Linguistic motives common to Japanese and Romance dialects: Two examples with maps

Linguistic data treatment and mapping can vary greatly depending on the choices made by dialectologists. After recalling the fundamental principles of traditional geolinguistics, this article introduces the motivational point of view and the possibilities it presents in terms of mapping dialectal data. Concepts such as désignant and motive help focus on the ideas, interpretations and worldviews that are so important to lexical creation and change. By using them to classify the dialectal lexicon, we have found great similarities between the data of the Linguistic Atlas of Japan (LAJ) and the Atlas Linguistique Roman (ALiR). Those similarities transcend cultural differences. The two main examples that we map and analyze are ‘praying mantis’ and ‘tadpole’. Both in Japan and in the Romance world, the former is generally named after its posture that looks like it is praying or after its bladelike limbs, when it is not seen as some kind of a (holy) horse. The latter gets its names from the fact that it is a baby frog, that it has a big head or that its shape is reminiscent of kitchen utensils. Our motivational maps show that such motives are massively shared by Japanese and Romance dialects as they cover a significant part of both areas. This rules out the possibility that they are due to chance. Etymologists already take advantage of this kind of discovery, that opens up new fields of research at the intersection of linguistics and cognitive sciences.