Volume 136, Issue 3

The present paper addresses three particular issues in the reconstruction of the Proto-Romance lexicon, offering an insight from the field of Basque historical-etymological studies. In the evolution from Proto-Romance */ˈdɪk-t-u/ to Idio-Romance dit / dicho ‘said’, the variant * deito is not attested; the Basque word deitu ‘call, be named’, however, bears witness to the ancient existence of that form. In support of this, I offer further documental evidence of that form in a medieval Aragonese text. This paper also sheds light on the irregular vocalism of Gascon puts ‘well’, which does not show the regular evolution */ˈʊ/ > /o/. I will argue that the metathesis of a glide may have prevented that change from taking place; again, data regarding some medieval variants of Basque putzu ‘well’ will prove crucial in settling the question. In a final note, the dialectal persistence of some archaic semantic values of a Proto-Romance word, */ ˈ nɛk-e/ ‘violent death’, */ne ˈ kat-u/ ‘kill’, will be assessed with the help of the Basque evidence.

New approaches built over the past ten years make it possible to address several long-standing questions regarding Guiron le Courtois . In particular, these studies illuminate ambiguities related to the literary origins of the protagonist and of his family. Guiron’s lineage as well as that of Galeholt le Brun, his mentor, include powerful individuals; and yet these strong characters remain peripheral, seldom crossing into the orbit of the Arthurian court. Of their lives only certain segments are known, and these alternate with imprisonment and incognito chivalric adventures. The Roman de Guiron , the core narrative of the cycle, most likely drew the protagonist’s name from the tradition of Arthurian lais but reinvented from scratch his chivalric biography, playing on the ambiguity of the relations between Guiron’s family and the Bruns, the family of Galeholt. One mirrors the other, and both seem to converge towards the archaic figures of the giant and the bear, while the plot unfolds in an unusual retro-chronology, drawing the reader’s sight to their origins.

Abstract  This study aims at comparing three evaluative adverbs in contemporary French, namely étrangement , curieusement and paradoxalement , in order to contribute by means of linguistic criteria to their semantic categorization as discourse markers, as well as give account of their points of divergence. The corpus is mainly taken from literary texts, online journalism, digitalized archives from Le Monde Diplomatique , and includes some built up examples. Our study will be based on the Theory of Stereotypes, with special attention paid to the role of genericity and shared knowledge, and aims at building an explanatory model for the above mentioned adverbs. We will also point out the intervention of a criterium of semantic coherence and/or discursive coherence in their respective functions as modal expressions, as well as the role plaid in the background by one or two linguistic communities in deep structure.

The Copilaçión de algunos dichos de Séneca contains, among its translated fragments of the Tabulatio et expositio Seneca , parts corresponding to the Libro de las cuatro virtudes . This paper compares both translations with their respective Latin models to determine whether it is a reuse by Alfonso de Cartagena, or, on the contrary, we are facing two different works.

The pres. ind. paradigm of Sp. caber ‘to fit’ exhibits a synchronically irregular form in the 1st pers. sg., i.e., quepo , instead of a synchronically regular form derived from the infinitive, i.e., caber → * cabo . However, quepo is not considered at all historically irregular. Since the first historical grammar of Spanish, quepo has been understood to be a direct continuation of Lat. capiō , which apparently evolved through regular phonetic development, like pres. subj. capiam > quepa , sapiam > sepa . Nonetheless, one may question why quepo has not been replaced by * cabo in Modern Spanish given its extremely low frequency of occurrence, as forms of a language that occur infrequently are often regularized. A historical look at quepo reveals the following surprising facts: (1) Although pres. subj. quepa is attested from the earliest Old Spanish texts onward, quepo is absent from the written record throughout the Old and Medieval Spanish periods and does not appear until the end of the sixteenth century; (2) Regularized cabo served as the first person singular of the present indicative until then. The present study attempts to explain through well-established processes of historical morphology the late appearance of quepo and its continued existence in Modern Spanish.

Encapsulators are cohesive noun phrases that compress the content of discursive segments of predicative nature. Their persuasive potential has been extensively highlighted in the literature. Some studies have identified general tendencies in the use of encapsulators in thematic or rhematic positions. However, the parameters influencing the preference for thematic or rhematic encapsulators have not been specifically addressed with quantitative data. The aim of this article is to analyse those parameters in a corpus of newspaper editorials. We have selected several parameters, most of them related to their evaluative and/or persuasive potential, that might influence the use of encapsulators in the thematic-rhematic progression. Rhematic encapsulators are slightly more frequent, but we show that there are no clear correlations between each pair of parameters. Although evaluation seems to play a role (the most evaluative encapsulators tend to appear in rhematic positions), we try to show that this is mediated by many other factors that make encapsulation a less predictable type of referential expression. We also reflect on the importance of other parameters, i.e. cognitive (accessibility) and textual (genre).

Lexical innovation is a continuous creative phenomenon which evinces language vitality. In today’s Spanish, borrowing words from other languages is a fruitful innovation mechanism. In Chilean Spanish, a significant portion of lexical neology comes from English loanwords, a fact that may be attributed in part to the global, open-market model upon which the country bases its economy. In this context and because of its linguistic and cultural relevance, we established the development process of the English loanword berry / berries in Chilean Spanish. To this end, this paper presents an analysis of the sociohistorical background that gave rise to the introduction of this Anglicism in Chile. This mixed-methods research includes the analysis of texts, interviews, surveys and field study. A contrastive lexicographic description of berry and its equivalents in Spanish is provided, the role of different types of speakers —from experts to laypeople— is analyzed in relation to the incorporation of this neologism in Chilean Spanish, the occurrence of different existing denominations is examined, some neologicity indicators are analyzed, possible combinations of berry / berries with other elements are classified, and the evolution of this Anglicism in Chilean Spanish use is confirmed.

Galician-Portuguese troubadours were able to bring their compositions to a close by means of one or a series of fiindas . The fiinda can be understood as a conclusive sequence, shorter than a cobra or stanza, which is harmoniously integrated into the composition in terms of both form and content. The principles governing the textual arrangement of the various Galician-Portuguese manuscript songbooks (the medieval A , fragmentary and unfinished, and the Italian apographs B and V of the humanist period) are of considerable help in identifying these final segments in texts where they are present. However, vicissitudes in the transmission of some compositions with fiindas have occasionally led to a blurring or obscuring of these sequences, which in turn may have been an obstacle to the correct perception and identification of the textual structure of fiindas by editors of these texts.