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This research applied corpus analysis techniques to a corpus of marine biology texts in
Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin American Spanish (LAS). The results explain why
these varieties of Spanish have different designations for the same sea organism. The
focus of our research was thus on types of formal onomasiological variation (Geeraerts,
Grondelaers & Bakema, 1994) and its pervasiveness in Spanish scientific discourse.
Also addressed was the incidence of metaphor in specialized concept formation and
designation. Domain-specific and standard strategies were used for the semi-automatic
1. Introduction
Cognitive Sociolinguistics (e.g. Geeraerts, Kristiansen & Peirsman, 2010; Kristiansen &
Dirven, 2008; Speelman, Grondelaers, & Geeraerts, 2003) is a field of research that
the analysis of corpus data (Geeraerts et al., 2010, p. 1). This model draws on empirical
variation. According to Geeraerts (2006, p. 30), language variation has been studied in
Cognitive Linguistics and related disciplines from many perspectives: (i) a diachronic
(Tomasello, 2003). However, until recently, intralingual and sociolinguistic diversity has
This is also true of research on conceptual metaphor where introspective research has
been done from a monolingual perspective (e.g. Feldman, 2006; Lakoff & Johnson,
1980, 1999) and a cross-linguistic perspective (e.g. Kövecses, 2005, 2006). However,
now there is increasingly more research that uses statistical and corpus-based strategies.
Monolingual corpus studies on metaphor include Koller et al. (2008), Sardinha (2008),
and Semino (2006), whereas examples of cross-linguistic studies are Charteris-Black &
Musolff (2003) and Chun (2002). Nevertheless, none of this research addresses
language-internal variation.
civil engineering (Boquera, 2005), and marine biology (Ureña & Faber, 2011). In fact,
research to the forefront (Temmerman & Kerremans, 2003). For instance, Ureña &
metaphor and highlight how they reflect interlinguistic differences and similarities.
specific discourse is Da Silva (2010) for Brazilian and European Portuguese in football
knowledge domains, such as energy fields (Dury & Lerva, 2008) and American Legal
study examines a corpus of marine biology texts in Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin
American Spanish (LAS). The results explain why these varieties of Spanish have
different designations for the same sea organism. The focus is thus on types of formal
designation.
The difference between synonymy and variation has always been a controversial
topic. According to the standard view, synonymy concerns lexical change whereas
well as orthographic and typological change (Freixa, 2002). Nevertheless, Suárez (2004,
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 4
p. 65) claims that there are currently no conclusive criteria that differentiate variation
from synonymy. For this reason, variant and synonym are used interchangeably in this
paper. All types of variant retrieved from the corpus were considered and computed,
except for orthographic and typological change (e.g. seafan, sea fan, sea-fan).
Nazarenko (2001, p. 200), two terms X and Y are synonymous in a context C if both
terms are syntactically identical and semantically substitutable in that context. This
assumption is central to our analysis because as reflected in our corpus data, the
metaphorical term retrieval (cf. Ureña & Faber, 2011) provided qualitative and
this sense, our study explains the causes of specialized language variation with a
particular emphasis on metaphor. This paper also shows how both variation and
communication.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the materials and method used
in the study to find terminological variants, identify their metaphorical nature, and
quantify them. Section 3 explains how the research method was applied and discusses
the qualitative (3.1) as well as the quantitative results (3.2) obtained. Finally, Section 4
organisms, namely the nearly total set of expressions that occur as designations
terminological heterogeneity.
To achieve these goals, a corpus of marine biology texts was processed and analyzed.
The search for observational patterns inevitably involves examining authentic corpus
data, regardless of the theoretical model chosen. This type of bottom-up methodology is
authentic data is even more important in metaphor research because corpus evidence
helps users to detect cases of inactive conventional metaphors and compensates for the
marine biology and environmental science. Some of the journals are included in the
Journal Citation Reports2, which provides an objective means to rank the world’s
Although the other journals in the corpus did not have a JCR ranking, they were
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 6
or because they appeared either on the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) or
(Redalyc) websites. These websites have a strict set of norms, guidelines, and selection
productive cause of intra-lingual terminological diversity. For this reason, the journals
were grouped according to the country or region whose sea life is described. In this
sense, not only were Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin American Spanish (LAS)
compared, but also the varieties of each that were spoken in a country or region. Table 1
Table 1. Spanish academic journals and the number of research articles and tokens in
the corpus
knowledge about the different causes of this variation. Table 2 shows Freixa’s (2006, p.
