El Anglicismo Ha Recibido Mucha Atencin, En Todas Sus ...
Using Corpora for Exploring and Assessing the
Influence of English on Contemporary Spanish
José L. Oncins-Martínez1
1. Introduction
Anglicisms are pervasive in most languages all over the world, and Spanish, of course, is no
exception. As Pratt demonstrates in his pioneering study, the influence of English on
contemporary Spanish affects all the levels of the system: orthographic, lexical, semantic,
syntactic, morphological (Pratt, 1980: 229). However, it is probably at the level of lexis that
this influence is greater and most noticeable. Indeed, more and more English loanwords enter
Spanish every day; some of them in their native form, the so-called ‘patent’ Anglicisms
(Rodríguez and Lillo, 1997) such as airbag, byte, lifting. Together with these, there are also
semantic or content Anglicisms2, less common and far less noticeable. They occur when
Spanish borrows from English not a word but part of the meaning or a sense of a paronymous
form in that language, thus having its denotational range extended very often. For instance,
the Spanish verb ignorar (=‘not to know’)3 has recently extended its meaning to include a
new sense, ‘not to pay attention to sb/sthg’, borrowed from English
4
ignore . These
Anglicisms, also known in the specialized literature as ‘false friends’ (Prado, 2001), may
often bring about changes in the collocations and colligation patterns of the Spanish host
forms (e.g., Spanish ignorar takes now a human Object, as English ignore), or change their
semantic or discourse prosody5 (Sp. versátil, an adjective with negative connotations a few
years ago, now has positive prosody as Eng. versatile).
Then, along with the aforementioned ‘univerbal’ varieties (Pratt, 1980: 37), there are
also multilexical Anglicisms. They cover all the phraseological spectrum of the two languages
(Oncins-Martínez, 2006), ranging from collocations, such as ‘perfil bajo’ (< ‘low profile’),
‘políticamente correcto’ (< ‘politically correct’) or ‘desarrollo sostenible’ (< ‘sustainable
development’), to phrases and idioms like ‘patata caliente’ (< ‘hot potato’) or ‘vuelta de
tuerca’ (< ‘turn of the screw’), quotations (‘algo huele a podrido’ (< ‘there’s something
rotten’), routine and pragmatic formulae (‘déjame adivinarlo’ < ‘let me guess’ or ‘damas y
caballeros’ < ‘ladies and gentlemen’) and even proverbs (‘llorar por la leche derramada’ <
‘cry over spilt milk’).
As such a pervasive phenomenon, the study of Anglicisms in Spanish has given rise to
a number of studies. Worth mentioning are, e.g., Pratt (1980), Lorenzo (1996) and Rodríguez
and Lillo (1997). These works represent key contributions to this area of research, each in its
own way. Besides, they deserve special praise if we take into account that their authors could
not enjoy the advantages of large generic corpora of Spanish, unavailable at the time these
1 Department of English, University of Extremadura
e-mail: oncins@unex.es
2 Cf. Rodríguez (2004) for a typology of Anglicisms.
3 ‘Ignorar. 1. tr. No saber algo, o no tener noticia de ello’ (Diccionario de la lengua española [1992], 21st ed.).
4 Cf. Ignorar in Diccionario de la lengua española (2001, 22 nd ed.): ‘1. tr. No saber algo, o no tener noticia de
ello. 2. tr. No hacer caso de algo o de alguien’.
5 The concept of semantic prosody I am drawing on in this paper is the one proposed and explained by Sinclair
(1991), Louw (1993) or Stubbs (1996; 2001), among others, and more specifically as used by Channell (2000)
for the analysis of evaluative lexis. For a recent critique of the concept see Whitsitt (2005).
works were published6. Fortunately, the situation seems to have changed in the last few years,
as Rodríguez (2003: 574) points out when urging lexicographers to make use of this tool:
En los últimos años, la aparición de corpus digitalizados ha sido una eficaz ayuda en esta labor hasta el
punto de convertirse en una herramienta indispensable […] La informática ha puesto a nuestra disposición
corpus digitalizados y otras herramientas útiles (bases de datos, buscadores, etc.) a los que el lexicógrafo
debiera acudir si lo que se pretende es recopilar el uso de la lengua sobre bases más objetivas.
Indeed, the advent of large electronic corpora of Spanish makes it possible now for linguists
and lexicographers to draw firmer conclusions about some aspects of Anglicisms difficult, if
not impossible, to confirm before. For instance, corpus data allows us to corroborate if Latin
American Spanish really is more receptive to and abundant in Anglicisms than European or
Peninsular Spanish, as has often been suggested in the specialized literature; or if the media,
especially the press, is the main vehicle for the spread of Anglicisms.
