Replacement of inherited words by Arabisms: the case of lande – bellota

The replacement of Arabisms by Latin cultisms and European foreign words is a common phenomenon in the history of the Spanish language. The opposite phenomenon, i.e. the substitution of a inherited word by an Arabism, is, however, less frequent. In this paper we intend to investigate the fate of the inherited word lande, substituted by the Arabic word bellota. First, a lexicographical investigation of Spanish historical dictionaries will be carried out, in order to check the usage of the words at the time, as well as the state of their lexical rivalry. Secondly, a corpus research will be carried out, taking as a basis the CDH corpus, the most complete diachronic corpus of Spanish. The study will attempt to answer the questions how? and why? of these lexical changes.