Abstract
While a language that is no longer learned as a mother tongue lives on as a fixed language for widespread intellectual use in a society, it easily finds strategies to name new things (just like living languages). For Latin, this condition is well-known and studied in the Middle Ages. But what happens when a fixed language retires to ever fewer social island niches, as happened with Latin from the 19th century onward? Small samples of word formation from three areas are analysed to approach this question: one composed of four 19th century doctoral theses, one of a 20th century Jesuit philosophy textbook, and one made up of today’s Latin Vicipaedia. Previously unattested words are sought and compared with the word formation rules of contemporary Ciceronian Antibarbarus text-books. It becomes apparent that a pragmatic approach, which, however, often violates the Antibarbarus rules, made Latin communication easily possible, even in completely new subject areas. Indeed, such Latin communication is still successfully practiced to a substantial extent today. Greek word components, new compounds, and suffix formations are typically used to form the new words.
Roelli, Philipp