Morphological Analysis of Philippine Ecological Neologisms

Abstract

Using a qualitative-descriptive design in analyzing morphological processes and structures, the present study examines the ecological neologisms used in the Philippines. Ecological, environmental, or green neologisms are newly added lexicons used in daily ecological discourses. To appraise the study's aims to identify, define, analyze, and differentiate ecological neologisms from other neologisms as used in the Philippines, the study extracted its data from the Press Release Section website of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources from January 2022 to December 2022. A total of two hundred twenty-nine (229) articles were examined for this paper. Results reveal the presence of fourteen (14) ecological neologisms in the articles: ecological integrity, urban park, climate finance, green job, green city, ecoexpert, ecofrontliner, ecodefender, climate agenda, green assessment, ecoyouth, river ranger, ecohero, and ecoinspector. Further, these neologisms are borrowed from the English vocabulary and are all classified as nouns, and are mainly used to name individuals who engage in environmental initiatives in the Philippines. Moreover, these ecological neologisms are formed through compounding and blending, following the general rule of structuring words in Standard English.