Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2021, Page 152

either the meaning of the loanword has widened (e.g. náttúra – eðli) or the native
word has received the specific meaning of the loanword in an explicative inser-
tion (e.g. enigma – gáta).10
Exceptions to rule 2:
If a calque, structural or semantic, corresponds to a prestige borrowing we are
faced with either of the following situations:
a) The native word has a wide range of meanings and thus comes to be used
as a synonym for the loanword in virtue of semantic contiguity (e.g. arti -
culus – grein).
b) The native word has another source rather than the loanword as a model
(e.g. skrifa – ríta/rita, whereby the native word [< PGmc. *wrītan-]
acquires the meaning ‘to write’ from its Old English cognate wrítan, or
armonia – hljóðagrein, whereby hljóðagrein translates soni differentia).11

5. Distribution of word pairs and their constituents in the corpus
As far as the distribution of word pairs in the corpus is concerned (Figure 2), it
can be said that the simple alternation of loanwords and native words (first bar
in each group), is by far the most widespread dynamic.
As can easily be seen, the only genre in which simple alternation does not
prevail is Treatises, where explicative insertions (third bar in each group), are the
majority. The two overall most widespread dynamics, simple alternation and
intrastemmatic variation (second bar in each group), constitute a positive valida-
tion of the active role of the words, both native and borrowed, in the lexicon. The
apparent exception constituted by Treatises harmonizes well with the just pro-
posed “law of semantic specificity”. In fact, that genre scores the highest in
semantic specificity and, in addition, the genre’s nature makes it well understand-
able that explicative insertions are very common there, as a result of the need of
introducing new terminology. These two characteristics, namely that simple alter-
Matteo Tarsi152
10 This specification, which was not present in the presentation at the doctoral defense
(nor in Tarsi 2020b, published shortly after the doctoral defense), is crucial, because other-
wise the native word would not count as a native lexeme but rather as a semantic calque.
Truth be told, the example given in the slides at the defense (aries – hrútr) was in fact
wrong, as hrútr is a semantic calque. The only example of this exception found in the
whole corpus is enigma – gáta. All other native words appearing in an explicative insertion
with a necessity loan are neoformations (8 cases, e.g. apocope – orðkolfr, senatus – ǫldunga -
sveit), semantic calques (3 cases, e.g. aries – hrútr, fígúra – mynd/vǫxtr) or structural calques
(9 cases, e.g. dialectica – þrætubók, rhetorica – málssnilldarlist).
11 The prestige borrowing needs to be acclimatized. An example of non-acclimatized
prestige borrowing which, as a result, does not follow the rule given above is evangelista.