En studie av lexikalisk variation för PUPPA och KOKONG i 1700-talets tidiga fackordförråd

During the 18th century, Sweden gained an important position in the emerging natural sciences, with Carl Linnaeus as a prominent figure. The scientific vocabulary in Swedish began to develop. This article studies how the two entomological concepts PUPPA and KOKONG were established and expressed lexically between 1740–1850. The questions addressed are which words are used, why these particular words were chosen and how the variation can be explained. The study uses cognitive theory, and the material is taken from 86 entomological texts by 13 authors. The results show that the concept PUPPA is rather immediately labelled with puppa. The reason is that Linnaeus saw a strong connection between the pupa’s resemblance to a swadelled baby and the meaning of pupa being ‘little girl’ in Latin. The lexical variation for KOKONG was greater, although puppa dominated, often in compounds such as puppehud. Kokong, however, was not used. Possible explanations might be that kokong was primarily associated with the silkworm and that the development of the pupal stage was not yet fully mapped. Accordingly, the pupa was difficult to distinguish from the cocoon. The study shows that the words used for PUPPA and KOKONG can be linked to different cognitive functions and to the image schema CONTAINER. The development of specialised language is thus based on general language use. As entomology developed, the lexical variation in Swedish was limited, while Latin gained an increasingly strong position.