Neology of the Portuguese Language

Dear Colleagues,

Louis Guilbert’s works published during the 1960s and, above all, his seminal work La créativité lexicale from 1975, mark the beginning of intense research activity in the field of neology, particularly regarding the Romance languages.

The study of neology in the Portuguese language received its first impetus specially from the 1980s onwards, in Brazil and Portugal. The start of the 21st century saw a surge in studies of neology in the Portuguese language, with the publication of important works on the Portuguese spoken in Mozambique and Angola and, indirectly, through the participation of teams representing Portuguese both at the International Congresses on Neology of the Romance Languages (1st ed., 2008, Barcelona; 6th ed., 2025, Coimbra), and the NEOROM network of Romance language observatories (starting in 2005).

Building on these approximately 45 years of research into neology in the Portuguese language, this Special Issue of the Languages aims to provide an overview of the most significant recent works on neologisms in Portuguese, developed not only from the more traditional perspectives of its relationship with lexicology, morphology, semantics, lexicography and terminology, but also from other perspectives such as the relationships of neology with linguistic variation, language contact, language acquisition, discourse analysis, and language policy and planning, amongst others. Papers based on empirical research are welcome, as well as those offering theoretical and methodological discussion.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to Languages editorial office (languages@mdpi.com).

Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the special issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review. The expected timeline for the volume is as follows:

Abstract submission deadline: 30 June 2027 (400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution)
Notification of abstract acceptance: 15 July 2027
Full manuscript deadline: 30 November 2027

Dr. Margarita Correia
Dr. Rui Pereira
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• neologism
• lexicon
• language use
• synchronic variation
• diachronic variation
• vocabulary acquisition
• observatories of neology
• linguistic resources
• language planning
• standardization