History of the spanish lexicon and the World Wide Web: some examples

Historia del léxico español y la red global: algunos ejemplos

doxa.comunicación | 31, pp. 403-419 | 403

July-December of 2020

ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978

How to cite this article:

Chavez Fajardo, S. (2020). History of the Spanish lexicon and the World Wide Web: some examples. Doxa Comunicación, 31, pp. 403-419.

https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n31a20

Soledad Chavez Fajardo. Professor in the Department of Linguistics of the University of Chile. Teacher in the area of Historical Linguistics (Romance Linguistics, History of the Medieval and Modern Spanish Language, History of Latin American and Chilean Spanish, Judeo-Spanish) and of Spanish Lexicography. Her research focuses on linguistic historiography and historical lexicology.

University of Chile, Santiago de Chile, Chile

[email protected]

ORCID: 0000-0001-8173-8979

Abstract:

In this essay, we would like to underline the relevance of international digital media as a corpus of research that contributes to our understanding of the history of the Spanish lexicon. We present tools such as corpora and word banks, especially elaborated for the Hispanic tradition. For example, we would like to examine some research projects in Romance or Hispanic linguistics that are in the Anglo-Saxon, French or German university networks or accessible in online libraries. Particularly, in this essay, we present some cases where research in historical lexicology was complemented with data provided by the whole digital ecosystem. For this research, we will only focus on two areas of Hispanic lexicology: that of Romance etymology and that of the history of the Spanish-American lexicon.

Keywords:

Historical lexicology; etymology; Spanish language studies; Romance language studies; dictionaries.

Resumen:

Queremos mostrar en este ensayo la relevancia de los medios di-gitales internacionales como corpus de investigación para hacer historia del léxico español. Queremos presentar algunas herra-mientas como corpus y bancos de palabras, especialmente elabo-rados para la tradición hispánica. Por ejemplo, queremos trabajar con proyectos de investigación en romanística o hispanística que están en la red de universidades anglosajonas, francesas o germá-nicas. O, además, bibliotecas en línea. Justamente, en este ensayo queremos presentar algunos casos en donde la investigación en lexicología histórica se complementó con los datos que aportó el ecosistema digital total. Para esta investigación nos centraremos en dos espacios de la lexicología hispánica, solamente: el de la eti-mología romance y el de la historia del léxico español americano.

Palabras clave:

Lexicología histórica; etimología; hispanística; romanística; diccionarios.

Received: 21/07/2020 - Accepted: 24/10/2020

Recibido: 21/07/2020 - Aceptado: 24/10/2020

1. Introduction

Any investigation of a lexicon, especially regarding its history and its etymology, will always require a search for data and the collation of information, whether on paper or online. Dictionaries, monographs, studies on the subject, as well as pertinent or related bibliography, in addition to the information found on the Internet, are all fundamental sources for