A History of the Spanish Lexicon A Linguistic Perspective

by Dworkin, Steven N.

• ISBN13: 9780199541140
• ISBN10: 0199541140
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-07-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This history of the Spanish lexicon is written from the interacting perspectives of linguistic and cultural change and in the light of advances in the study of language contact and lexical change. The author describes the language inherited from spoken Latin in the Iberian Peninsula during six centuries of Roman occupation and examines the degree to which it imported words from the languages - of which only Basque survives - of pre-Roman Spain. He then shows how Germanic words wereimported either indirectly through Latin or Old French or directly by contact with the Visigoths. He describes the importation of Arabisms following the eighth-century Arab conquest of Spain, distinguishing those documented in medieval sources from those adopted for everyday use, many of whichsurvive in modern Spanish. He considers the influence of Old French and Old Provençal and identifies late direct and indirect borrowings from Latin, including the Italian elements taken up during the Renaissance. After outlining minor influences from languages such as Flemish, Portuguese, and Catalan, Professor Dworkin examines the effects on the lexicon of contact between Spanish and the indigenous languages of South and Central America, and the impact of contact with English. The bookis aimed at advanced students and scholars of Spanish linguistics and will interest specialists in Hispanic literary and cultural studies.

Author Biography

Steven N. Dworkin is Professor of Romance Linguistics and Linguistics at the University of Michigan. His books include Etymology and Derivational Morphology: The Genesis of Old Spanish Denominal Adjectives in -ido (Niemeyer, 1985); with David J. Billick, Lexical Studies of Medieval Spanish Texts (second edition Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1993); and, co-edited with Dieter Wanner, New approaches to Old Problems: Issues in Romance Historical Linguistic (John Benjamins, 2000). He is the author of over eighty scholarly articles, many of which deal with lexical change in Spanish.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. viii
Language abbreviations	p. x
Language contact and the history of the Spanish lexicon: General and methodological questions	p. 1
The lexical impact of the pre-Roman languages of the Iberian Peninsula	p. 18
Historical background	p. 18
The pre-Roman languages of the Iberian Peninsula	p. 19
Pre-Roman languages and Latin	p. 21
Basque and Celtic loanwords	p. 26
Selected examples	p. 29
Selected etymological controversies	p. 31
Cases of lexical rivalry	p. 38
Pre-Roman loanwords and suffixal derivation	p. 40
Modern Basque and Spanish	p. 41
Summary	p. 42
The Latin base of the Spanish lexicon	p. 44
Preliminaries	p. 44
Latin lexical items limited to Hispano- and Luso-Romance	p. 46
Etymological controversies	p. 49
Lexical survivals in Spanish, Portuguese, and Rumanian	p. 51
Lexical innovations	p. 53
Lexical diversity in Ibero-Romance	p. 58
Latin-Greek contact in the Iberian Peninsula	p. 60
Summary	p. 63
The Germanic component of the Spanish lexicon	p. 65
Historical background	p. 65
Germanic strata in the Spanish lexicon	p. 67
Gothic loanwords in Hispano-Romance	p. 70
Etymological controversies	p. 73
Lexical rivalries	p. 76
Gothic loanwords and the suffix -engo	p. 77
Flemish/Dutch, German, and Scandinavian loanwords	p. 77
Summary	p. 80
The Arabic component of the Spanish lexicon	p. 81
Preliminaries	p. 81
Quantitative considerations	p. 83
Previous scholarship	p. 85
Hispano-Arabic/Hispano-Romance language contact	p. 86
Chronological considerations	p. 89
Etymological controversies	p. 91
Lexical rivalries	p. 95
Grammatical categories of Arabisms	p. 100
Semantic issues	p. 104
Arabic-Romance hybrids	p. 106
Arabisms in al-	p. 107
Lost Arabisms	p. 108
Arabisms in modern Spanish	p. 111
Spanish Hebraisms	p. 113
Summary	p. 116
The impact of Gallo-Romance on the Spanish lexicon	p. 118
Background	p. 118
Medieval Gallicisms: Nouns, adjectives, and verbs	p. 120
Medieval Gallicisms: Function words and suffixes	p. 125
Early modern Gallicisms	p. 128
Gallicisms: Eighteenth to twentieth centuries	p. 129
Reactions against Gallicisms	p. 135
Gallicisms in New World Spanish	p. 136
Summary	p. 137
The influence of Italian on the Spanish Lexicon	p. 139
Preliminaries	p. 139
Medieval Italianisms and etymological controversies	p. 140
Italianisms in early modern Spanish	p. 143
Italianisms in New World Spanish	p. 155
Summary	p. 156
Latinisms in Spanish	p. 157
Preliminaries	p. 157
Periodization	p. 159
Early Latinisms	p. 160
Late Medieval and Renaissance Latinisms	p. 164
Form class and lexical rivalries	p. 167
Failed Latinisms	p. 176
Learnèd Hellenisms	p. 178
Summary	p. 180
Portuguese and Catalan loans in Spanish	p. 182
Lusisms	p. 182
Etymological controversies	p. 183
Phonological clues to Lusisms	p. 187
Lusisms in regional Spanish	p. 190
Catalan loanwords in Spanish: Background	p. 191
Catalanisms: Analytical problems	p. 193
Catalanisms: Form class	p. 197
Summary	p. 198
Lexical borrowings from the New World	p. 200
Background	p. 200
Reception and integration of New World borrowings	p. 203
Etymological controversies	p. 207
Vitality in contemporary European Spanish	p. 209
Summary	p. 210
Anglicisms in Spanish	p. 212
Historical background	p. 212
Earliest Anglicisms	p. 213
Anglicisms 1800-1950	p. 215
The influence of American English 1950-	p. 217
Reactions to Anglicisms	p. 219
Semantic Anglicisms and loan-translations	p. 220
Integration and derivational productivity	p. 223
Gay sex, drugs, and the Internet	p. 225
Summary	p. 228
Some final thoughts	p. 230
References	p. 238
Index	p. 271
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