:phonetic
414:Sniglet
356:galumph
350:chortle
315:fluddle
151:nonword
80:blicket
59:letters
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553:p. 388
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508:. Ed.
482:. 2011
431:Gostak
426:Foobar
278:, and
244:errors
171:bldzkg
55:sounds
51:lexeme
367:quark
365:used
320:Bouba
167:blurk
870:ISBN
847:2022
813:ISBN
757:ISBN
689:ISBN
663:OCLC
653:ISBN
626:ISBN
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572:ISBN
518:ISBN
488:2012
353:and
330:Grok
324:kiki
322:and
287:and
232:puns
189:typo
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790:doi
337:in
75:wug
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