2. Aim of this Paper
The present paper aims to show how studies of Anglicism in Spanish can benefit from the use
of corpora as a main source of empirical evidence and help cast new light on some less
explored aspects of these type of loanwords. In order to do this, two case studies are
presented. The first one is the phrase ‘al final del día’, a calque of the English idiom ‘at the
end of the day’, an informal expression very similar in meaning to ultimately used in English
when ‘talking about what happens after a long series of events or what appears to be the case
after you have considered the relevant facts’ (COBUILD). The second one is a semantic
Anglicism, the adverb dramáticamente, which is taking on the new sense ‘radically’ under the
influence of its English paronym dramatically.
For the analysis, use will be made of the CORDE and the CREA7, the two corpora that
the Spanish Royal Academy of Language has been developing in the last decade, freely
available at its website8. These two on-line corpora −the former historical (c. 950-1974), the
latter contemporary (1975-today)− contain at present around 125 and 170 million words
respectively.
As the two case studies will try to show, the possibility of comparing the data found in
the two corpora allows us, for instance, to verify basing on its frequency whether a given
Anglicism is really an Anglicism and is not simply a bad translation or an isolated occurrence
of a foreign form. Moreover, since the corpora permit different search parameters
(geographical, thematic, etc.), valuable information can be obtained not only about the
distribution of Anglicisms across themes, text-types and registers and the proportion of
occurrences in Peninsular Spanish in comparison with Latin American Spanish, but also about
the degree of penetration or speed of spread of some forms. Finally, because the corpora give
access to a reasonable amount of the co-text of the forms searched for, they also allow us to
explore to what extent or in what ways Anglicisms are changing the Spanish language. This is
6 As some corpus linguists have pointed out, large generic corpora of Spanish have not been available until very
recently (Davies and Face, 2006: 133). The CORDE and the CREA, the largest corpora of Spanish to date, were
available to public use only a few years ago, c. 1997. There are other generic corpora of Spanish, if smaller, very
useful for this type of research. Worth mentioning for its pioneering nature is the one developed by Prof.
Sánchez-Pérez (1995) at the University of Murcia. Also freely available on-line is Davies’ 100 million-word
diachronic corpus (http://www.corpusdelespanol.org). Likewise, there are some studies of Anglicisms in Spanish
that are corpus-based, but the corpora they use are normally smaller and specific (see, e.g., Gómez Capuz 1993,
1994, 2001).
7 CORDE (Corpus diacrónico del español/ Diachronic Corpus of Spanish); CREA (Corpus del español actual/
Corpus of Contemporary Spanish).
8 [http://www.rae.es]. The Academy website offers abundant information about the characteristics of the two
corpora: origin, make up, etc.
2
especially interesting with semantic Anglicisms, for the impact they have in the collocations
and colligation patterns of the Spanish forms, as was said before.
3. Case Study 1: ‘al final del día’ < ‘at the end of the day’
Even though this phrase has not been current in the English language for too long as an idiom
−the OED dates it from 1974−, it is extremely common. The Oxford English Dictionary
(OED) describes it as hackneyed: ‘End II. 7. d. In hackneyed phr. at the end of the day,
eventually; when all's said and done’. Moon (1998, 276) also points out its trite nature: ‘At the
end of the day has been condemned as cliché and ridiculed for vacuity’9. As an idiom, the
phrase presents some of the characteristics of idiomatic expressions: it is fixed and figurative,
although there is also a homonymous phrase ‘at the end of the day’ that can appear as a free
combination in discourse functioning as a time adjunct. From a functional point of view, it is
organizational, signalling a conclusion summary or opinion (Moon, 1998: 276), so it can be
classified as a concessive linking adjunct of the type of ‘that said’ or ‘at any rate’(Carter and
McCarthy, 2006: 259).
3.1 ‘At the end of the day’ in the BNC
Data from the BNC10 confirms that this is indeed a very common expression, with 760
occurrences −practically all of them figurative−, far more than for similar phrases like ‘that
said’ or ‘at any rate’. In terms of distribution across registers, the BNC also confirms that it
appears mainly in spoken English: 332 tokens, nearly 50 percent of the total, are found in the
spoken section of the corpus.
3.2 ‘Al final del día’ in the CORDE and the CREA
The CORDE contains only three occurrences of this phrase. The three are literal usages, free
combinations functioning as time adjuncts:
1
dormido serafín. Era allí la luz dudosa cual es al final del día, siempre fría la linfa en su mana
2 rdecía la luz trepidante, y yo salía de la ciudad al final del día, por la puerta del Oeste, sin fue
3 ; tenía nuevas audiencias, asistía a las Juntas y al final del día despachaba otra vez con los secr
Table 1: ‘al final del día’ in the CORDE
However, if we search for this phrase in the contemporary corpus, we find that out of 68
occurrences of it 6 are calques of the English homonym:
30
tenemos un programa noticioso y otro, pero al final del día los contenidos son distintos.
