Southwestern Plant Names from Spanish

Abstract

OF ALL THE categories in which American English has adopted words from Spanish that of common names for plants presents the greatest number of borrowings. The loan words vary in currency from apparent nonce uses to established parts of the vocabulary of American English. Thus, the list of borrowed plant names includes words which are virtually the only common names for the plants (mesquite, piiron or pinyon), words which are the most common names although English equivalents also exist (chamiso, cholla), words which compete about evenly with English names (sahuaro, giant cactus; garbanzo, chickpea), words which are used, but less than their English equivalents (greasewood, chico; cat's claw, uja de gato), and still others that appear to be nonce uses (chamunque, toroso). It may be objected that apparent nonce uses and borrowings which have attained only a slight currency should not be considered loan words. It seems unreasonable, however, that studies of loan words so often concern themselves only with words which have become established parts of the borrowing language and, furthermore, that these studies are usually concerned only with linguistic analysis of borrowings, the degrees and kinds of morphemic, phonetic, and semantic substitution or importation. There is another kind of study of loan words that is useful, but somewhat neglected, that of topical analysis and the cultural analysis which may follow. Without requiring that one's examples fit a strict definition of the term loan word or that they meet minimum standards of frequency of usage, one can learn a great deal about the nature of the cultural relationship between two or more language groups. Topical analysis of loan words collected without restriction from many and varied sources relating to a given geographical area can serve to outline the milieu in which language borrowing is possible. The number of loan words found, overall and within each topical category, the breadth or lack of breadth of coverage in the major areas of cultural contact, the kinds of borrowings and the variations in currency of the loan words in the borrowing language, and the dates of citations all can serve to build a linguistic description of acculturation. Although it is proverbial that Spanish has contributed more to the vocabulary of American English than any other of the many languages that have played a part in making it necessary to distinguish as we do between American and British English, most studies of Spanish loan words in American English have been linguistic rather than cultural and all have been partial at best. The word-