LEXICAL CHANGE IN ARABIC

This study deals with the lexical change in Arabic. It employs qualitative descriptive research. The focus of this study is the lexical creations in particularly nouns which aim to describe: (1) the processes of lexical creation in Arabic, (2) to explain the reasons of lexical creation in Arabic. The source of the data was Al-Munawwir dictionary.The technique of collecting data used of this study was document study and random sampling. The data were analyzed by Miles and Hubbermans data analysis. The distributor of lexical creations in this research refers to the opinion of Varshney who divided the processes into two; internal borrowings included derivations, acronyms, compounds, and coinages, and external borrowings encompass modified lexical creation, total lexical creation, and loan translation/ calque. The reasons of lexical creations were analyzed based on Katamba who explained the need, the prestige and the practicality reasons. According to the data analysis, it was found that there are totally 478 lexical creations in Al-Munawwir dictionary namely derivations; 233 (49%), acronyms; 5 (1.04%), compounds; 53 (11.08%), and coinage; 42 (8.8%). The second process is the external lexical borrowing comprises modified lexical borrowing; 106 (22.17%), total lexical borrowing; 27 (5.7%), and loan translation/ calque; 12 (2.51%). The reasons of lexical creation are the need, the prestige and the practicality included some fields such technical term, technology, place, time, culture, government, art, entertainment, family, medical term, science, building, transportation, sport, fashion, material, academy, food, drink, and animal.Thus, it implies that the lexical creations are aimed to the Arabic users able to understand to find a term for naming a new object, concept, and idea.