21:33 Apr 26, 2016 |
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Spanish to English translations [PRO] Social Sciences - Linguistics / dictionary entry - etymology | |||||||
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Summary of answers provided | ||||
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4 +5 | semi-formal register |
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4 +4 | semi-learned word / semi-learnèd word |
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4 | a semi-literate voice |
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Summary of reference entries provided | |||
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Discussion entries: 16 | |
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semi-learned word / semi-learnèd word Explanation: Despite what you might assume at first glance, "semiculta" doesn't refer to the register of the word but purely to its form, and specifically to its phonological assimilation. If you look up "semiculto" in the DRAE it says (typically) "Perteneciente o relativo al semicultismo", and "semicultismo" means: "Palabra influida por el latín, o por la lengua culta, que no ha realizado por completo su evolución fonética normal" http://dle.rae.es/?id=XWmeacR They give the examples "siglo" and "tilde"; obviously neither of these is formal or semi-formal register. Here's a blog piece about such words, giving other examples: http://www.curiosidario.es/palabras-semicultas/ Well, in English the corresponding term is "semi-learned". Some people spell it "semi-learnèd", with a grave accent, to make it clear that learned means "erudite", not "the result of have been learned". "semi-learnèd word A word in a language which is in principle inherited from an ancestral language but which shows the effects of only some, and not all, of the regular phonological changes which have applied in the language. For example, Latin rēgula(m) should have yielded *reja in Spanish by normal developments, and indeed does so in the sense of 'ploughshare', but the form meaning 'rule, ruler' is regla, in which the word has undergone the popular loss of the medial vowel but not the normal treatment of the cluster. Compare learnèd word." Robert Lawrence Trask, The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, 306 https://books.google.es/books?id=EHeGzQ8wuLQC&pg=PA306&lpg=P... "esp. mod gigante (xiyante) (velarización) > [yjyante) (uvularización) (voz semiculta, la forma patronimica seria "geante)" https://books.google.es/books?id=LyLYCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA83&lpg=PA... This means that "gigante" is a "voz semiculta", because the normal process of phonological development would have led from gigantem to geante, but it hasn't (contrast French, where it has led to "géant"). Obviously there is nothing formal about the word "gigante". "Semiculto", as I say, has nothing to do with register. Dictionaries don't usually specify this, but the one you're translating from does, and this is what it means. -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 12 hrs (2016-04-27 10:26:57 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- "Ejecutoria" is semiculta, semi-learned, because it has undergone xs > j. Just to back up my interpretation of this word, here is another entry from the same dictionary (I won't give the source here in case of confidentiality issues but it contains the exact entry you've quoted). It makes it quite clear, I think, that "culto" has a meaning here related to etymology, not to register; contrato is not a formal or even semi-formal word. "Culto" here simply means less evolved, closer to Latin. "CONTRATO Es una voz semiculta (el derivado culto es contraído, ya de formación romance y el derivado popular antiguo contrecho, actual contrahecho “contraído, jorobado”) del latín contractus, -a, -um, literalmente “contraído” del verbo contraho, -ere, originalmente “juntar” y en la acepción “contraer” (una deuda, un negocio). Ya en la época latina el participio contractus, -a, -um se sustantivizó en contractus, -us, de donde proviene el término contrato, pero el verbo no se especializó en este sentido, sino que conservó su acepción concreta de “traer una cosa junto a otra” o “acercar dos cosas entre sí”. " -------------------------------------------------- Note added at 12 hrs (2016-04-27 10:27:54 GMT) -------------------------------------------------- This is essentially an etymological dictionary of legal terms. Formality of register is not an issue. |
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