A cognitive sociolinguistic approach to metaphor and denominative variation: A

case study of marine biology terms1

José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno (University of Castile-La Mancha)

Pamela Faber (University of Granada)

This research applied corpus analysis techniques to a corpus of marine biology texts in

Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin American Spanish (LAS). The results explain why

these varieties of Spanish have different designations for the same sea organism. The

focus of our research was thus on types of formal onomasiological variation (Geeraerts,

Grondelaers & Bakema, 1994) and its pervasiveness in Spanish scientific discourse.

Also addressed was the incidence of metaphor in specialized concept formation and

designation. Domain-specific and standard strategies were used for the semi-automatic

retrieval of metaphorical terms. The resulting qualitative and quantitative account of

terminological diversity reflected the pervasiveness of intralingual denominative

variation in scientific language and also identified its causes.

Keywords: intralingual variation, cognitive sociolinguistics, metaphor

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 2

1. Introduction

Cognitive Sociolinguistics (e.g. Geeraerts, Kristiansen & Peirsman, 2010; Kristiansen &

Dirven, 2008; Speelman, Grondelaers, & Geeraerts, 2003) is a field of research that

focuses on the interaction of conceptual meaning and variational factors as reflected in

the analysis of corpus data (Geeraerts et al., 2010, p. 1). This model draws on empirical

methods to measure lexical-semantic as well as constructional language-internal

variation. According to Geeraerts (2006, p. 30), language variation has been studied in

Cognitive Linguistics and related disciplines from many perspectives: (i) a diachronic

perspective (Bybee, 2001; Geeraerts, 1997); (ii) a cross-linguistic and anthropological

perspective (Levinson, 2003; Pederson, 1998); (iii) a developmental perspective

(Tomasello, 2003). However, until recently, intralingual and sociolinguistic diversity has

been largely ignored.

This is also true of research on conceptual metaphor where introspective research has

been done from a monolingual perspective (e.g. Feldman, 2006; Lakoff & Johnson,

1980, 1999) and a cross-linguistic perspective (e.g. Kövecses, 2005, 2006). However,

now there is increasingly more research that uses statistical and corpus-based strategies.

Monolingual corpus studies on metaphor include Koller et al. (2008), Sardinha (2008),

and Semino (2006), whereas examples of cross-linguistic studies are Charteris-Black &

Musolff (2003) and Chun (2002). Nevertheless, none of this research addresses

language-internal variation.

In Terminology, there is a growing number of corpus-based studies that provide

statistical data on conceptual and linguistic metaphor in architecture (Caballero, 2006),

civil engineering (Boquera, 2005), and marine biology (Ureña & Faber, 2011). In fact,

in the same way as in Cognitive Linguistics, Terminology has also experienced a

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 3

sociocognitive shift, which brings communication-oriented and discourse-centered

research to the forefront (Temmerman & Kerremans, 2003). For instance, Ureña &

Tercedor (2011) establish a typology of sociocognitive patterns for marine biology

metaphor and highlight how they reflect interlinguistic differences and similarities.

Such research complements and enriches monolingual work on the sensorimotor

underpinnings of terminological metaphor (e.g. Ureña & Faber, 2010).

It is only recently that language-internal variation has started to be addressed in depth

in domain-specific and specialized language. One of the sociolectometric studies that

address the convergence and divergence between intralingual varieties in domain-

specific discourse is Da Silva (2010) for Brazilian and European Portuguese in football

and clothing. There are studies on terminological diversity in different specialized

knowledge domains, such as energy fields (Dury & Lerva, 2008) and American Legal

English (Goźdź-Roszkowski, 2011). To further research in terminological variation, this

study examines a corpus of marine biology texts in Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin

American Spanish (LAS). The results explain why these varieties of Spanish have

different designations for the same sea organism. The focus is thus on types of formal

onomasiological variation (Geeraerts, Grondelaers & Bakema, 1994) (i.e. intra-lingual

denominative diversity) and its pervasiveness in Spanish scientific discourse. Also

addressed is the incidence of metaphor in specialized concept formation and

designation.

