Institutionalized

A complex word is said to be institutionalized if it exists in the language, i.e. if it recognized by speakers as word they have heard before, as opposed to complex words which have been created on the fly. Institutionalized words need not be lexicalized, i.e. have special properties not predictable from its parts and the rule by which it was created.

"It might in addition be useful to have a label for those established words which, despite their being established, still form part of a synchronically productive series, differing only from potential words in that, by being used, they have come to have a specific reference. Following Bauer 1983, I shall term such words institutionalized. Institutionalized and lexicalized are thus, by definition, complementary terms, co-hyponyms of established." (Bauer 2001: 46)

Synonym

• established
• existing

Origin

The term was apparently coined by Bauer (1983).

References

• Bauer 1983
• Bauer, Laurie. 2001. Morphological productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.