Diccionario de galicismos prosodicos y morfologicos

Abstract

Diccionario de galicismos prosodicos y morfologicos. By Valentin Garcia Yebra. Madrid: Gredos, 1999. 319 pages. Valentin Garcia Yebra, perhaps more well-known for his work dealing with the history, theory and practice of translation, claims to be inspired by Ramon Menendez Pidal's statement that learned borrowings, or cultismos, have not been studied enough in Spanish. As a result, he focuses mainly on prosodic and morphologic Gallicisms in scientific language in his new dictionary. His purpose is to provide a reference book that might be useful to a general lay audience interested in the origins of the words they use. Additionally, he hopes to reach translators and scientists. He defines a galicismo prosodico as a word in Spanish that, based on its remote origin, should be accented in a particular way, but because of the influence from a French word, has evolved with a stress pattern resembling its French cognate. He uses the example of the word crisantemo in Spanish, which based on its remote Greek to Latin origin, should have developed as a proparoxytone with the stress on the antepenultimate syllable. However, because of the influence of the French chrysantheme, which would have been paroxytonic in Old French and is now tonic, the Spanish cognate is also paroxytonic. He defines a galicismo morfologico as a word that has altered its form or structure from that which corresponds to it etymologically because of the influence of a similar French word. He uses the example of the Spanish exilado to demonstrate his idea here. The etymologically correct form in Spanish from the Latin EXILIUM > exilio should be exiliado, which does exist in Spanish but has been in competition with exilado derived from exilado that was inspired by the French verb exiler. Garcia Yebra criticizes the Diccionario de la Real Academia Espanola because in many cases only the remote origin, that is to say, the Latin or Greek origin, of a word is presented. He argues that many words of Latin or Greek etymology entered Spanish through French, not directly through Latin, or at least were altered at some point in their history to resemble a French word, rather than following the more predictable Spanish development. He hopes that his dictionary, although not as exhaustive as he would like it to be, can fill in some of those gaps where they are related to prosodic and morphologic Gallicisms rather than to compete with the work already done with regard to these two types of Gallicisms. …