31 juzgar, porque no tengo los detalles. Pero al final del día, Carlos Peralta es una persona
35
ando", dice. "El problema estriba en que, al final del día
, resulta muy difícil reconocer
55
erdad soy consciente de ello. "Lo importante al final del día es que nos queremos" Son la
9 Moon (1998: 277) gives an example from spoken interaction, an excerpt from a transcribed radio programme,
probably from an interview of a footballer talking to the press after a match: ‘At the end of the day though, the
championship I think, tells you who is the best team of any one year and [um] that’s the professional’s choice I
think…’. It seems to me interesting that this phrase is part of football jargon or ‘footballese’. In fact, the last time
I came across this expression was from football superstar David Beckham, and it was literally rendered into
Spanish as ‘al final del día’ by the translator. I am saying this for reasons that will become clearer later on.
10 Use has been made of M. Davies’s BNC interface, available at [http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/].
3
56 ompletamos a la perfección y lo importante al final del día es que nos queremos. No se tr
60 Sin embargo, añade Wilkinson, "no creo que al final del día la victoria de Bush tenga un
Table 2: ‘al final del día’ in the CREA
Now if we look at the table below, we see that these examples, apart from allowing us
to classify the phrase as a new idiomatic Anglicism given its absence from the CORDE and
its presence in the CREA, also help us corroborate and substantiate with empirical data at
least three characteristics of this linguistic phenomenon in Spanish that have often been
suggested:
30
PRENSA
Proceso, 03/11/1996 : Salinas Pliego: presentaré una demanda
MÉXICO
31
PRENSA
Proceso, 07/07/1996 : AMIGO Y SOCIO DE RAÚL, CARLOS PERALTA MÉXICO
35
PRENSA
El Nuevo Herald, 21/04/1997 : Red electrónica: Paraíso para
EE. UU.
55
PRENSA
Diez Minutos, nº 2729, 04/12/2003 : Victoria Adams
ESPAÑA
56
PRENSA
Diez Minutos, nº 2729, 04/12/2003 : Victoria Adams
ESPAÑA
60
PRENSA
El Mercurio, 04/11/2004 : Relaciones Europa-Estados Unidos:
CHILE
Table 3: ‘al final del día’ in the CREA (register and country)
Firstly, in terms of register, the information provided by the corpus indicates that indeed the
press has a leading role in the spread of loanwords from English. Secondly, the corpus also
reveals that Anglicisms are more frequently found in Latin American Spanish than in
Peninsular Spanish. Indeed, except for 55 and 56 (which in fact come from the same
quotation), the other four occurrences are from Latin American sources. As for the repeated
occurrence in 55 and 56, the words do not come from a Spanish native speaker but from the
translated speech of an English one, English celebrity Victoria Adams, ex-spice girl and
football superstar David Beckham’s wife:
Cuando empezamos a salir juntos yo era mucho más famosa que David y, ahora mismo, yo estoy orgullosa de
él. […] Ahora mismo yo no sería tan famosa como soy si no fuera por David y creo que él, si no estuviese
conmigo, tampoco sería tan famoso. Creo que los dos nos completamos a la perfección y lo importante al final
del día es que nos queremos.
AÑO: 2003
AUTOR: PRENSA
TÍTULO:
Diez Minutos, nº 2729, 04/12/2003 Victoria Adams
PAÍS: ESPAÑA
TEMA:
02. Testimonios varios
PUBLICACIÓN:
Hachette Filipacchi, S.A. (Madrid), 2003
Table 4: ‘al final del día’ in the CREA (55-56)
This example, and the fact that it appears as translated speech, permits us to begin to confirm
a third characteristic that has often been suggested: that translation is one of the most common
gates of access for Anglicisms into Spanish. In fact, 4 of the 6 occurrences come from
translated speech (examples 35, 55, 56 and 60 on table 2).
4
4. Case Study 2: ‘dramáticamente’ < ‘dramatically’
In its entry for dramático, the recently published Diccionario Panhispánico de Dudas
(DPDD) warns us against the ‘incorrect’ use of this adjective and its derivative adverb:
dramático –ca. En español significa ‘del drama (género literario)’ y ‘que tiene caracteres de drama’. No
debe usarse con el sentido de ‘drástico o espectacular’, como se hace a veces por influjo del inglés
dramatic […] Lo mismo cabe decir del adverbio dramáticamente, que no debe usarse con el sentido que
corresponde a las voces españolas drásticamente o espectacularmente.
Several authors have pointed out the effects that these look-alike words may have on
the borrower language. For instance, Prado (2001), in what is perhaps the most complete
study on English false-friends in Spanish published to date, explains how the repeated use and
influence of some English forms may end up altering the semantic prosody of their Spanish
host words. Talking about adjectives, which he regards as the ‘most treacherous type of false-
friend’, Prado (2001: 11) gives a few examples of processes of melioration or pejoration
undergone by a few Spanish forms under the influence of their English cognates:
Sin duda los adjetivos son los falsos amigos más traicioneros debido a que muchos degradan la denotación
original en una lengua, pero no en la otra; por ejemplo, jesuit, que traduce intrigante, maquinador, en vez
de jesuita. Otros adjetivos ennoblecen el sentido etimológico de una lengua, causando discrepancias
notables con la otra; y en esta categoría hay una serie de vocablos que han pasado al mundo comercial en
inglés con versión muy positiva, como versatile, que traduce talentoso, flexible, frente a versátil, que es
bastante negativo como fickle / flaky (voluble).
