Lexical borrowings from Portuguese as Arab loanwords in the Atlantic communicative context

Abstract

This work includes the Atlantic dimension as a part of the identity of Spanish language and an important chapter in the reconstruction of Romanic lexicon influenced by Arabic in the Spanish language expansion. In this area, Portuguese and Spanish opened an Atlantic cultural offshoot and the Canarian lexicon shared the Arab legacy through both languages. The objective of this research is the quantitative and qualitative analysis of Portuguese loanwords in Canarian Spanish, as possible borrowings from Arabic language in different corpora. The results of this analysis show 47 Portuguese loanwords in Canarian dialect, possibly of Arabic origin, related to particular types of borrowing, grammatical categories and lexical areas, with different presence throughout Hispanic America. These facts contribute to the identification of Arab loanwords in dialectal lexicon and its meaning in an Atlantic communicative context.