The difference between synonymy and variation has always been a controversial

topic. According to the standard view, synonymy concerns lexical change whereas

variation involves syntactic or morphosyntactic order change, morphological change, as

well as orthographic and typological change (Freixa, 2002). Nevertheless, Suárez (2004,
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 4

p. 65) claims that there are currently no conclusive criteria that differentiate variation

from synonymy. For this reason, variant and synonym are used interchangeably in this

paper. All types of variant retrieved from the corpus were considered and computed,

except for orthographic and typological change (e.g. seafan, sea fan, sea-fan).

Our vision of synonymy is closely linked to context. According to Hamon and

Nazarenko (2001, p. 200), two terms X and Y are synonymous in a context C if both

terms are syntactically identical and semantically substitutable in that context. This

assumption is central to our analysis because as reflected in our corpus data, the

meaning of single-word terminological variants can vary or even be deactivated when

the term is decontextualized.

The application of domain-specific strategies previously used for semi-automatic

metaphorical term retrieval (cf. Ureña & Faber, 2011) provided qualitative and

quantitative evidence of regularities in language-internal terminological variation. In

this sense, our study explains the causes of specialized language variation with a

particular emphasis on metaphor. This paper also shows how both variation and

metaphor operate to channel conceptualization and knowledge transfer in scientific

communication.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the materials and method used

in the study to find terminological variants, identify their metaphorical nature, and

quantify them. Section 3 explains how the research method was applied and discusses

the qualitative (3.1) as well as the quantitative results (3.2) obtained. Finally, Section 4

summarizes the conclusions that can be derived from this research.

2. Materials and method

2.1 Research objectives

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 5

Our research study had the following objectives:

 To obtain the onomasiological range of a set of concepts referring to sea

organisms, namely the nearly total set of expressions that occur as designations

of each of these concepts in a text corpus (Geeraerts & Speelman, 2010).

 To quantify the incidence of the types of intra-linguistic term variation in the

corpus. In this regard, particular attention was paid to geographical variation,

interlinguistic borrowings, and cognitive perspective.

 To quantitatively determine the significance of metaphor as a trigger of

terminological heterogeneity.

To achieve these goals, a corpus of marine biology texts was processed and analyzed.

Details about this corpus are provided in section 2.2.

2.2 The corpus

The search for observational patterns inevitably involves examining authentic corpus

data, regardless of the theoretical model chosen. This type of bottom-up methodology is

the foundation of usage-based linguistics (Langacker, 1999, 91). The analysis of

authentic data is even more important in metaphor research because corpus evidence

helps users to detect cases of inactive conventional metaphors and compensates for the

arbitrariness of dictionaries (Charteris-Black, 2004, p. 19).

Accordingly, we compiled a corpus of texts from Spanish academic journals on

marine biology and environmental science. Some of the journals are included in the

Journal Citation Reports2, which provides an objective means to rank the world’s

leading journals with quantifiable, statistical information based on citation data.

Although the other journals in the corpus did not have a JCR ranking, they were
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 6

considered to be quality publications because they were published by official organisms

or because they appeared either on the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) or

the Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal

(Redalyc) websites. These websites have a strict set of norms, guidelines, and selection

criteria that guarantee the quality of the articles3.

Geographical parameters are a major cause of intralingual lexical variation

(Geeraerts et al., 2010). In this study, geographical distance was a particularly

productive cause of intra-lingual terminological diversity. For this reason, the journals

were grouped according to the country or region whose sea life is described. In this

sense, not only were Peninsular Spanish (PS) and Latin American Spanish (LAS)

compared, but also the varieties of each that were spoken in a country or region. Table 1

lists the journals in this study.

Table 1. Spanish academic journals and the number of research articles and tokens in

the corpus

JCR Citation Number of

Journal Origin Tokens
Index articles
Ciencias Marinas Mexico 0.041 11 74,792
Revista de Biología
Chile 0.032 57 450,335
Marina y Oceanografía
Instituto Español de
Spain 0.028 64 609,998
Oceanografía
Consejo Superior de
Spain — 1 (book) 152,208
Investigaciones Científicas
Investigaciones Marinas Chile — 56 449,506
Revista de Biología
Costa Rica — 33 252,069
Tropical
Boletín de Investigaciones
Colombia — 28 276,371
Marinas y Costeras
Multequina – Latin
American Journal of Argentina — 6 44,584
Natural resources
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 7

Total: 256 Total:

2,309,863

2.3 Lects and causes of variation in this study

To quantify intralingual variation in marine biology, it was first necessary to gain

knowledge about the different causes of this variation. Table 2 shows Freixa’s (2006, p.

