Lexical innovation has been dealt with both in studies of second language lexical acquisition and communication, the former often trying to determine the principles that govern the acquisition of the word formation system of a language, the latter studying the application of these processes to compensate for deficiencies in interlanguage vocabulary during communication.

Both approaches are combines in the present work, which focuses on lexical innovation in the oral production of Spanish learners of L2 English. The analysis and classification of the examples of lexical innovation spotted in the corpus provides a linguistic description of the word formation system of these learners' interlanguage, by determining the frequency of application of these mechanisms as well as the influence of linguistic, contextual and individual variables. The participation of subjects of different proficiency levels in the L2 allows checking whether the principles of productivity, transparency and simplicity have any influence on the acquisition of L2 word formation. Finally, the detailed analysis of a selection of examples in context allows us to trace the psychological processes that take place during communication, and to ascertain the extent to which some contextual variables influence process selection.

2nd printing 2008.