In this connection, and with regard to the problems that these pairs may pose to the translator
in terms of prosody, Partington (1998: 77-8) makes the following observation:
Cognate or “look-alike” words in two related languages can have very different semantic prosodies. The
adjective impressive in English has a favourable prosody, collocating in the English corpus with items such
as achievement, best, talent, dignity and gains, etc. The look-alike Italian word impressionante, on the
other hand, was found as often as not to collocate with neutral or unfavourable items (corpus examples:
series of price rises, assassination attempts, amongst others). Conversely, the English verb incite and the
related noun incitement almost always relates to unfavourable phenomena (racial hatred, moral hazard,
violence, among others), whereas the Italian verb incitare (noun incitamento) often collocates favourably,
with the meaning ‘to encourage’. The pitfalls for translators unaware of such prosodic differences are
evident.
Partington summarizes very well what is occurring with pairs like the one under scrutiny.
Both words are similar in terms of form: same root, dram-, and same adverb suffix, -ly in
English, -mente in Spanish. However, as the DPDD warns us, the two adverbs differ
substantially in their meaning. In English, dramatically has as its first or most frequent sense
that of ‘radically’, along with the theatrical one (sense 3 in COBUILD):
Dramatic. 1 A dramatic change or event happens suddenly and is very ADJ QUALIT
noticeable and surprising. EG I expect to see dramatic improvements. ◊ ↑ sudden
= marked
dramatically. EG The way in which information is transmitted has ◊ ADV
changed dramatically.
= radically
2 An event, situation, or thing that is dramatic is very exciting, interesting,
and impressive. EG Landing on the moon was one of the most dramatic ADJ QUALIT
scientific adventures of this century.
3 If something that you say or do is dramatic, it is said or done suddenly, ADJ. QUALIT =
and in a way that is intended to impress or surprise people. EG ‘Look!’ she theatrical, stirring.
said, flinging open the lid with a dramatic gesture. ◊ dramatically. EG He
paused dramatically.
5
On the other hand, in contemporary Spanish dramáticamente derives its meaning from the
noun drama, just as English dramatically. Its first two senses are directly related to the
literary genre: ‘drama I m 1 Obra literaria escrita para ser representada./ 2 Obra teatral de
tono serio’. However, along with these there is also a third sense that has developed as a
meaning extension of the first one due to the specialization in Spanish of drama as a tragic
play, roughly equivalent to tragedy: ‘3 Suceso o situación lamentable’11. Consequently, in
terms of prosody dramáticamente can be said to be negatively loaded when used in this third
sense, roughly equivalent to ‘sadly’ or ‘regrettably’, whereas the prosody of the piece of
discourse in which English dramatically appears will depend entirely on the verb it modifies
or the participants involved in the process, not on the adverb, as will be shown in the next
section with evidence from the BNC.
Even though one must agree with Partington that formal similarities like these may
frequently lead to translation mistakes12, it is also very often the case, as Prado reminded us
before, that false friends of this type can also end up becoming very good friends, so much so,
indeed, that the Spanish host word may eventually undergo changes in its prosody due to the
influence of its English ‘cousin’. And this is precisely what is happening to dramáticamente.
Now in order to demonstrate how the Spanish adverb is changing in terms of meaning
and prosody, the collocational profile of English dramatically will be first explored with the
BNC. After this, a comparison will be given of the findings with data extracted from the
CORDE, first, and then with the CREA. In the final step of the analysis, the span covered by
the CREA (1975-2004) will be split to explore the evolution of dramáticamente during the
last three decades. For reasons of space, the survey is limited to occurrences of the adverb
only in postverbal position: ‘verb + dramatically’. However, I believe that the results would
not differ too much if the search was extended also to occurrences of the adverb in preverbal
position, or if it included the periphrastic construction ‘in a dramatic way/form’, also
registered, if rarely, in the BNC.
11 The definitions above come from Seco et al. (1999). Interestingly enough, this dictionary includes a sense 6
for ‘dramática ─co’ which corresponds to the English one: ‘espectacular’. However, dramáticamente is defined
‘De manera dramática’ (‘in dramatic way’) only for senses 1, 2 and 3: ‘dramáticamente adv De manera
dramática [1, 2 y 3]. dramático –ca I adj 1 De (l) drama […] 2 Que tiene carácter de drama [3]. […] 3 Que
emociona o conmueve vivamente (Seco et al., 1999).
12 Cf. Tognini-Bonelli (2001, 33-9) for a view of synonyms as false friends, or Berber-Sardinha (2000) for a
comparison of semantic prosodies in English and Portuguese.