69) typology, which helped us to carry out our study. The left column lists six types of
variation and the right column, two or three subtypes for each. Paying attention to this
Type Subtype
1. Preliminary causes Linguistic redundancy
Arbitrariness of the linguistic sign
2. Dialectal causes Geographical variation
Chronological variation
Social variation
3. Functional causes Adaptation to the level of language
Adaptation to the level of specialization
4. Discursive causes Avoiding repetition
Linguistic economy
5. Interlinguistic causes Cohabitation of the “local” term and the loanword
Diversity of alternative approaches
6. Cognitive causes Conceptual imprecision
Ideological detachment
Differences in conceptualization
Based on corpus data, we estimated the importance of these causes and evaluated
their overlap. A language-internal variant is also known as a lect, a general term used to
varieties, registers, styles, and idiolects (Geeraerts, 2006, p. 30). Our aim was to explore
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 8
how lectal variables in marine biology texts pattern with each other as well as with
As previously mentioned, not all of the subtypes in Table 2 were considered in the
different experts name the same concept in different ways) and excluded self-variation
(when an expert uses different designations for the same concept) (Freixa, 2006, p. 52).
Self-variation normally occurs for discursive and stylistic reasons (e.g. avoidance of
and interlinguistic factors (Freixa, 2005), which are more relevant to denotational
synonymy in scientific discourse. This study thus explores the characteristics and
interlinguistic causes).
specialized language. This is all-important because currently there are no reliable data
2.4 Method
Faber, 2011) to retrieve English-Spanish metaphor term pairs. These techniques were
the following: (i) extraction with target domain keywords; (ii) extraction with source
domain keywords; (iii) extraction with lexical markers. This third technique was found
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 9
synonyms.
Lexical variation has rarely been studied as a sociolinguistic variable because there is
the problem of determining whether two words are semantically equivalent and whether
they designate the same concept (Geeraerts, 2010a). The lexical markers provide a
divergence in PS and LAS as well as between more local varieties within the continent.
One of the very few sociolectometric studies that address the convergence and
Brazilian and European Portuguese. Unlike our study, Da Silva addresses domain-
specific rather than specialized terminology, and does not specify which strategies were
used to retrieve variants from his corpus. Moreover, his study is diachronic, whereas
ours is synchronic.
variants drawn from the corpus. Metaphor identification is often understated in current
research, and this applies to specialized language as well (Caballero, 2006, p. 65). This
can lead to somewhat unreliable results since metaphor identification is far from easy.
intuition and random inference to determine the metaphorical nature of terms. However,
We used two strategies to obtain objective evidence of metaphorical usage. The first
strategy involves exploring the linguistic context of the term in academic article(s) and
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 10
of an explicit or implicit explanation. Context analysis was performed by using the View
Text option in the Concord module of Wordsmith Tools. This function displays a co-text
of 400 words for single concordance lines, as shown in context (1). This context, which
explanation of the figurative meaning of pez león [lionfish]. As specified in (1), this fish
“belongs to the family Scorpenidae, which means little scorpion in Greek due to the
(1) El pez león (Pterois volitans) […] pertenece a la familia de los Escorpénidos o
peces espinosos, del griego skorpaina (diminutivo de escorpión), por sus
prolongaciones espinosas y la potencialidad de su veneno. (Revista Cubana de
Medicina Militar 42(2), 235-243)
Context (2), which was extracted from an academic journal published in Venezuela,
explains that “scorpion fish have strong, short, erectile spines with anterolateral
(2) Los peces escorpión del género Scorpaena […] poseen espinas o púas eréctiles
cortas y fuertes (12-13 en su aleta dorsal, 2 en la pélvica y 3 en la anal), las
cuales tienen en su porción antero-lateral glándulas de veneno con cavidades
alargadas. (Investigación Clínica 49(3), 299-307).