69) typology, which helped us to carry out our study. The left column lists six types of

variation and the right column, two or three subtypes for each. Paying attention to this

classification enabled us to subsequently focus on those causes that were expected to

have a significant impact on the marine biology terminology (see below).

Table 2. Causes of terminological variation

Type
1. Preliminary causes
2. Dialectal causes
3. Functional causes
4. Discursive causes
5. Interlinguistic causes
6. Cognitive causes
Subtype
Linguistic redundancy
Arbitrariness of the linguistic sign
Geographical variation
Chronological variation
Social variation
Adaptation to the level of language
Adaptation to the level of specialization
Avoiding repetition
Linguistic economy
Cohabitation of the “local” term and the loanword
Diversity of alternative approaches
Conceptual imprecision
Ideological detachment
Differences in conceptualization

Based on corpus data, we estimated the importance of these causes and evaluated

their overlap. A language-internal variant is also known as a lect, a general term used to

refer to a wide range of language varieties, such as dialects, regiolects, national

varieties, registers, styles, and idiolects (Geeraerts, 2006, p. 30). Our aim was to explore
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 8

how lectal variables in marine biology texts pattern with each other as well as with

linguistic variables (Geeraerts, 2010b, p.6).

As previously mentioned, not all of the subtypes in Table 2 were considered in the

corpus. In this regard, we only focused on terminological hetero-variation (when

different experts name the same concept in different ways) and excluded self-variation

(when an expert uses different designations for the same concept) (Freixa, 2006, p. 52).

Self-variation normally occurs for discursive and stylistic reasons (e.g. avoidance of

repetition). In contrast, hetero-variation typically emerges from geographical, cognitive,

and interlinguistic factors (Freixa, 2005), which are more relevant to denotational

synonymy in scientific discourse. This study thus explores the characteristics and

relational structure of concepts (cognitive causes) in which metaphor plays a leading

role. Accordingly, it analyzes conceptualization and its relation to the socio-

communicative factors that have an impact on term choice (geographical and

interlinguistic causes).

This study complements previous research by providing quantitative empirical

evidence of the most recurrent types of denominative terminological hetero-variation in

specialized language. This is all-important because currently there are no reliable data

on the importance of any of these causes.

2.4 Method

We applied a set of corpus-searching techniques devised in a previous study (Ureña &

Faber, 2011) to retrieve English-Spanish metaphor term pairs. These techniques were

the following: (i) extraction with target domain keywords; (ii) extraction with source

domain keywords; (iii) extraction with lexical markers. This third technique was found
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 9

to be particularly useful for the semi-automatic extraction of language-internal

synonyms.

Lexical variation has rarely been studied as a sociolinguistic variable because there is

the problem of determining whether two words are semantically equivalent and whether

they designate the same concept (Geeraerts, 2010a). The lexical markers provide a

solution for this problem.

Furthermore, a tagging system was used to quantify the occurrences of synonyms.

This quantification also involved measuring and parameterizing terminological

divergence in PS and LAS as well as between more local varieties within the continent.

One of the very few sociolectometric studies that address the convergence and

divergence between intralingual varieties in specialized discourse is Da Silva (2010) for

Brazilian and European Portuguese. Unlike our study, Da Silva addresses domain-

specific rather than specialized terminology, and does not specify which strategies were

used to retrieve variants from his corpus. Moreover, his study is diachronic, whereas

ours is synchronic.

Finally, it was necessary to identify the metaphorical basis of the terminological

variants drawn from the corpus. Metaphor identification is often understated in current

research, and this applies to specialized language as well (Caballero, 2006, p. 65). This

can lead to somewhat unreliable results since metaphor identification is far from easy.

From a linguistic perspective, studies of terminological metaphor are mostly based on

intuition and random inference to determine the metaphorical nature of terms. However,

there are strategies that can be used to avoid subjective choices.