6
4.1 ‘Dramatically’ in the BNC
A search of the sequence ‘verb + dramatically’ in the BNC yields the following 25 most
frequent collocates:
1
INCREASED
84 (number of occurrences)
2 CHANGED
73
3 IMPROVED
37
4 WAS
34
5 DROPPED
25
6 BEEN
25
7 RISEN
24
8 CHANGE
23
9 FALLEN
22
10 HAS
21
11 BE
20
12 FELL
19
13 IS
18
14 INCREASE
17
15 RISE
15
16 WILL
15
17 DECLINED
14
18 ROSE
14
19 HAVE
13
20 IMPROVE
12
21 GROWN
11
22 ARE
11
23 ALTERED
10
24 FALL
10
25 PAUSED
10
Table 5: 25 most frequent collocates of dramatically
After filtering and normalising to the base form of the different verbs, these are the
collocates of dramatically: INCREASE, CHANGE, IMPROVE, DROP, RISE, FALL,
DECLINE, GROW, ALTER and PAUSE. As can be seen, except for PAUSE, all these verbs
belong to the same category of gradual completion verbs13. As for pause, it belongs to a
different category, some members of which can also be found down on the list of collocates
of dramatically, but far less frequently:
25 PAUSE
10 (number of occurrences)
39 POINT
5
41 SAY
5
64 ANNOUNCE
2
74 GESTURE
2
87 WHISPER
2
Table 6: other verbs collocating with ‘dramatically’
These verbs, unlike the ones on table 5, usually describe a speech situation. Not surprisingly
almost all the quotations come from the fiction section of the BNC.
13 Cf. e.g. Bertinetto and Squartini (1995) and Rodríguez Ramalle (2003).
7
But let’s return now to the gradual completion verbs, in whose company, COBUILD
says, dramatically is roughly equivalent to ‘radically’. To begin with, in terms of prosody
none of these verbs seems to be marked as either positive or negative, with the exception of
improve. Their prosody is to be inferred from the participant that is caused to change or
changes. So, among the positive things that change or increase dramatically in the BNC we
have sales, life expectancy or number of employees; among the negative ones, food prices,
death or mortgage rates.
4.2 Dramáticamente in the CORDE and the CREA14
The search for the adverb dramáticamente in the CORDE yielded 70 hits15. After filtering and
normalising to the base form of the verbs, here are arranged alphabetically those that collocate
with dramáticamente (L1) in the diachronic corpus:
ACABAR (FINISH)
1 (number of occurrences)
ACERCARSE (APPROACH) 1
AFRENTAR (AFFRONT) 1
AMENIZAR (ENTERTAIN) 1
APARECER (APPEAR) 1
APRETAR (PRESS) 1
AVECINARSE (APPROACH) 1
CALLARSE (SHUT UP) 1
CANTAR (SING) 1
CONFIRMAR (CONFIRM) 1
CONTORSIONARSE (WRITHE) 1
DESPLOMARSE (COLLAPSE) 1
DECIR (SAY) 1
EXCLAMAR (EXCLAIM) 2
EXPRESAR (EXPRESS) 1
FERTILIZAR (FERTILIZE) 1
HABLAR (SPEAK) 2
ILUMINAR (LIGHT UP) 1
INTERRUMPIR (INTERRUPT) 1
NARRAR (NARRATE) 1
PROCLAMAR (PROCLAIM) 1
QUEDAR (REMAIN) 1
REGISTRAR (REGISTER) 1
REPETÍR (REPEAT) 1
REVELAR (REVEAL) 1
SENTIR (FEEL) 1
TERMINAR (FINISH) 1
VIVIR (LIVE) 1
Table 7: Collocates of dramáticamente up to 1974
As can be seen, up to 1974 the adverb does not seem to collocate with gradual completion
verbs as its English paronym but mainly with those related to the theatrical sense that both
languages share, such as exclamar (exclaim), expresar (express), hablar (speak), interrumpir
(interrupt) or narrar (narrate). However, things look quite different in the CREA. To begin
14 As with dramatically, the search was limited to the form dramáticamente, ignoring the periphrastic
construction ‘de forma/manera dramática’; and also to occurrences of the adverb in postverbal position.
15 The examples obtained from the corpus were transformed into txt format and processed with WordsSmith
Tools 4.0 (WST). Since the number of hits was so low, the search was reduced to a minimum frequency of one.