This is thus an explicit explanation of the same metaphorical basis of pez león. In this
case, however, the term defined is pez escorpión [scorpionfish], which designates a fish
of the same family as pez león. These examples anticipate more cases of terminological
Context (3) provides an implicit explanation of why pez mantequilla [butter fish]
receives its name. It is argued that “a rectal excretion of a greasy substance after
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 11
consumption of certain fish with high fat content” is analyzed, concretely, “after intake
of butterfish”. The metaphorical nature of pez mantequilla can thus be inferred from this
description.
(3) Se conoce como keriorrhea la emisión rectal de una sustancia grasa anaranjada
tras el consumo de ciertos peces con alto contenido en grasas. Se presenta el caso
de dos niños que manifestaron este cuadro tras consumir un pescado llamado
"pez mantequilla". (Revista de Pediatría y Atención Primaria 14(3), 49-52).
When the contextual analysis was not sufficient to attest the metaphorical motivation
of a term, it was necessary to examine the image of sea organisms in the electronic
database consulted as well as on the Google image search engine. This study includes
pictures of sea organisms, some of which were crucial to finding the metaphorical
By applying these two strategies, we were able to test the metaphorical nature of
This section explains how lexical markers and tags facilitated the retrieval of
These markers, which recovered literal and figurative common names from the corpus,
were both domain-specific and standard. The domain-specific markers were taxonomic
designations4 and the standard markers were the phrases (localmente) conocido/a como
(también) llamado “(also) called”. Both types were concordanced with the lexical
analysis program Wordsmith Tools®. The collocational horizons of the search word were
five words to the left and five words to the right of the node.
extremely productive lexical markers for common-name terms. This was crucial for the
predict which word forms will be used more often metaphorically (Sardinha, 2008, p.
128). Taxonomic designations were collected from the co-texts of extracted terms and
from the checklists in the academic articles (see Figure 1 for a species list from a
accuracy, the corpus data showed that synonymy is frequent in specialized discourse.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 13
The concordance lines showed significant convergence in the way the two speech
communities designate the same concepts. However, the concordances also reflected
many denominative differences. This can be observed in concordance lines (4) and (5),
which include the pair yubarta and ballena jorobada, both of which are Spanish terms
for humpback whale. Although the quantitative analysis revealed that both terms are
commonly used by experts in Spain and Latin America, it was also evident that PS
biologists tend to favor yubarta (81 hits across a range of articles) over ballena
jorobada (35 hits). In contrast, LA biologists clearly prefer ballena jorobada (97 hits) to
yubarta (1 hit).
The comparison of each term in the onomasiological range of a concept in the marine
biology corpus is one of the three criteria that were used as evidence of terminological
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 14
variation mediated by geographic fragmentation. The other two criteria were the
following: (i) the lexical markers (localmente) conocido/a como “(locally) known as”,
and (también) llamado x en y “(also) called x in y” (where x stands for the common-
name term and y stands for the place where the term is used); (ii) the first author’s
(4) Este último es el caso de la YUBARTA (Megaptera novaeangliae) que, aun siendo
habitual en los océanos de todo el mundo (Fernández-Casado et al. 2001), en raras
ocasiones se adentra en el interior del MAR MEDITERRÁNEO (Aguilar 1989) (IEO <
Galemys 18(1-2), 2006, Notas, 40-42)
doublet, i.e. a term pair in which the semantics of one term is transparent whereas the
other is Latin in origin, and thus, opaque (Suárez, 2004, p. 64). Accordingly, yubarta
comes from the French jubartes, which in turn stems from gibbus (Latin for Spanish
metaphor. In both cases, a physical feature is compared with the curve of the whale’s
back when diving. However, despite its opaque meaning, the formal term, yubarta, is
This is true for concept names based on resemblance5 metaphor concepts (see Picture
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 15
1), which illustrates the motivation for the metaphorical transfer of the synonyms
The terms in contexts (4) and (5) are examples of how geographic fragmentation
prompts intralingual variation, even when the cognitive perspective regarding the
motivation for the naming of the concept (i.e. metaphorical transfer) is shared by the
two speech communities. Other examples in this study show that geographic
cognitive perspectives often involve different speech communities, which are separated
geographically.