We used two strategies to obtain objective evidence of metaphorical usage. The first

strategy involves exploring the linguistic context of the term in academic article(s) and
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 10

online marine biology databases, such as Fishbase (http://www.fishbase.org), in search

of an explicit or implicit explanation. Context analysis was performed by using the View

Text option in the Concord module of Wordsmith Tools. This function displays a co-text

of 400 words for single concordance lines, as shown in context (1). This context, which

was extracted from an academic journal published in Cuba, contains an explicit

explanation of the figurative meaning of pez león [lionfish]. As specified in (1), this fish

“belongs to the family Scorpenidae, which means little scorpion in Greek due to the

pointed protuberances that inject potent venom”.

(1) El pez león (Pterois volitans) […] pertenece a la familia de los Escorpénidos o
peces espinosos, del griego skorpaina (diminutivo de escorpión), por sus
prolongaciones espinosas y la potencialidad de su veneno. (Revista Cubana de
Medicina Militar 42(2), 235-243)

Context (2), which was extracted from an academic journal published in Venezuela,

explains that “scorpion fish have strong, short, erectile spines with anterolateral

poisonous glands showing elongates cavities”.

(2) Los peces escorpión del género Scorpaena […] poseen espinas o púas eréctiles
cortas y fuertes (12-13 en su aleta dorsal, 2 en la pélvica y 3 en la anal), las
cuales tienen en su porción antero-lateral glándulas de veneno con cavidades
alargadas. (Investigación Clínica 49(3), 299-307).

This is thus an explicit explanation of the same metaphorical basis of pez león. In this

case, however, the term defined is pez escorpión [scorpionfish], which designates a fish

of the same family as pez león. These examples anticipate more cases of terminological

variation found in this study.

Context (3) provides an implicit explanation of why pez mantequilla [butter fish]

receives its name. It is argued that “a rectal excretion of a greasy substance after
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 11

consumption of certain fish with high fat content” is analyzed, concretely, “after intake

of butterfish”. The metaphorical nature of pez mantequilla can thus be inferred from this

description.

(3) Se conoce como keriorrhea la emisión rectal de una sustancia grasa anaranjada
tras el consumo de ciertos peces con alto contenido en grasas. Se presenta el caso
de dos niños que manifestaron este cuadro tras consumir un pescado llamado
"pez mantequilla". (Revista de Pediatría y Atención Primaria 14(3), 49-52).

When the contextual analysis was not sufficient to attest the metaphorical motivation

of a term, it was necessary to examine the image of sea organisms in the electronic

database consulted as well as on the Google image search engine. This study includes

pictures of sea organisms, some of which were crucial to finding the metaphorical

motivation of their terms (e.g. Picture 7).

By applying these two strategies, we were able to test the metaphorical nature of

marine biology terms against empirical data.

3. Results and discussion

This section explains how lexical markers and tags facilitated the retrieval of

intralingual terminological variants in Spanish.

3.1 Qualitative study

As previously mentioned, lexical markers were used to retrieve terminological variants.

These markers, which recovered literal and figurative common names from the corpus,

were both domain-specific and standard. The domain-specific markers were taxonomic

designations4 and the standard markers were the phrases (localmente) conocido/a como

“(locally) known as”, denominado/a (comúnmente) como “(commonly) named”, and

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 12

(también) llamado “(also) called”. Both types were concordanced with the lexical

analysis program Wordsmith Tools®. The collocational horizons of the search word were

five words to the left and five words to the right of the node.

3.1.1 Domain-specific markers

As evidenced in the concordances and collocates, taxonomic designations were

extremely productive lexical markers for common-name terms. This was crucial for the

identification of metaphorical PS-LAS variants because no theory of metaphor can

predict which word forms will be used more often metaphorically (Sardinha, 2008, p.

128). Taxonomic designations were collected from the co-texts of extracted terms and

from the checklists in the academic articles (see Figure 1 for a species list from a

Mexican estuary). Although taxonomic designations are used to guarantee referential

accuracy, the corpus data showed that synonymy is frequent in specialized discourse.
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 13

Figure 1. Checklist of fish species in the Tuxpan-Tampamachoco estuary, Mexico.

The concordance lines showed significant convergence in the way the two speech

communities designate the same concepts. However, the concordances also reflected

many denominative differences. This can be observed in concordance lines (4) and (5),

which include the pair yubarta and ballena jorobada, both of which are Spanish terms

for humpback whale. Although the quantitative analysis revealed that both terms are

commonly used by experts in Spain and Latin America, it was also evident that PS

biologists tend to favor yubarta (81 hits across a range of articles) over ballena

jorobada (35 hits). In contrast, LA biologists clearly prefer ballena jorobada (97 hits) to

yubarta (1 hit).