8
with, the number of occurrences is much higher, with a total of 382 hits, so this time the
search was made for patterns with a minimum frequency of 2. The table below shows the
collocates arranged by frequency:
CAMBIAR (CHANGE)
22 (number of occurrences)
AUMENTAR (INCREASE) 10
REDUCIR (REDUCE/DECREASE) 8
BAJAR (DECREASE) 7
CAER (DROP/FALL) 7
MEJORAR (IMPROVE) 6
DESCENDER (DECREASE) 5
APARECER (APPEAR) 4
CRECER (GROW) 4
DISMINUIR (DECREASE) 4
INCREMENTAR (INCREASE) 4
VER (SEE) 4
ACORTAR (DECREASE/SHORTEN) 3
EXPRESAR (EXPRESS) 3
REFLEJAR (REFLECT) 3
TERMINAR (FINISH) 3
ASUMIR (ASSUME) 2
DETENER (STOP) 2
DIVIDIR (DIVIDE) 2
ILUSTRAR (ILLUSTRATE) 2
INTERRUMPIR (INTERRUPT) 2
MATERIALIZAR (MATERIALIZE) 2
MODIFICAR (MODIFY/CHANGE) 2
REPRESENTAR (REPRESENT) 2
TRANSFORMAR (TRANSFORM) 2
VARIAR (VARY) 2
Table 8: Collocates of dramáticamente 1975–2004
Another striking feature that the corpus reveals is that, in contemporary Spanish, the
adverb collocates with several gradual completion verbs such as cambiar (change), aumentar
(increase), bajar (decrease), caer (drop/fall), reducir and disminuir (reduce/decrease),
incrementar (increase) and even mejorar (improve). The presence of this latter verb in the
corpus is especially significant as far as the influence of English on Spanish is concerned. In
fact, due to the negative prosody of the Spanish adverb, the collocation ‘mejorar
dramáticamente’ (‘improve dramatically’) might be regarded by many speakers of Spanish as
a ‘collocative clash’ (Louw, 1993: 157).
A careful reading of the data reveals some other interesting facts. The first one relates
to the chronological distribution of dramáticamente. A steady increase of the frequency of the
adverb was observed. So, in order to assess the degree of penetration and spreading speed of
this Anglicism, the span covered by the CREA was split into two fifteen-year periods: 1975-
1989 /1990-2004. After processing the two halves separately, some remarkable differences
emerged, both quantitatively and qualitatively. From a quantitative point of view, a clear
imbalance was observed between the two halves: 116 hits for the first half, 266 for the
second. From a qualitative point of view, the difference has to do with the type of verb that
the adverb collocates with. Thus, in the first half of the span, only cambiar (change) begins to
emerge clearly in this new pattern (Table 9), accompanied by caer (drop/fall), descender
(decrease), incrementar (increase) and reducir (reduce), whereas processing of the second
half of the span reveals that the presence of gradual completion verbs increases dramatically
(Table 10):
9
CAMBIAR (CHANGE)
8 (number of occurrences)
CAER (DROP/FALL) 3
APARECER (APPEAR) 2
CRECER (GROW) 2
DESCENDER (DECREASE) 2
DETENER (STOP) 2
EXPRESAR (EXPRESS) 2
INCREMENTAR (INCREASE) 2
REDUCIR (REDUCE/DECREASE) 2
TERMINAR (FINISH) 2
VER (SEE) 2
Table 9: Collocates of dramáticamente 1975–1989
CAMBIAR (CHANGE)
14 (number of occurrences)
AUMENTAR (INCREASE) 10
BAJAR (DECREASE) 7
REDUCIR (REDUCE/DECREASE) 6
MEJORAR (IMPROVE) 6
CAER (DROP/FALL) 4
DISMINUIR (DECREASE) 4
ACORTAR (DECREASE/SHORTEN) 3
DESCENDER (DECREASE) 3
REFLEJAR (REFLECT) 3
APARECER (APPEAR) 2
ASUMIR (ASSUME) 2
CRECER (GROW) 2
ILUSTRAR (ILLUSTRATE) 2
INCREMENTAR (INCREASE) 2
INTERRUMPIR (INTERRUPT) 2
MATERIALIZAR (MATERIALIZE) 2
MODIFICAR (MODIFY/CHANGE) 2
REPRESENTAR (REPRESENT) 2
TRANSFORMAR (TRANSFORM) 2
VARIAR (VARY) 2
VER (SEE) 2
Table 10: Collocates of dramáticamente 1990–2004
In fact, as can be observed, the list of verbs for the span 1990-2004 is beginning to look very
much like the one found for dramatically in the BNC (Table 5), with the ‘unexpected’
presence of a verb like mejorar (improve), positively loaded. Interestingly enough, a look at
the results from a search of the sequence ‘mejor* dramátic*’ shows that now, in
contemporary Spanish, things can also ‘improve dramatically’, like in English:
1 absolutos", aseguró McNamar, "se ha producido una mejora dramática de la e o
c nomía norteamericana
2 erazgo de Gingrich, los chances de los demócratas mejorarían dramáticamente.
3
su espalda, hace 20 días. El receptor guayanés
“mejoró dramáticamente de sus dolencias en las últim
4
que comenzaron con gran desventaja económica han mejorado dramáticamente sus vidas a medida que han
5 nizaciones que utilizan la tecnología de Internet mejoren dramáticamente en el proceso de negocio
6 Cruz Roja Internacional, nuestro entorno cotidiano mejoró dramáticamente
, y así pudimos esperar día a
7
lesión que lo deja parado dos meses: La creatina mejora dramáticamente la recuperación del miembro
Table 11: ‘mejor* dramátic*’ in the CREA
10
On the other hand, the data also help us confirm our intuitions about distribution of
Anglicisms across registers and on both sides of the Atlantic, as shown below in column two
and four respectively:
1 PRENSA
El
País,
02/02/1985
ESPAÑA
2
PRENSA
El Nuevo Herald, 28/04/1997
EE. UU.
