This thesis presents a corpus linguistic research on lexical creations in German in the period between the 1990s and the second half of the 2010s as well as their translatability into Croatian. The research is based on the following underlying hypotheses: 1) The most common parts of speech among lexical creations are nouns; 2) All lexical creations, neologisms and nonce words, are coined by the same mechanisms; 3) The most common method of making lexical creations is word-building; 4) German lexical creations are usually translated into Croatian by combining two or more techniques of translating culture-specific items. The aim of the research is to describe recent tendencies in the word-building of lexical creations in the German language, to emphasize the importance of nonce words when analyzing lexical creations and to outline possible techniques for translating German lexical innovations into Croatian. Lexical creations are the result of changes a language undergoes on a nearly daily basis, attracting considerable attention from scholars and the general public. On the one hand, lexical creations emerge as a direct response to the need to refer to new concepts and phenomena that must be designated, while on the other hand, they reflect the speaker's desire for expressive communication. Thus, lexical creations are necessarily linked to a particular language community at a given point in time and to the innovativeness of their authors, i.e. the context in which they emerged. Lexical creations are a genuinely interesting linguistic topic addressed by a number of linguistic disciplines, such as lexicology, lexicography, morphology, diachronic semantics, contact linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics and stylistics. The role of language policy must not be neglected, since lexical creations can at the same time be a result of the susceptibility of a language to the influence of other languages, but also a result of linguistic purism. In this thesis, the term “lexical creations” is considered to be the superordinate of the terms “neologisms” and “nonce words”. Reference sources in linguistics mostly refer to “neologisms”, whereas “nonce words” are either not mentioned at all, or are not considered relevant, or are referred to as “neologisms” in a broader sense of the term. The thesis opens with a theoretical framework which identifies lexical creations as a phenomenon of linguistic change, emphasizing their essence: the necessity to meet the communication and cognitive needs of the members of a particular language community (Schippan 2002). We will analyze the motivation underlying the creation of lexical creations, which can be extralinguistic or intralinguistic (e.g. Fleischer 1987, Kinne 1998, MuhvićDimanovski 2005, Steffens 2010). We will also provide a possible classification of the mechanisms by which lexical creations are created, the most prominent of which are wordbuilding, borrowing, creation of multiword expressions, and semantic change (e.g., MuhvićDimanovski 2005; Mihaljević and Ramadanović 2006; Elsen 2011; Fleischer and Barz 2012). The term “rječotvorje“ - “word-formation” is adopted from Tafra and Košutar (2009) and Marković (2013), as the superordinate of all mechanisms by which lexical creations are coined. The term “tvorba”-“ (word-)formation”, which in Croatian linguistic reference sources mainly refers to compounding and derivation, is replaced by the term “rječogradba”- “word-building” adopted from Marković (2013), as it corresponds with the German term “Wortbildung”. Since the thesis focuses on lexical creations in German, a historical overview of approaches to lexical creations in the German-speaking area will be provided first (e.g. von Polenz 1999, Muhr 2002, Muhvić-Dimanovski 2005). Subsequently, current research projects on collecting data on lexical creations in the German-speaking area will be described (the “Neuer Wortschatz” – “The New Lexicon” Project of the Leibniz-Institute for the German Language, the “Wortwarte” Project, the Duden Dictionary and its lexical creations, as well as the “Wort des Jahres” – “Word of the Year” Project by the Association for the German Language). The most important types of classification of lexical innovations (Heller et al. 1988; Kinne 1998; Holz 2009) will be presented, thus identifying the two basic types of lexical creations: neologisms and nonce words. Furthermore, we will provide criteria for determining neologisms (e.g., Kinne 1998, Muhvić-Dimanovski 2005, Holz 2009, Steffens 2010), which for the most part emphasize the “neo-new“ feature, although this may often be interpreted differently (e.g., Teubert 1998, Barz 1998, Muhvić-Dimanovski 2005, Milković 2010). Based on these criteria, neologisms are further defined as neologisms in a broader (e.g. Jesenšek 1995, Muhvić-Dimanovski 2005, Lemnitzer 2010, Elsen 2011) and in a narrower sense (e.g. Kinne 1998, Herberg 2002, Steffens 2010). In the broader sense, neologisms include nonce words, while this is not the case with neologisms in the narrower sense of the term. This thesis adopts Herberg's definition of neologism (2002) as a lexical unit or a meaning which arises in a certain phase of language development of a speech community, spreads, is generally accepted as linguistic norm and during this developmental stadium is perceived as new by the majority of language users. Neologisms are further classified mostly into “new lexemes” and “new meanings”. Of particular interest to us is the classification proposed by Steffens (2010), according to which new lexemes are divided into new native words, loanwords and multiword expressions, and new meanings. The same methodology is used in this thesis to classify neologisms and nonce words. We believe that nonce words should be studied separately from neologisms since they are ‒ precisely due to their temporary character, i.e. the fact that they have been created for a single particular occasion ‒ an indicator of the most recent word-building tendencies in a language (cf. Štebih Golub 2016). Since they are often determined with respect to neologisms, they are regarded as non-lexicalized lexical units (e.g. Fleischer and Barz 2012). However, they mostly overlap in their functions (e.g. Tomášiková 2008, Wanzeck 2010, Elsen 2011). Based on some previous definitions (e.g. Barz et al. 2007, Tomášiková 2008, Bagić 2012, Štebih Golub 2012, Lewis and Štebih Golub 2014, Dressler, Hannesschläger and Tumfart 2018), nonce words are defined in this thesis as a “new word” or a “new meaning of an already existing word”, arising in a particular situation to meet the specific communication needs, such as filling a lexical gap or making a point, while not entering the general linguistic usage and having very few verifications. The theoretical framework of the thesis dedicated to lexical creations in German focuses on four basic methods of creating new words: word-building (rječogradba), borrowing, creation of multiword expressions, and semantic change. Insights into word-building mechanisms as seen by Croatian linguists (e.g. Samardžija 1995; Babić 2002; Barić et al. 2003; Mihaljević and Ramadanović 2006), as well as from the perspective of German linguists will be provided (e.g. Bußmann 2002, Duden Grammar 2005, Eisenberg 2006). The classification of wordbuilding processes adopted in this thesis is based on that provided by Marković (2013) and Fleischer and Barz (2012), and the results of these processes will be designated as “coinages” (novokovanice). Coinages include lexical units consisting of both German components and combinations of German and foreign components (hybrid forms), whereby emphasizing the strong connection between word-building and meaning, i.e. the morphosemantic approach (e.g. Raffaelli 2015). An overview of theoretical approaches to borrowing (e.g. Muljačić 1968, Muhvić-Dimanovski 1992, Piškorec 2005, Turk 2013) will be provided, with special reference to loanwords from English, so-called anglicisms, which account for the majority of loanwords among lexical creations in German. The importance of pseudo-loanwords, in German mostly pseudo-anglicisms, will also be highlighted. Morphological and orthographic adaptations of loanwords to the German paradigm will be discussed (Yang 1990; Onysko 2007). Internationalisms as a special group of loanwords will be identified (Frančić, Hudeček and Mihaljević 2005, Muhvić-Dimanovski 2006, Pöllmann 2012). When studying multiword expressions based on their idiomatic features or semantic transformation, a distinction between phrasemes and fixed phrases will be introduced (e.g. Fleischer 1997, Fink-Arsovski 2002, Silić and Pranjković 2005, Donalies 2009, Barčot 2017, Parizovska and Stanojević 2018, Novoselec 2019). Semantic changes will be studied with respect to their causes, mechanisms, and consequences (e.g. Schippan 2002, Samardžija 2002, Raffaelli 2009, Kuna and Mikić 2012). Under the superordinate term “new meaning”, two categories of words will be differentiated: a “word with a new meaning” (cf. Samardžija 2002) defined as a lexical unit that acquired a new meaning without being influenced by a foreign language, and a “semantic loan”, defined as a native word or an already established loanword whose semantic shift came about under the influence of a given foreign word. The theoretical framework of the thesis dedicated to the translation of lexical creations will point to the need to redefine lexical creations in the translatological sense (e.g. Gataullin 2000/2001, Schüler 2006, Rolek 2019). Emphasis will be put on the necessity to translate these creations as culture-specific items since they are a reflection of a particular culture, including global culture. Several taxonomies of translation techniques for culture-specific items (e.g., Ivir 1987, Pedersen 2007, Pavlović 2015) will be provided. The most significant ones for this thesis are those proposed by Veselica Majhut (2012) and Schüler (2006). The presentation of the corpus research will be preceded by defining the basic terms used throughout this thesis to describe the corpus, the methodology and the entire analysis. The corpus comprises 3 061 references from the German-Croatian Dictionary of Lexical Creations (Ančić et al. 2015) and consists of 1 570 neologisms and 1 491 nonce words. Neologisms originate from an online edition of the Dictionary of Neologisms of the Leibniz-Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, while nonce words were taken from the Wortwarte Project. The analysis consists of two sections: analysis of the German part of the corpus, i.e. German lexical creations, and analysis of the Croatian part of the corpus, i.e. their Croatian translation equivalents. Each type of lexical creations requires a specific approach and a specific analysis, which sometimes does not provide straightforward, unambiguous answers. The analysis of German lexical creations is classified with respect to the mechanism of creation. The first group consists of new words (coinages) (1 920 of them), further divided into free or potentially free morphs or simplexes, and those formed by a particular wordbuilding process (derivation, compounding, blending, conversion, shortening, clipping/truncation and reduplication). Morphologically, the predominant group of lexical creations analyzed are nouns, while the most common word-building process is compounding. The results of the analysis of neologisms and nonce words were compared. The second group are loanwords (786 of them), analyzed with respect to their morphological adaptation. Again, the predominant group of lexical creations are nouns which are analyzed in terms of gender determination. Pseudo-loanwords are analyzed according to the same criteria. The results of the analysis of neologisms and nonce words are compared for this group too. Internationalisms (53 entries), mostly nonce words, are identified and analyzed as a separate group of loanwords and listed in their German, English, French and Croatian forms whenever possible. The third group studied are multiword expressions (81 entries), exclusively neologisms. There is also a number of phrasemes analyzed by type. The fourth group is composed of “new meanings”, which are classified as “words with a new meaning” and “semantic loans”. In this group of 137 neologisms, only one nonce word has been identified. The analysis of the Croatian part of the corpus was conducted with respect to the type of lexical creation (new words/coinages, loanwords, multiword expressions and new meanings) resulting from a specific translation process. It is evident that most lexical creations, both neologisms and nonce words, are translated by combining various translation techniques. The results of the research confirm the original hypotheses, stressing the importance of exploring lexical creations in view of their presence in written and spoken language. On the one hand, lexical creations are the subject of research of different linguistic disciplines, which, each from their own perspective, highlight the specific features of vocabulary enrichment. On the other hand, if viewed as culture-specific items, lexical creations may present an interesting challenge for translation studies, primarily due to their novelty and cultural embeddedness. The analysis of lexical creations, with special reference to their formation and translatability, provides new insights into the possibilities of lexical enrichment in both the native and foreign languages. Although this doctoral thesis is not based on a representative sample and does not aim at presenting the most recent lexical creations in German, we believe that it provides an innovative approach to this lexical phenomenon. Therefore, it may contribute to the systematization of Croatian terminology in this area and could serve as impetus for further research.