The comparison of each term in the onomasiological range of a concept in the marine

biology corpus is one of the three criteria that were used as evidence of terminological
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 14

variation mediated by geographic fragmentation. The other two criteria were the

following: (i) the lexical markers (localmente) conocido/a como “(locally) known as”,

and (también) llamado x en y “(also) called x in y” (where x stands for the common-

name term and y stands for the place where the term is used); (ii) the first author’s

knowledge of scientific terminology. In the previously mentioned case, it was the

taxonomic designation Megaptera novaeangliae that helped to identify the variants

yubarta and ballena jorobada in examples (4) and (5).

(4) Este último es el caso de la YUBARTA (Megaptera novaeangliae) que, aun siendo
habitual en los océanos de todo el mundo (Fernández-Casado et al. 2001), en raras
ocasiones se adentra en el interior del MAR MEDITERRÁNEO (Aguilar 1989) (IEO <
Galemys 18(1-2), 2006, Notas, 40-42)

(5) La BALLENA JOROBADA del Pacífico suroriental (Megaptera novaeangliae)

migra entre el área de reproducción, principalmente en las aguas de ECUADOR Y
COLOMBIA, y el área de alimentación alrededor de la península Antártica. (Rev.
Biol. Mar. Ocean.41(1), 2006, 11-19)

The metaphorical motivation of these terms indicates that this is a terminological

doublet, i.e. a term pair in which the semantics of one term is transparent whereas the

other is Latin in origin, and thus, opaque (Suárez, 2004, p. 64). Accordingly, yubarta

comes from the French jubartes, which in turn stems from gibbus (Latin for Spanish

giba/joroba, ‘humpback’). Ballena jorobada, ‘humpback whale’, is a transparent

metaphor. In both cases, a physical feature is compared with the curve of the whale’s

back when diving. However, despite its opaque meaning, the formal term, yubarta, is

more frequent in PS scientific discourse.

Visuals greatly assist experts in explaining specialized concepts (Fernandes, 2004).

This is true for concept names based on resemblance5 metaphor concepts (see Picture
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 15

1), which illustrates the motivation for the metaphorical transfer of the synonyms

yubarta and ballena jorobada.

Picture 1. Humpback of the ballena jorobada/yubarta.

The terms in contexts (4) and (5) are examples of how geographic fragmentation

prompts intralingual variation, even when the cognitive perspective regarding the

motivation for the naming of the concept (i.e. metaphorical transfer) is shared by the

two speech communities. Other examples in this study show that geographic

fragmentation and cognitive preferences generally go hand in hand since different

cognitive perspectives often involve different speech communities, which are separated

geographically.

The concordances also show the influence of English on Spanish, which triggers

term variation in Spain and Latin America. This influence was reflected in the corpus by

interlinguistic borrowings, adaptations of the English terms, and literal translations.

These three types of borrowing are what Bertaccini, Massari & Castagnoli (2010, p. 16)

call pathological synonymy. Unlike physiological synonymy, pathological synonymy is

arbitrary (i.e. not functional), involves the coexistence of a foreign and a native term,

and gives rise to a wide range of equivalent expressions.

An example of term adaptation is the LAS term macarela in (6), which stems from

mackerel. As shown in (7), this adaptation is an example of intra-lingual variation

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 16

because the PS designation of this fish (Scomber scombrus) is caballa, the Latin word

for Spanish yegua and English mare. This is a metaphor originally based on the jumping

and flying ability of the fish Cheilopogon heterurus (Exocoetidae family), whose

morphology and striped dorsal skin partially resemble that of the Scomber scombrus

(Pictures 2 and 3). This physical resemblance caused the Scomber scombrus to also be

known as caballa (Coromines & Pascual, 1997).