3 PRENSA
El
Nacional,
26/07/2000
VENEZUELA
4
PRENSA
Diario de las Américas, 09/04/1997
EE. UU
5 PRENSA
Excélsior,
17/09/2001
MÉXICO
6 PRENSA
Caretas,
18/12/1997
PERÚ
7 Palavecino
Norberto
Edgardo
ARGENTINA
Table 12: ‘mejor* dramátic*’ in the CREA (register and country)
We again find that, out of the 7 hits, there is only one occurrence from Spain, the first one,
and again it is the translated speech of an English-speaking person16.
So it seems that the pressing influence of English is contributing to the bleaching of
dramáticamente into a less negatively loaded type of adverb and, in consequence, less
evaluative also. Now, in contemporary Spanish, not all the things that ‘change dramatically’
are necessarily negative. The adverb is progressively emptying itself of any prosody, like its
English paronym, and the positive or negative sign of the piece of discourse in which
dramáticamente is found depends more and more, also like in English, on the ‘things’ that
change, rather than on the adverb. A close reading of the texts that contain the sequence
‘cambi* dramátic*’ in the CREA shown on the Table below shows that some of those
instances are indeed changes for the better17 (notice the metalinguistic comment in the first
occurrence ‘como dirían los anglosajones’ / ‘as the Anglosaxons would say’):
1 la inercia de nuestro propio recuerdo. El país ha cambiado dramáticamente, como dirían los anglosajones
2
el lugar de vacaciones del sector popular". Fue cambiando dramáticamente de aspecto, hasta llegar a
3 ón de la división sexual del trabajo y la familia cambió dramáticamente con la invasión de capital y el
4 ente superados, ahora que el escenario mundial ha cambiado dramáticamente, con una Unión Soviética des
5 ueron resueltos. En Argentina, aunque la sociedad cambió dramáticamente mediante la inmigración, la urb
6 neral don Miguel de la Torre, la situación vino a cambiar dramáticamente. Aunque de la Torre permitió
7 gún modelo organizativo anterior. Simplemente han cambiado dramáticamente las circunstancias externas
8
los ratones de laboratorio, estas teorías pueden cambiar dramáticamente la forma en que la medicina
9
de la Operación Guardián, sin embargo, las cosas cambiaron dramáticamente. El programa, en sus fases
10 ficativos en el país", agrega que esta situación c
" ambió dramáticamente" e
n enero de ese año con el
11 fortalezas requeridas para acceder al desarrollo cambiaron dramáticamente en los últimos treinta años;
12 simplemente ha hecho que las rentabilidades hayan cambiado dramáticamente' comenta quien fuera Coor
13 curridos desde su detención la imagen de Mauss ha cambiado dramáticamente, incluso en su propio país.
14
a nadie nuestra situación migratoria. Sus vidas cambiaron dramáticamente en el verano de 1995, cuand
15 ntos de hasta 60 kilómetros por hora, que podrían cambiar dramáticamente l
a situación. "La mancha podrí
16 prusiano y el de los Habsburgo. Sus fronteras han cambiado dramáticamente durante el siglo XX, converti
17 general había estado dirigida a los republicanos, cambió dramáticamente en 1993, después de que la Unió
18 abello. Esto se debe a que en realidad el cabello cambia dramáticamente la imagen de las personas. En r
19
Lo que viene Y es que si hay un mercado que ha cambiado dramáticamente en los últimos años es el de
20
y desechan las otras. Pero la vida de Dora va a cambiar dramáticamente u
c ando, tras dictarle una nuev
21 rante el mismo período las políticas industriales cambiaron dramáticamente. Desde una estrategia de des
22 ina diaria. Durante los años ochenta esta actitud cambió dramáticamente. La participación en la investi
23 censo. Las condiciones demográficas de Costa Rica cambiaron dramáticamente en 16 años: bajó la fecundad
16 Cf. n. 1 on table 11: "En términos absolutos", aseguró McNamar, "se ha producido una mejora dramática de
la economía norteamericana durante los pasados años y frente a la japonesa y especialmente la europea". "Mi
conclusión es clara", terminó McNamar, "y es que los inversores piensan hoy que la economía norteamericana es
la más atractiva del mundo".
17 Here is an example: ‘“Esto simplemente ha hecho que las rentabilidades hayan cambiado dramáticamente”
comenta quien fuera Coordinador de Planificación de Pdvsa. Si en 1993 los proyectos tenían un margen de
tolerancia bajo, según Pantin “hoy en día aún con un Brent entre 13 o 14 dólares, los proyectos serían
rentables”’.
11
24 nte, un hecho irrelevante en apariencia, pero que cambiaría dramáticamente nuestra percepción del cosmo
25 infructuosos de contactar a Posada. La explosión cambió dramáticamente la suerte de Posada. Los invest
Table 13: ‘cambi* dramátic*’ in the CREA
As for register and geographical distribution, the corpus gives us valuable information again.
