The words of ‘expressive origin’ in Corominas’ "Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico", from a Romance and Indo-European point of view. New (and old) insights

Abstract

The phonetic and semantic similarity between a large number of words which, however, cannot be reduced to the same etymon suggests to Corominas (in DCECH) a spontaneous origin in every language, as a result of the reproduction by linguistic means of certain non-linguistic impressions. Taking as a starting point a selection of lexemes categorized as ‘words of expressive origin’, we aim at analyzing the possibility and limits of spontaneous lexical creation, in terms of phonosymbolism and primary concepts expressed by onomatopoeias. As the comparative analysis of these words reveal recurrent semantic and phonetic patterns, one cannot reject completely the idea of linguistic motivation (and in this sense, we try to rehabilitate the theory of Hilmer, 1918), but must place it as far as the Proto-Romance or, more likely, Proto-Indo-European period.