(6) La abundancia relativa de la MACARELA (Scomber scombrus) fue

significativamente mayor en la REGIÓN DE LA ISLA PATOS, respecto a cualquier otra
región. (Revista de Biología Tropical, 56(2), 2008, 575-590)

(7) La pretensión de esta tesis es tener un conocimiento más amplio de las

características biológicas de la CABALLA Scomber scombrus L., 1758 del
Atlántico nordeste en el norte y noroeste de la PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA. (IEO, PhD
dissertation)

Picture 2. Exocoetidae fish (flying fish) Picture 3. Scomber scombrus (caballa)

A case of direct borrowing that causes PS-LAS variation is turbot, which was

extracted by concordancing the taxonomic designation Psetta maxima. As shown in (8)

and (9), LAS biologists use the terms rodaballo and turbot with a preference for the

latter. In contrast, PS experts prefer rodaballo. Turbot and rodaballo occurred 51 and 10

times in the LAS texts, respectively, whereas the PS texts yielded 73 occurrences of

rodaballo with no hits for turbot.

(8) La alimentación de juveniles de Paralichthys adspersus ha sido provista

tradicionalmente por dietas formuladas para juveniles de RODABALLO o TURBOT
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 17

(Psetta maxima Linnaeus, 1758), bajo el supuesto que los peces planos tienen
hábitos de vida similares (Alvial and Manríquez 1999). (Rev. Biol. Mar. Oceanogr.
(1), 2011, 9-16)

(9) Trataremos en particular los problemas patológicos de especies conocidas de

peces planos en cultivo, como el RODABALLO (Scophthalmus/Psetta maxima),
lenguado (Solea sp.), fletán (Hippoglossus hipoglossus), así como de otras
especies. (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2000)

Interestingly, (9) shows that denominative variation is not only present in scientific

common names but also in taxonomic designations (Scophthalmus/Psetta maxima).

Concordances of Tursiops truncatus, a type of dolphin, reflected that terminological

diversity in Spanish can be caused by literal translations from English. Figure 2 was

extracted from an article in Ciencias Marinas, a bilingual Latin American journal. This

format was extremely helpful in identifying not only literal translations, but also other

types of borrowing. Figure 2 shows that LA Spanish is more influenced by English than

peninsular Spanish. LA biologists use the metaphorical term delfín nariz de botella,

which is the literal translation of bottlenose dolphin. This name refers to the dolphin’s

snout, which is short and stubby in comparison with that of the rest of members of the

Delphinidae family (see Picture 4).

Figure 2. Extract from a bilingual article in Ciencias Marinas (36 (1), 2010, 71-81).

In contrast, the corpus data reflected that peninsular Spanish has less of a tendency to

adapt or incorporate English names. Context (10) shows that PS biologists

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 18

metaphorically refer to Tursiops truncatus as delfín mular ‘mule dolphin’. The dolphin

is compared to a mule because of its robust appearance as well as its energetic and

hardy nature. In fact, this species is the most common in aquaria, where it is in close and

constant contact with people.

(10) […] las aguas que rodean el ESTRECHO DE GIBRALTAR, del 8 al 26 de julio de
1993, se realizaron períodos de observación para el avistamiento de cetáceos. Se
hicieron 62 avistamientos que correspondieron a las siguientes especies: delfín
común Delphinus delphis Linnaeus, 1758 (31 % de los avistamientos); calderón
Globicephala sp. (26 %); delfín listado Stenella coeruleoalba (Meyen, 1833) (23
%); DELFÍN MULAR Tursiops truncatus (Montagu, 1821) (18 %) (IEO, 24, 1997,
65-73)

The corpus revealed that LA scientists also make use of the alternative term tursión

(11), an adaptation of the Latin tursio ‘porpoise’ and the Greek ops ‘face’, which

combine to form Tursiops. Curiously enough, truncatus, the second constituent, also

refers to the shortness of this animal’s snout in that it appears to be cut off or truncated.

(11) El primero corresponde a un grupo observado junto con TURSIONES (Tursiops

truncatus) y calderones de aleta corta (Globicephala macrorhynchus) en bahía
Cumberland, isla Robinson Crusoe frente a CHILE CENTRAL. (Rev. Biología
Marina y Oceanografía, 38(2), 2003, 81-85).

Picture 4. Short snout of the bottle-nose dolphin.

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 19

These corpus examples provide evidence that Tursiops truncatus has three

metaphorical common names. In this case, variation is largely due to the influence of

the English language on LAS. Different cognitive perspectives are associated with the

geographical distance separating LAS and PS.