The concordances also show the influence of English on Spanish, which triggers
term variation in Spain and Latin America. This influence was reflected in the corpus by
These three types of borrowing are what Bertaccini, Massari & Castagnoli (2010, p. 16)
arbitrary (i.e. not functional), involves the coexistence of a foreign and a native term,
An example of term adaptation is the LAS term macarela in (6), which stems from
because the PS designation of this fish (Scomber scombrus) is caballa, the Latin word
for Spanish yegua and English mare. This is a metaphor originally based on the jumping
and flying ability of the fish Cheilopogon heterurus (Exocoetidae family), whose
morphology and striped dorsal skin partially resemble that of the Scomber scombrus
(Pictures 2 and 3). This physical resemblance caused the Scomber scombrus to also be
A case of direct borrowing that causes PS-LAS variation is turbot, which was
and (9), LAS biologists use the terms rodaballo and turbot with a preference for the
latter. In contrast, PS experts prefer rodaballo. Turbot and rodaballo occurred 51 and 10
times in the LAS texts, respectively, whereas the PS texts yielded 73 occurrences of
(Psetta maxima Linnaeus, 1758), bajo el supuesto que los peces planos tienen
hábitos de vida similares (Alvial and Manríquez 1999). (Rev. Biol. Mar. Oceanogr.
(1), 2011, 9-16)
Interestingly, (9) shows that denominative variation is not only present in scientific
diversity in Spanish can be caused by literal translations from English. Figure 2 was
extracted from an article in Ciencias Marinas, a bilingual Latin American journal. This
format was extremely helpful in identifying not only literal translations, but also other
types of borrowing. Figure 2 shows that LA Spanish is more influenced by English than
peninsular Spanish. LA biologists use the metaphorical term delfín nariz de botella,
which is the literal translation of bottlenose dolphin. This name refers to the dolphin’s
snout, which is short and stubby in comparison with that of the rest of members of the
Figure 2. Extract from a bilingual article in Ciencias Marinas (36 (1), 2010, 71-81).
In contrast, the corpus data reflected that peninsular Spanish has less of a tendency to
metaphorically refer to Tursiops truncatus as delfín mular ‘mule dolphin’. The dolphin
is compared to a mule because of its robust appearance as well as its energetic and
hardy nature. In fact, this species is the most common in aquaria, where it is in close and
(10) […] las aguas que rodean el ESTRECHO DE GIBRALTAR, del 8 al 26 de julio de
1993, se realizaron períodos de observación para el avistamiento de cetáceos. Se
hicieron 62 avistamientos que correspondieron a las siguientes especies: delfín
común Delphinus delphis Linnaeus, 1758 (31 % de los avistamientos); calderón
Globicephala sp. (26 %); delfín listado Stenella coeruleoalba (Meyen, 1833) (23
%); DELFÍN MULAR Tursiops truncatus (Montagu, 1821) (18 %) (IEO, 24, 1997,
65-73)
The corpus revealed that LA scientists also make use of the alternative term tursión
(11), an adaptation of the Latin tursio ‘porpoise’ and the Greek ops ‘face’, which
combine to form Tursiops. Curiously enough, truncatus, the second constituent, also
refers to the shortness of this animal’s snout in that it appears to be cut off or truncated.
These corpus examples provide evidence that Tursiops truncatus has three
metaphorical common names. In this case, variation is largely due to the influence of
the English language on LAS. Different cognitive perspectives are associated with the
scale. For instance, the phrase también llamado ‘also called’ in (12) revealed the
presence of the terms flecha de plata and matungo, together with pejerrey. All three
(12) Unos años más tarde, en 1960, se transplanta oficialmente en nuestro medio
acuático una especie más, el PEJERREY (Odontesthes bonariensis) o también
llamado vulgarmente «FLECHA DE PLATA» o «MATUNGO», oriundo del RÍO DE LA
PLATA, RÍO PARANÁ y URUGUAY MEDIO E INFERIOR y LAGUNAS DE LA CUENCA
DEL RÍO SALADO (BUENOS AIRES) (Ringuelet, 1967). (Multequina 4, 1995)
Although the three are LAS variants, pejerrey is a generic term, widely used across
Latin America. This supports the claim that lectal varieties are not necessarily discrete
entities with well-defined characteristics and strict isoglosses (Kristiansen, 2008, p. 59).
