The lexical impact of language contact with Arabic on Spanish and Catalan

Abstract

Abstract During the nine centuries of Arab presence in the Iberian Peninsula (from the conquest in 711 to the expulsion of the Moriscos in 1610), the Ibero-Romance languages received hundreds of Arabic loanwords. This lexicon is distributed in specific notional fields that reflect the cultural exchange that Christian Spain benefitted from in its contact with Al-Andalus, and is often characterized by a limited diatopic, diastratic and diachronic diffusion that reveals that the transfer of lexical material occurred in very varied social, political and cultural contexts and periods. There was already an interest in Arabic loanwords during the Age of Humanism, at which time they began to be the object of systematic compilations and attempts at etymological interpretation. In the second half of the nineteenth century, authors such as Dozy and Eguílaz gathered an ample documentation of Arabic loanwords and proposed numerous, largely correct etymologies. With the studies of modern authors, mainly of J. Corominas and F. Corriente, the lexical material has been further extended and deepened in the description and etymological analysis, efforts whose results are incorporated into dictionaries specifically centred on Arabic loanwords and etymological works of general orientation.