El préstamo en seis variedades geolectales del Español: Un estudio en prensa escrita

Abstract

Seeking to probe the vitality of Spanish, a general analysis of neological loanwords found in the press was made. The corpus consisted of adapted and non-adapted loanwords, classified by type and token frequency between 2003 and 2010 by the six active nodes of the Observatori de Neologia of Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Corpus collection combined manual and semiautomatic extraction, and unit classification was made according to standard protocol (Protocolo de Vaciado de Prensa Escrita del Observatori). It was possible to establish the nature of loanword adoption, frequency of use by informant, language of origin and contextual area of knowledge. Some distinctive features of use by informant and possible motivations for newspaper writers to incorporate loanwords into Spanish were also explored. It was concluded that loanwords are an important resource for lexical innovation, with non-adapted Anglicisms at the forefront. © 2012 PUCV, Chile.