Neological Anglicized Phrases in Spanish: Calques and Loanwords

Abstract

As results from studies carried out by the Antena Chilena de Neología - Universidad de Concepción suggest, lexical units from English are one of the prolific forms of innovation in Spanish, especially due to the linguistic and cultural influence of the United States. Neological word formations of this origin, such as loanwords and loan translations from English, and hybrid word formations are evident in Spanish. Previous research has proven that English loan words are significant today in lexical innovation in different varieties of Spanish (Goddard, 1980; Lorenzo 1996; Gimeno & Gimeno, 2003; Novotná, 2007); therefore, it was interesting to examine other types of Anglicized neological formations. This study focuses on the presence of Anglicized phrases in Spanish, i.e., loan translations from English and hybrid formations containing English loanwords. The sample was obtained from neological syntagmatic units formed either by English calque or hybrid formations consisting of a patrimonial word and an English loanword, collected from Chilean press between 2003 and 2014. The analysis was performed according to recurrence, grammatical configuration, and domains where these Anglicized neologisms were used. The results determined that loan translations were more frequent than hybrid formations, that the syntagmatic combinations consisted of a variety of grammatical structures, predominantly noun phrases, and that both types of neological units were overridingly used in specific domains.