60 Augusto Soares da Silva
― divergence is found in the vocabulary of clothing and restricted con-
vergence is found in the vocabulary of football: the hypothesis of di-
vergence is confirmed in the field of clothing but not in the field of
football;
― internal changes occur on a bigger scale in the Brazilian variety in both
lexical fields: BP changes more than EP;
― the most significant changes took place between 1950 and 1970;
― an orientation of one variety in relation to the other does not seem to
exist (neither approaching nor moving apart);
― the evolutionary situation is more direct and clearer as far as clothing
terms are concerned than football terms.
We have thus far only had a few indirect hints about the direction taken by
these changes. It is therefore important to study possible correlations be-
tween the results obtained until now and the special features of the lexical
items under analysis.
First of all, we will examine the distribution of uniformity values U/U’
for the different onomasiological profiles of each lexical field in the three
periods studied. The purpose is to find out if the slight global convergent
tendency observed for football terms and the clear global divergent tenden-
cy observed for clothing terms are in any way reflected in the distribution
of the uniformity percentages for the respective profiles. In short we want
to answer the following questions: do the uniformity values of the individ-
ual profiles follow the respective global tendency or are there different
uniformity values beyond the global tendency? We will calculate the stan-
dard deviation for each of the three moments. Standard deviation is defined
as the measure of the degree of variation of the whole set of results: the
higher the standard variation is, the greater the differences between the
results will be. Standard variation in uniformity values for the set of pro-
files of each lexical field are as follows:
football: 25.24 (1950); 33.87 (1970); 35.96 (2000);
clothing: 36.36 (1950); 35.19 (1970); 33.67 (2000).These high values of standard deviation show that the homogeneity be-
tween the profiles of each lexical field is not great. In each of the periods
studied significant fluctuations between the individual uniformity values
are observed, that is, there are always profiles with a uniformity degree
much higher than the average and profiles with a uniformity degree much
lower than the average. Furthermore, the global convergence tendency ob-
served in football terms is not reflected by the decrease in standard devia-