However, terminological diversity is a fact since flecha de plata and matungo are
mostly used in Argentina and Uruguay. In fact, the geographical range (Geeraerts &
More specifically, matungo is a Latin American word with an African origin. This is
African black slaves that began in the 15th century (Lapesa, 1942, p. 534). Matungo thus
reflects that borrowings from indigenous languages even exist in scientific terminology.
These borrowings may in turn be the cause of intralinguistic variation affecting the
widespread term). According to Geeraerts & Speelman (2010, p. 23), lexical variation in
a geographical or social continuum occurs because societal and material factors trigger
of knowledge fields. For instance, Trim (2011, p. 84), who conducts a diachronic
analysis of the evolution of conceptual mapping, argues that a great deal of borrowing
takes place in drug terminology as a result of its international nature. However, research
phrase que carece de buenas cualidades físicas ‘in poor physical condition’ in the
definition of matungo is a cue for the metaphorical motivation of the term since it
establishes a comparison between an enfeebled horse and a fish with a thin elongated
The metaphorical motivation of pejerrey is also grounded in the shape and physical
appearance of the fish. However, rather surprisingly, the cognitive perspective in this
case is positive instead of negative. The explanation lies in the term itself, which reflects
the fact that specialized language is subject to the same rules as general language. More
rrey (orthographic adaptation of rey ‘king’). Consequently, the term, pejerrey “king
fish”, foregrounds the slimness and elegance of this fish. In fact, its elongated shape and
shiny gray color is also the metaphorical motivation of the term flecha de plata ‘silver
arrow’. Therefore, the same fish can be named from a negative, positive, and neutral
When pejerrey was concordanced, the data showed that this term designated a
This example supports our claim that the meaning of a single-word term can change,
depending on the context. Accordingly, pejerrey can refer to different fish species
However, not surprisingly, the same metaphor has been lexicalized in both speech
communities because the two fish families belong to the same order. Atheriniformes
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 22
have an elongated and slender shape, and furthermore, the Atherina presbyter is grayish
known as’, together with the more specific geographical marker en Canarias ‘in the
Canary Islands’, showed that the generic PS term pejerrey has a lectal variant, guelde
The geographical origin of the term was confirmed by the entry for guelde in the
This dictionary entry is relevant for three reasons. First of all, this entry contributes
two more lectal variants for Atherina presbyter, i.e. longorón and ruama. Secondly, the
Canary Islands term, ruama, is a variant of ruana, which means grayish in color
(Diccionario de la Real Academia Española). The terms guelde blanco ‘white guelde’
and ruama are thus examples of social categorization (Kristiansen, 2008, p. 417), which
intergroup differences on a continuous dimension. In this sense, white and gray are
colors that overlap in a transition zone of the dimension of color. The color of Atherina
presbyter (light gray or grayish white) lies in this transition zone (see Picture 6). One
group of Canary Islanders originally perceived the color of this fish as light gray
(ruama), whereas another group perceived the color as dirty white (guelde blanco).
Thirdly, the dictionary entry states that fishermen use this fish as bait. The term guelde
Española as follows:
The term guelde must thus be an insular lectal variant of the general language word
gueldo, which designates not only small crustaceans, but also fish.
language occurs in PS and LAS, but also within Spain. The corpus also yielded
prominently. For example, the keywords conocida como ‘known as’ in (14) show that
the species Fissurella crassa is called lapa de sol ‘sun limpet’ in northern Chile,
whereas it is called lapa ocho ‘eight limpet’ in central and southern Chile. This means
that the maximal geographical range (Geeraerts & Speelman, 2010, p. 32) of the term
(14) Con este propósito se ha escogido a Fissurella crassa, conocida como “LAPA DE
SOL” en el NORTE DE CHILE (Bretos 1978) o “LAPA OCHO” en la ZONA CENTRAL Y
SUR del país. (Revista de Biología Marina y Oceanografía, 33(2), 1998: 223–239)
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 24
lingual diversity. Lapa ocho refers to a limpet whose shape is more ellipsoid than
normal, and which resembles the number eight (Picture 7). In contrast, lapa de sol is not
metaphorical, and refers to the fact that this limpet usually clings to rock clefts where it
The physical and behavioral characteristics of marine organisms have been shown to
(Geeraerts & Speelman, 2010, p. 24), but also in specialized language. By the same
2001, p. 67). In other words, these perspectives are an integral part of the dynamics of
in which concepts and conceptual structures adapt to the speakers’ cultural, social and
The second tool used was a manual tagging system. Corpus annotation has been shown
tagging is the most frequent type of corpus formatting. For instance, Semino (2006)
annotates her corpus to describe a specific kind of metaphorical speech act annotation,
whereas Sardinha (2008) annotates his corpus to compute the probabilities of each
candidate word form being a vehicle metaphor. Another body of research relies on
artificial intelligence, which offers automatic semantic field annotation tools, such as the
UCREL Semantic Annotation System for English texts (Koller, Hardie, Rayson &
Semino, 2008; Hardie, Koller, Rayson & Semino, 2007), and metaphor extraction
systems that exploit the codification of pre-defined semantic relations between units in
Although convincing results have been obtained, the approaches of these studies are
not suitable for our research. First of all, it is not clear how the USAS could be
Spanish, something that is guaranteed by our tag set. Secondly, the procedure used in
projects such as CorMet is only valid for verbs7, whereas this study focuses on nouns.
