Competition of synonyms through time: Conceptual and social salience factors and their interrelations

Abstract

This paper highlights three theoretical and descriptive insights into synonymy and lexical variation and change: (1) the diachronic development of synonymous forms reveals essential aspects about the nature and motivations of synonymy; (2) the emergence and competition of synonymous forms can either result from conceptual salience factors or from social salience factors; (3) synonym competition sheds light upon processes of language variation and change. Focusing on the interplay between conceptual and social aspects of language variation and change, this study subscribes to the framework of Cognitive Sociolinguistics, an emerging extension of Cognitive Linguistics as a meaning-oriented and usage-based approach to language. Two corpus-based case studies in lexical synonymics of Portuguese will be presented. The first case study shows the semantic development of the verb deixar 'to leave, to let' from Old to Modern Portuguese and its most competitive synonyms, namely abandonar 'to abandon' and permitir 'to allow'. The second case study includes the development of four dozens of sets of denotational synonymous nouns selected from the lexical fields of football and clothing in European and Brazilian Portuguese in the last 60 years. The two diachronic studies show essential aspects of synonymy and lexical variation and change.Keywords: synonymy; lexical change; lexical variation; conceptualization; onomasiology; prototypicality; cognitive linguistics; lexical sociolectometry. Resum. La competició dels sinònims en el temps: Factors de rellevància conceptual i social i les seves interaccionsAquest article se centra en tres observacions teòriques i descriptives sobre la sinonímia, la variació lèxica i el canvi lèxic: (1) el desenvolupament diacrònic de formes sinònimes revela aspectes essencials de la naturalesa i la motivació de la sinonímia; (2) l'aparició de formes sinònimes i de la competició que en resulta es pot deure a factors de rellevància conceptual o de rellevància social; (3) la competició entre sinònims aporta llum als processos de variació i canvi lingüístics. Des de la interacció entre els aspectes conceptuals i socials de la variació i el canvi lingüístics, aquest estudi s'integra en el model de la Sociolingüística Cognitiva, una ampliació emergent de la Lingüística * This study was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, as part of the UID/FIL/00683/2013 research project.