Semantic Aspects of National Varieties of Spanish in a Dictionary of Neologisms, the Antenario

Abstract

The process of including neologisms in dictionaries has usually been studied in Spanish from the point of view of only one specific kind of dictionary, the general language dictionary, in terms of how the headword list and entries are updated. This fails to address a key question: What does the inclusion of new words in a dictiXNnary of neologisms actually involve? The aim of this paper is to explore problems of representation of neological variation by discussing how the tension between neologicity and geolectal variation is dealt with in a non-pan-Hispanic dictionary, the Antenario. Diccionario en línea de neologismos de las variedades del español (http://www.antenario.wordpress.com), designed and written by the Antenas Neológicas Network (https://www.upf.edu/web/antenas), and thus contribute to further the characterization of dictionaries of neologisms. We will focus the analysis on three aspects of lexicographic representation which are clearly linked to geolectal variation: degrees of neologicity, synonymy and polysemy.