Words of Lunfardo origin in festive register in Chilean newspaper La Cuarta

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine, qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature that the presence of Lunfardo borrowings assume in the lexicon used in the festive register of the Chilean newspaper La Cuarta. For this purpose, the participation of these lexical items in the processes of semantic change, lexical formation and phraseological fixation has been decided to be established. To do so, a corpus of 375 was gathered, which consists of 15 numbers published between November and December 1998 and May and June 2004. The borrowings found were analyzed from two perspectives: 1) relative vitality (according to frequency of use, capacity to originate lexical families and their predisposition to establish synonymic relationships within the corpus); 2) lexical creation (paying attention to lexicogenesic resources implied in each case: semantic change, lexical formation and  phraseological fixation). In the same way, a lexicographic inventory of borrowings was made. Here, grammatical characterization, meaning definitions and the samples of each loandword are shown.