Inland nautical terms. From Río de la Plata to Mexico
Authors
Juan Antonio Frago Gracia
Departamento de Lingüística General e Hispánica, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Zaragoza, Pedro Cerbuna 12, 50009 Zaragoza
Nautical terms used to designate realities and activities others than those conveyed by their technical use is one of the peculiarities which make American Spanish different from Peninsular Spanish. The study of these terms is by its own right of special dialectological and historical interest if we attend to the light it may shed to the understanding of the process by which these words of European origin adapted themselves semantically to the New World's realities. In this particular case, the nautical terms underwent semantic extensions to designate everyday realities others than those from their original nautical semantic fi eld. A great deal of the semantic changes undergone by these words is often associated to the maritime navigation. Nonetheless, the importance of the great rivers of the Continent as transit routes within its vast territories suggest that fl uvial navigation must also be considered as a relevant determinant in the process. In these circumstances, the proper study of this sector of the lexicon demands from current lexicography a founded documentary approach that would involve a careful consideration of both the social and geographic dimensions of the issue. Such an approach will show that the lexical and semantic phenomenon in question is not exclusive to the American Spanish of coastal cities but a characteristic common to the American Spanish of inland territories as well, regardless of the fact that some of the ‘marinerismos' may have become of common or widespread use in the Continent and others peculiar only to a restricted area.
Keywords:
Spanish American lexicon, nautical terms, linguistic geography, documentary basis of dialectology and historical linguistics
Frago Gracia, J. A. (2008). Inland nautical terms. From Río de la Plata to Mexico. Boletín De Filología, 43(1), Pág. 63 – 82. Retrieved from https://boletinfilologia.uchile.cl/index.php/BDF/article/view/18045
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