3.1.2 Standard markers

Standard markers were very productive in identifying synonyms on an intracontinental

scale. For instance, the phrase también llamado ‘also called’ in (12) revealed the

presence of the terms flecha de plata and matungo, together with pejerrey. All three

terms designate a fish typically found in Argentina and Uruguay.

(12) Unos años más tarde, en 1960, se transplanta oficialmente en nuestro medio
acuático una especie más, el PEJERREY (Odontesthes bonariensis) o también
llamado vulgarmente «FLECHA DE PLATA» o «MATUNGO», oriundo del RÍO DE LA
PLATA, RÍO PARANÁ y URUGUAY MEDIO E INFERIOR y LAGUNAS DE LA CUENCA
DEL RÍO SALADO (BUENOS AIRES) (Ringuelet, 1967). (Multequina 4, 1995)

Although the three are LAS variants, pejerrey is a generic term, widely used across

Latin America. This supports the claim that lectal varieties are not necessarily discrete

entities with well-defined characteristics and strict isoglosses (Kristiansen, 2008, p. 59).

However, terminological diversity is a fact since flecha de plata and matungo are

mostly used in Argentina and Uruguay. In fact, the geographical range (Geeraerts &

Speelman, 2010, p. 32) of matungo is specified in its non-figurative general language

sense in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española:

ARG. y UR. Dicho de un caballo: Que carece de buenas cualidades físicas.

‘ARGENTINA and URUGUAY. Of or relating to a horse in poor physical condition’
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 20

More specifically, matungo is a Latin American word with an African origin. This is

a common linguistic phenomenon in the Latin America because of the importation of

African black slaves that began in the 15th century (Lapesa, 1942, p. 534). Matungo thus

reflects that borrowings from indigenous languages even exist in scientific terminology.

These borrowings may in turn be the cause of intralinguistic variation affecting the

geographical continuum of a speech community, as is the case of matungo with respect

to flecha de plata (typically Argentinean and Uruguayan) and pejerrey (a more

widespread term). According to Geeraerts & Speelman (2010, p. 23), lexical variation in

a geographical or social continuum occurs because societal and material factors trigger

the interaction of different language systems.

In studies on metaphor, the significance of borrowing has been discussed in a range

of knowledge fields. For instance, Trim (2011, p. 84), who conducts a diachronic

analysis of the evolution of conceptual mapping, argues that a great deal of borrowing

takes place in drug terminology as a result of its international nature. However, research

in metaphorical borrowing in marine biology is yet to be exploited. In our case, the

phrase que carece de buenas cualidades físicas ‘in poor physical condition’ in the

definition of matungo is a cue for the metaphorical motivation of the term since it

establishes a comparison between an enfeebled horse and a fish with a thin elongated

shape (Picture 5).

The metaphorical motivation of pejerrey is also grounded in the shape and physical

appearance of the fish. However, rather surprisingly, the cognitive perspective in this

case is positive instead of negative. The explanation lies in the term itself, which reflects

the fact that specialized language is subject to the same rules as general language. More

specifically, pejerrey is combination of pej6 (phonological adaptation of pez ‘fish’ and

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 21

rrey (orthographic adaptation of rey ‘king’). Consequently, the term, pejerrey “king

fish”, foregrounds the slimness and elegance of this fish. In fact, its elongated shape and

shiny gray color is also the metaphorical motivation of the term flecha de plata ‘silver

arrow’. Therefore, the same fish can be named from a negative, positive, and neutral

cognitive perspective. Unlike the term pair, ballena jorobada-yubarta, the

onomasiological range of Odontesthes bonariensis reflects different cognitive

perspectives, underlying the geographic fragmentation of the designations.

Picture 5. Fish known as pejerrey, flecha de plata, or matungo.

When pejerrey was concordanced, the data showed that this term designated a

different fish in peninsular Spanish, as shown in context (13).

(13) Aspectos de la biología reproductora del PEJERREY o GUELDE BLANCO Atherina

presbyter Cuvier, 1829 (Atherinidae) en GRAN CANARIA (Islas Canarias) […] En
Canarias, esta especie, denominada comúnmente GUELDE BLANCO, es utilizada
como cebo vivo en la pesquería de túnidos desarrollada por la flota artesanal.
(Boletín Instituto Español Oceanografía 17(3-4), 2001)

This example supports our claim that the meaning of a single-word term can change,

depending on the context. Accordingly, pejerrey can refer to different fish species

(Atherinopsidae or Atherinidae), if it appears in a PS article or in an LAS article.

