Lexical convergence and divergence in Portuguese 67As regards the percentage variation of endogenousness and exogenousness
in the field of clothing in the previous time period, we observe that the
changing number of exogenous terms is always larger than the changing
proportion of endogenous terms. But if we compare the percentages of
endogenousness and exogenousness linearly (defined according to each
time period), then the variation of endogenousness values is almost always
greater in terms of weighted measurement. This is consistent with the glob-
al divergent evolution observed in both varieties.
4.2. Loanwords
We will now examine the impact of loanwords on the global evolution,
calculating (using the A/A’ measures described in section 2) the proportion
of terms with feature ‘English’, ‘French’ or ‘loan’ (regardless of the origin)
within the onomasiological profile of a selected concept and then for all the
concepts included in the analysis of the samples of both varieties. In the
vocabulary of football, foreign loanwords are distributed into two catego-
ries: English loans and loans in general (including Spanish, Italian and
French loans). In the vocabulary of clothing, foreign borrowings are di-
vided into three categories: French loans, English loans and loans in gener-
al. In section 2, it was mentioned that when measuring the weight of loan-
words in the onomasiological profile of a given concept, the highest score
(1) was given to loanwords keeping their original form and the lowest score
(0.25) to strongly-adapted terms and loanword translations.
Tables 10 and 11 show the percentage results obtained for English loans
(A’Engl), French loans (A’Fr) and for all the foreign loanwords in general
(A’loan) in the Portuguese (P) and Brazilian (B) varieties, in the three pe-
riods under study. Only values in relation to weighted measure A’ are pre-
sented.
As regards the corpus of football, the influence of English borrowings
and other loans is clearly stronger in BP than in EP in all the periods stu-
died. Crucially, the huge percentage difference between B50 and P50 (the
number of English loans in BP is twice as large as in EP: 18.0% vs. 7.1%)
results from a larger number and a higher frequency of foreign borrowings
that keep their original form in BP. This is the case with referee, forward,
back, team, foul, goal, keeper, match, half, shoot, corner, for instance,
which are in the majority of cases absent from the European Portuguese
texts. This internal feature contributes significantly to a considerable dis-