Lexical convergence and divergence in Portuguese 55What we can safely state now is that BP has clearly undergone more
changes than EP, which does not necessarily mean that BP is nearing any
closer to EP, in the sense of BP conforming to EP. In order to interpret the
results more thoroughly, the features of the terms studied need to be further
analyzed. As we will see in the next section, there is a factor which may
partly explain why BP exhibits greater changes, as well as the apparent
approaching of BP towards EP in the first two periods. This factor is the
introduction of loanwords which have had a greater influence on BP.
As for question (3), the percentages of I and I’ are indicative of a great
increase in internal uniformity in BP, mainly between 1950 and 1970, whe-
reas minor change is found in EP. I and I’ measures are a lot lower for B50
than P50; but happen to be higher for B70 and B00 as compared to P70 and
P00.
BP undergoes global and intermediate changes more clearly than EP.
That change is directed towards a strong increase in internal uniformity.
This may not always be the case, since if a variety changes a lot, such
change may either increase or decrease internal uniformity. The increase in
internal uniformity, which is stronger in BP, is due to the increase in inter-
nal homogeneity derived from two factors: i) the decrease in competition
between onomasiological alternatives in the majority of the profiles in fa-
vor of the dominance of a single term (sometimes two terms), and ii) a re-
duction in the number of alternative terms. It is BP which exhibits a greater
decrease in the number of alternative terms; only in 2 (BACK and MID-
FIELDER) of the 21 onomasiological profiles are there more synonyms in
BP00 than in EP00; in the rest of the profiles there are either fewer syn-
onyms in BP00 (11 profiles) or the same number (8 profiles); there are 4
profiles with only 1 term in BP00 (FOUL, OFFSIDE, GOALKEEPER and FREE
KICK), which is not observed in EP00; and finally, within the set of the 21
profiles and respective 183 terms, 93 are from EP00 against 71 in BP00.
A growing internal homogeneity in the field of football is thus observed
in both varieties between 1950 and 2000, but the tendency is higher in BP
than in EP. At present, this homogeneity has similar percentages in both
varieties, although BP exhibits a higher internal uniformity at the level of
the unweighted measure – I (B00) 75.80% > I (P00) 60.61%. We can in-
terpret this increase in internal uniformity as an indicator of standardiza-
tion, in the sense that standardization can be seen as a process which reduc-
es the internal formal onomasiological variation. This interpretation is set in
the context of the growing popularity and globalization of football over the
last 60 years. The more popular and globalized football becomes, the more
standardized its vocabulary tends to be. However, the association between