Lexical convergence and divergence in Portuguese 61tion. On the contrary, there is an increase in standard deviation. Similarly,
the global divergence tendency observed in clothing terms is not reflected
by an increase in standard deviation either. There is, indeed, a decrease in
standard deviation.
The analysis of the distribution of the individual uniformity values also
shows another aspect: the profiles that best reflect the global evolution
trend are those with highest weighted uniformity U’ values, i.e., the most
frequent ones (in the case of clothing, less frequent profiles also follow the
global divergent trend). The results are as follows (note that U’ 5% corres-
ponds to U 50%):
for football:
― U’ is equal or greater than 5% (7 profiles):
U’(P50, B50) 50.47% < U’(P70,B70) 65.02% ≅ U’(P00,B00) 69.15%
― U’ is lower than 5% (14 profiles):
U’(P50,B50) 24.37% > U’(P70,B70) 16.70% ≅ U’(P00,B00) 14.40%
for clothing:
― U’ is equal or greater than 5% (7 profiles):
U’(P50,B50) 84.56% > U’(P70,B70) 68.79% > U’(P00,B00) 63.68%
― U’ is lower than 5% (15 profiles):
U’(P50,B50) 51.29% < U’(P70,B70) 57.73% > U’(P00,B00) 37.89%
The comparison between the two lexical fields shows more clearly that the
evolutionary tendency between EP and BP is more homogeneous with re-
gard to clothing terms than to football terms. In the former, the most fre-
quent concepts as well as the least frequent terms reflect the global diver-
gent tendency.
- Internal diachronic analysis: item-related results
We will now examine the impact of two groups of features of the selected
items on the global evolution trend:
(1) endo-/exogenousness: we aim to know whether a conver-
gent/divergent evolution is determined by the exogen-
ous/endogenous orientation of one of the varieties towards the oth-
er during the converging/diverging process, i.e. if this occurs
through the adoption of exogenous terms and giving up of endo-
genous terms, or the opposite