An Approach to Vernacular Phytonymy in Spanish and Catalan: The Study of Somaphytonyms

Authors

Keywords:

popular phytonymy, Spanish, Catalan, cognitive semantics, embodiment.

Abstract

The aim of this research is to analyse the influence of the human body on the conceptualization of the natural world, with special attention to phytonyms in Spanish and Catalan. The article studies the data from two digital corpora of phytonyms, one Spanish (Anthos. Sistema de información sobre las plantas de España) and the other Catalan (Corpus de fitonímia catalana). In general, the results obtained show a high degree of similarity between the two languages both in morphology and semantic motivation. The main differences reside in the unequal productivity of certain parts of the body as sources of conceptualization in each of the languages studied.

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Articles