All instances of intra-lingual variants in the PS and LAS corpora were annotated with
one of the tags used in Ureña & Faber (2011). Accordingly, TAXO was placed next to
term. Concordancing this tag with Wordsmith Tools was particularly useful since it also
facilitated the retrieval of those PS and LAS terms that were not metaphorical in nature.
The next step was to analyze the TAXO-tagged terms and their co-text to identify
conocido como ‘known as’, were also of great help for this purpose. The goal was not
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 26
only to quantify PS and LAS terminological synonyms, but also to classify them based
o PEN: for terms reflecting variation on the Iberian Peninsula and Islands
o ADA: adaptation
In addition, the tag METAPH was crucial for the computation of Spanish-language
metaphorical variants.
corpus by concordancing the tag INTER. This procedure facilitated the retreival of LAS-
PS terminological synonyms. The cotext of many of the terms reveals that they are used
In Figure 3, concordances 1 and 2 include the synonyms tortuga golfina ‘gulf turtle’
and tortuga olivácea ‘olive turtle’, mostly found in PS texts, and their variant tortuga
lora ‘parrot turtle’, only found in LAS texts. Concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 3) show the
LAS term tortuga cabezona ‘big-head turtle’ and tortuga boba ‘loggerhead turtle’,
widely used in the PS texts. Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 3) include the PS term lampuga
[no translation] and its LAS synonym pez dorado ‘golden fish’. Concordances 7 and 8
(Fig. 3) show the term ostión del Pacífico ‘giant oyster from the Pacific’, used in
peninsular Spanish, and the LAS variant ostra rizada ‘curly oyster’. As can be seen,
Figure 4 shows concordances of the tag LAT, which contain terminological variants
in Latin America. Concordances 1 and 2 (Fig. 4) retrieve the term pargo manchado
‘stained snapper’, used in Costa Rica, and pargo lunarejo ‘spotty snapper’, which
Colombian and Ecuadorian synonyms, pata de mula ‘mule-leg (clam)’, piangua [no
translation], and concha prieta ‘swarthy shell’, respectively. These synonyms were also
Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 4) contain the two common name variants of Nodipecten
subnodosus in the corpus, escalopa (no translation) and almeja mano de león ‘lion’s
paw clam’.
Figure 5 includes concordances obtained with the tag PEN, which was used to
retrieve PS synonyms. Again, the cotext indicates the origin of the terms. Concordances
1 and 2 (Fig. 5) show the Canary Islands metaphorical synonyms sebadales ‘barley
field’ and manchones ‘soiled field’, which are variants of the standard Spanish term
‘transparent goby’, used in Murcia to designate the species Aphia minuta. Concordance
4 (Fig. 5) shows that the standard term besugo americano ‘American sea bream’ is
called alfonsiño ‘dear/little alphonse’ and fula de altura ‘deep-sea fula’ on the Canary
Islands. Fula is a term used in Canary Islands to designate the bell-shaped umbrella of a
jellyfish (Alvar, 1975, p. 432). In Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 5), the standard term
boquerón ‘whitebait’ is called anchoa ‘anchovy’ in the north of Spain, including the
Cantabrian region. In concordances 7–8 (Fig. 5), the standard term pargo ‘snapper’ is
Figure 6 includes concordances of the tags, LAT DB and INTER DB, showing
instances of direct borrowings from English. Only a few examples reflected PS-LAS or
borrowing, halibut, extracted from an LAS article. As can be observed in the taxonomic
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 29
metaphorical term lenguado del Atlántico ‘tongue-shaped (fish) from the Atlantic’.
