History and Semantic Causes of the Presence of Salvadoreanisms in the Academic Dictionary

Abstract

The objective of this article is to analyze the Salvadoranisms that were included in the twenty-third edition of the Diccionario de la Lengua Española of the RAE to provide a reading of the lexicographic heritage of El Salvador and to observe the mechanisms of lexical creation of these terms. To do this, following the taxonomy of Torres Torres, we have classified the terms examined in patrimonial words (which in turn are distinguished in semantic Americanisms, formal Americanisms, regionalisms, marinerisms and archaisms) and American indigenisms, and we have analyzed them by proposing hypotheses and reconstructing the history of words based on underlying semantic relationships. The work has highlighted the great linguistic variety of Salvadoran Spanish since we have found a significant diversity of word formation processes, such as semantic extensions or specializations with respect to the original meanings thanks to metaphorical comparisons; morphological derivation processes by prefixation, suffixation or parasynthesis; and variations, phonetic changes and graphic adaptations of the original voices. On the other hand, it has been highlighted how the linguistic richness of El Salvador also depends on the fact that it is a mixture of heritages, visible in the numerous Nahuatisms ‒but also in the indigenisms originating from the Arawak, the Maya, the Quechua and the Taíno‒ and in the regionalisms typical of Andalusia or Cantabria. At the same time, different intersections between formal and semantic Americanisms are observed, which, together with everything previously exposed, has led to the ingenious formation of what today is the speech of this small country of the Central American Isthmus, which the academic dictionary, thanks to its pan-Hispanic vision, allows it to spread and publicize.