Analogies in Castilian and in the Learning of Spanish as a Foreign Language: a Creative, Levelling and Simplifying Linguistic Phenomenon

Abstract

The term analogy has been used to encompass all types of linguistic changes resulting from the imitation of other paradigmatic models since Antiquity. Currently, analogy is still used as a catchall term. However, new studies are restricting its scope and new terms appear to name linguistic change phenomena by imitation. After a brief summary of the term evolution, we will present the main phenomena of analogical creation regarding Castilian from diatopic and drastratic perspectives. Finally, we will focus on the analogy in L2 learning, mainly the ELE (Spanish as Foreign Language), by commenting according to the precepts of psycholinguistics examples from a corpus created with students of Spanish from different levels and nationalities.