Since this term appeared in both LAS and PS publications, the tag LAT/INTER was
which is synonymous with the standard term langosta australiana de agua dulce
(Fig. 6) contain the metaphorical PS term pez reloj ‘clock fish’ and its LAS synonym,
Figures 7 and 8 show concordances of the tags LAT LT and INTER LT, which contain
terminological synonyms that are literal translations of the English terms. They were
obviously literal translations because most were extracted from English-Spanish articles
in the bilingual journal Ciencias Marinas. In other cases, the original English terms
two LAS metaphorical variants of the seal species Otaria flavescens: lobo marino ‘sea
wolf’ and león marino ‘sea lion’. Lobo marino is the standard name in LAS and PS. As
for león marino, it is hardly a coincidence that the English common name for this
(15) Several major breeding areas have been defined for the South American SEA
LION (Otaria flavescens) along the Atlantic Ocean including the Uruguayan and
Patagonian coasts. (Marine Biology, 158(8), 2011: 1857-1867)
tiburón limón, which appeared in many LA articles, and is a literal translation of the
metaphorical English term, lemon shark (the shark is yellowish in color). Concordance
2 (Fig. 8) shows the metaphorical variant tiburón galano ‘gallant shark’ in a PS text.
Concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 8) include the PS term langostino blanco ‘white prawn’,
and its LA synonym camarón rosado, which is the literal translation of pink shrimp.
Finally, concordances 5-6 (Fig. 8) show the PS term rabil [a type of mill] and the LA
Finally, two adaptations from English were found. Of these two, only macarela
used in both Spain and Latin America. Figure 9 is a concordance of the tag ADA with
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 31
the term marlines. This concordance also contains two metaphorical terms used by both
All the corpus common names, including the previous examples, were classified and
quantified based on the tags and lexical markers. The results showed that the corpus
contained 15,327 metaphorical terms for sea organisms. Table 3 shows the figures
Tokens 2,309,863
PS variants
Metaphorical PS-LAS variants LAS variants
Variants (metaphorical
variants and (metaphorical) (metaphorical)
and % )
% and % and %
and %
Table 3 shows the number of tokens rather than of types to provide a more accurate
applied by Geeraerts & Speelman (2010, p. 36), who prefer a token-based measure of
diversity. Although the terminological variation in the corpus is fairly low, the figures
possible explanation for this is that in international communication scientists tend to use
especially in Latin American Spanish. In all likelihood, the reason for this is that LAS is
units of this type were identified by means of the semi-automatic strategies applied in
this study). However, many of them did not generate synonym pairs, probably because
the organisms designated are only found in Latin America. For example, (16) contains
the huachinango, which clearly stems from Quechua. Even its taxonomic designation,
Also found were PS terms with no correlates in the LAS texts (as many as 45 terms
of this type were identified). In some cases, the reason was cultural (19 metaphorical
(17), a metaphorical term that designates a fish typically found off the coasts of Spain,
and which has a roundish shape (Picture 8). This shape prompts the comparison
between the fish and an ochavo, a coin used in Spain from the reign of King Philip III
until the 19th. This clearly shows that culture affects conceptualization and designation
of specialized concepts through metaphor (see Ureña & Tercedor, 2011 for a fine-
surprising that this fish did not appear in the LAS texts.
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 33
The corpus contained 32 PS variants from the Canary Islands. The geographical
distance of these Islands from the Iberian Peninsula is certainly a major cause of
65 83 111
Direct borrowing
9 0 3
from English
Adaptation from
1 0 1
English
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 34
Literal translation
16 2 21
from English
Those pairs/triples that do not fit in any of the three borrowing types are triggered by
As many as 206 pairs/triples of this type were retrieved from the texts, including 13
terms stemming from indigenous languages (it should be noted that not all terms of this
origin could be coupled to their corresponding equivalents since these latter were not
always found in the texts). Adding up, 259 pairs/triples were identified in the corpus.