Most of the examples come from the press (60 percent) and from Latin American Spanish (75
percent):
1
Garrigues Walter Una política para España
ESPAÑA
2
PRENSA
Revista Hoy, 17-23/07/1984 : MUNICIPALIDADES
CHILE
3
Ostolaza Bey, M. Política sexual en Puerto Rico
PUERTO RICO
4
PRENSA
Diario La Prensa, 16/05/1992 : México supera el pasado
ARGENTINA
5
Fuentes, Carlos
El espejo enterrado
MÉXICO
6
Picó, Fernando
Al filo del poder: subalternos y dominantes en Puerto Rico 1
PUERTO RICO
7
García Hernández La encrucijada sanitaria
ESPAÑA
8
PRENSA
ABC Cultural, 29/03/1996 : VUELCO A LAS TEORÍAS DE LA INMUNI ESPAÑA
9
PRENSA
Diario de Yucatán, 01/09/1996 : Las montañas y sus riesgos s
MÉXICO
10 PRENSA
Diario de Yucatán, 01/09/1996 : México aceptaría ayuda milit
MÉXICO
11 PRENSA
El Universal, 09/10/1996 : La revolución educativa
VENEZUELA
12 PRENSA
El Universal, 15/10/1996 : Corpoven: convenios operativos en
VENEZUELA
13 PRENSA
Semana, 03-10/12/1996 : El
COLOMBIA
14 PRENSA
El Nuevo Herald, 30/06/1997 : Familia nica ve un 'rayo de es
EE. UU.
15 PRENSA
El Observador, 10/02/1997 : Grave riesgo ecológico a 20 mill
URUGUAY
16 PRENSA
El País, 08/06/1997 : Polonia o la dificultad de servir a do
ESPAÑA
17 PRENSA
La Hora, 03/05/1997 : Guerra del banano enfrenta a Estados U
GUATEMALA
18 PRENSA
Listín
Diario,
19/05/1997
REP.DOMIN.
19 PRENSA
Semana, 28/01-04/02/1997 : RENTA FIJA
COLOMBIA
20 EFÍMERO
98102048. Programa impreso 1998
ESPAÑA
21 Ten Kate, A.
Desarrollo industrial y el medio ambiente en México [Economí
MÉXICO
22 Rapado, Aurelio La salud de la mujer
ESPAÑA
23 PRENSA
Crisol, Revista de Ciencia y Tecnología, nº 9, 2003 : Repens
COSTA RICA
24 Sabadell, M.Á.
El hombre que calumnió a los monos
ESPAÑA
25 ORAL
Discurso de Fidel Castro en el acto central por el 45 aniver
CUBA
Table 14: ‘cambi* dramátic*’ in the CREA (register and country)
These findings demonstrate empirically not only the importance of the press in the
spread of Anglicisms but also a far greater presence of this type of loanword in American
Spanish in comparison with Peninsular Spanish. Moreover, taking into consideration that 50
percent of the data in the CREA comes from Spain (the other 50 percent is ‘shared’ by twenty
American countries and the Phillipines), in absolute terms the figures for Latin American
Spanish are bigger. After all, the population of Spain represents approximately 10 percent of
the Spanish-speaking community in the world.
5. Conclusions
The first case study corroborates, with empirical evidence, some of the suggestions made in
some of the major studies of Anglicisms, for instance, that the press has a leading role in the
spread of Anglicisms, or that they are more abundant in Latin American Spanish than in
Peninsular Spanish. It also shows that translation is a very frequent gate of access for
Anglicisms into Spanish. The second case confirms the same suggestions, and also
12
demonstrate how the influence of an English word can contribute to the progressive
bleaching, in terms of prosody and meaning, of a cognate form in Spanish.
Reasons of space have limited the number of case studies to just two, although it
seems very likely that the analysis of any of the many Anglicisms found in Spanish today
would have proved as illustrative for the purpose of the paper. I hope these two examples
have been sufficient to show how using the CORDE and the CREA can help us deepen our
knowledge of Anglicisms in contemporary Spanish; and also that lexicographers interested in
this area of research should, as Rodríguez (2003: 574) strongly recommends, make use of this
tool if they want to explore these or other linguistic phenomena more objectively.
The analysis has also revealed some of the limitations of these two corpora.
Obviously, the better the design of a corpus, the more useful it will be for scholars with an
interest in this or other related areas of research. In this sense, even though the CORDE and
the CREA may not be as user friendly as standard corpora of English (e.g. the BNC), they are
the largest corpora available for Spanish so far and also ─or so the Spanish Royal Academy
of Language claims─, the main source of information and tool for the making of the
Diccionario de la Lengua Española, the ‘official’ dictionary of the Spanish language for
people on both sides of the Atlantic. Thus, the CORDE and the CREA constitute
indispensable tools for linguists and lexicographers alike.
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