LEXICA-THANATOLOGY

This article attempts to study the linguistic and non-linguistic factors under which many words are rarely used or dead, as well as the reasons for the resurrection of dead words. Dead word samples were taken from different languages and described within their linguistic contexts, e.g. political and cultural, to explain any gaps. The results show that the gaps between words and their contexts lead to word death, concluding that; first, surviving words are due to polysemy, conversion, borrowing words, expressing multiple speakers’ intended meaning, and literature – all these linguistic factors make words more frequently used. Second, long words and abbreviations are reasons for rare usage. Third, dead words are resurrected and used to express technical terms. Finally, the loss of semantic content and the context of a word are the most common causes of word death. The originality of this topic motivates me to propose a new sub-discipline in lexicology – ‘lexicathanatology’ – to study what causes word death and survival. For further studies, lexica-thanatology may study the causes of the death of grammatical units affixations and other words that express pragmatic meaning. The results of this study will assist linguists who work in the fields of lexicology, linguistic documentary and historical and comparative linguistics. The nature of lexicathanatology can serve sociology, politics and anthropology as sub-disciplines socio-thanatology, politico-thanatology and cultural-thanatology. They study the death causes of social, cultural values and why humans amend some polices and abandoned others.