4. Conclusions
et al. 2010, 6) and even more so in terminology research. To fill this gap, this paper
Latin American Spanish in marine biology. The qualitative and quantitative results of
the study show that although the percentage of terminological variation is not significant
compared to the total number of tokens in the corpus, the number and types of
language.
this study were found to be highly productive since they effectively provided the
onomasiological range of the set of sea organism concepts extracted from the corpus.
The strategies also enabled us to quantify the incidence of the types of intra-linguistic
term variation. The results show that geographical fragmentation, reinforced by the
influence of languages other than Spanish (especially English, but also indigenous
languages), is a crucial factor that triggers inter- and intracontinental variation. The
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 35
figures show that in contrast to PS, LAS has a greater tendency to incorporate terms
stemming directly or indirectly from the English language (25 and 2 terminological
variants of this type were found in the corpus, respectively). Indigenous languages
increases terminological diversity. In fact, the results of this study provide evidence that
LAS is more prone to producing terminological variants (4,609) than PS (3,791). In our
opinion, it is not only the geographic closeness between North and Central/South
America that prompts this phenomenon, but also the fact that in Latin America, there is
this regard though an exception is evidently the role of dialects from the Canary Islands
The quantitative analysis also revealed the pivotal role of metaphor in prompting
variants were identified in the corpus. Again, it is LAS that is more open to
extracted). It can thus be argued that conceptual salience significantly influences the
highlight and recall the physical and/or behavioral features that characterize sea
Metaphor and denominative variation in science 36
organisms. A direct consequence of this might be that experts referred to such organisms
more easily than using taxonomic designations, which are longer and opaque names.
Notes
1
This research was carried out within the framework of the projects RECORD (FFI2011-22397) and VARIMED (FFI2011-
23120), both funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
2
http://www.scimagojr.com/index.php.
3
The SciELO website’s criteria for journal evaluation and selection can be accessed at http://www.scielo.org/php/level.php?
lang=es&component=44&item=2.
4
The taxonomic designation of a species is the Latin name in binomial nomenclature used by the scientific
community to classify such a species into a specific taxon. The first and the second constituents of the binomial refer to the
genus and the specific name, respectively. Both constituents must be written in italics (e.g. Dicentrarchus labrax).
5
Resemblance metaphors arise from physical and/or behavioural analogy. In contrast, non-resemblance metaphors are
grounded in more abstract aspects (Lakoff, 1993), although they also involve the retrieval of mental images (Ureña & Faber,
2010).
6
As the corpus showed, this phonological adaptation is widespread in the marine biology terminology, giving rise to
different names, such as pejerrey and pejesapo “toad fish”. This finding supports the claim that “some systemic factors in
the terminology of a domain determine the formation of new terms and the growth of terminology” (Kageura, 2002, p. 34).
7
CorMet identifies metaphors by finding systematic differences in selectional preferences between domains. A selectional
preference is “a verb’s predilection for a particular type of argument in a particular role” (Mason, 2004, p. 23).
8
The third cause, cognitive perspective, was not quantified because it is comprehensive. Each of the common names
included in one onomasiological range offers a distinct cognitive standpoint, which may or may not be figuratively
motivated (tagged with METAPH in the corpus). Moreover, it is pointless to tag those synonyms that have the same
cognitive perspective (e.g. doublet-terms).
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Faculty of Arts
josemanuel.urena@uclm.es
Pamela Faber
University of Granada
C/ Buensuceso, 11
pfaber@ugr.es
José Manuel Ureña obtained his PhD in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Granada.
He is currently a Junior Professor at the Department of Modern Philology of the University of Castile-
La-Mancha, Spain, where he teaches Translation and Academic English. His main research interests lie
in (socio)cognitive semantics and Terminology, with a special focus on figurative language and
Pamela Faber holds degrees from the University of North Carolina, the University of
Paris IV, and the University of Granada where she has been a full professor in
Translation and Interpreting since 2001. She is the author of various articles and books
on Lexical Semantics and Terminology. She is also the Head of the LexiCon research
group, with whom she has carried out various research projects on terminological
knowledge bases, conceptual modeling, ontologies, and cognitive semantics.