However, not surprisingly, the same metaphor has been lexicalized in both speech

communities because the two fish families belong to the same order. Atheriniformes
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 22

have an elongated and slender shape, and furthermore, the Atherina presbyter is grayish

in color (see Picture 6).

Picture 6. Atherina presbyter.

Interestingly enough, the standard marker denominada comúnmente ‘commonly

known as’, together with the more specific geographical marker en Canarias ‘in the

Canary Islands’, showed that the generic PS term pejerrey has a lectal variant, guelde

blanco ‘white guelde’. Consequently, geographic fragmentation also affects PS texts.

The geographical origin of the term was confirmed by the entry for guelde in the

Diccionario Básico de Canarismos (2010, p. 227):

(Atherina presbyter) Pequeño pez pelágico de color plateado […] Los

pescadores lo suelen utilizar como carnada […] En algunas zonas de Canarias
se conoce con los nombres de “longorón” y “ruama”.
‘(Atherina presbyter) Small pelagic, silvery fish […] Fishermen generally use it
as bait […] In certain areas of the Canary Islands, this fish is known as longorón
and ruama’.

This dictionary entry is relevant for three reasons. First of all, this entry contributes

two more lectal variants for Atherina presbyter, i.e. longorón and ruama. Secondly, the

Canary Islands term, ruama, is a variant of ruana, which means grayish in color

(Diccionario de la Real Academia Española). The terms guelde blanco ‘white guelde’

and ruama are thus examples of social categorization (Kristiansen, 2008, p. 417), which

is a cognitive process involving the accentuation of intragroup similarities and

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 23

intergroup differences on a continuous dimension. In this sense, white and gray are

colors that overlap in a transition zone of the dimension of color. The color of Atherina

presbyter (light gray or grayish white) lies in this transition zone (see Picture 6). One

group of Canary Islanders originally perceived the color of this fish as light gray

(ruama), whereas another group perceived the color as dirty white (guelde blanco).

Thirdly, the dictionary entry states that fishermen use this fish as bait. The term guelde

evidently resembles gueldo, which is defined by the Diccionario de la Real Academia

Española as follows:

Cebo que emplean los pescadores, hecho de camarones y otros crustáceos

pequeños.
‘Bait used by fishermen, which consists of shrimp and other small crustaceans’

The term guelde must thus be an insular lectal variant of the general language word

gueldo, which designates not only small crustaceans, but also fish.

These examples not only show that geographical fragmentation in specialized

language occurs in PS and LAS, but also within Spain. The corpus also yielded

instances of country-specific LAS variation in which metaphorical thought figures

prominently. For example, the keywords conocida como ‘known as’ in (14) show that

the species Fissurella crassa is called lapa de sol ‘sun limpet’ in northern Chile,

whereas it is called lapa ocho ‘eight limpet’ in central and southern Chile. This means

that the maximal geographical range (Geeraerts & Speelman, 2010, p. 32) of the term

lapa ocho is wider than that of lapa de sol.

(14) Con este propósito se ha escogido a Fissurella crassa, conocida como “LAPA DE
SOL” en el NORTE DE CHILE (Bretos 1978) o “LAPA OCHO” en la ZONA CENTRAL Y
SUR del país. (Revista de Biología Marina y Oceanografía, 33(2), 1998: 223–239)
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 24

Again, metaphor is a cognitive cause underlying geographical fragmentation in intra-

lingual diversity. Lapa ocho refers to a limpet whose shape is more ellipsoid than

normal, and which resembles the number eight (Picture 7). In contrast, lapa de sol is not

metaphorical, and refers to the fact that this limpet usually clings to rock clefts where it

is easily reached by the sunlight.

Picture 7. Lapa ocho [eight limpet].

The physical and behavioral characteristics of marine organisms have been shown to

have a crucial bearing on their conceptualization and lexicalization. In fact, certain

concept features enhance onomasiological heterogeneity not only in everyday language

(Geeraerts & Speelman, 2010, p. 24), but also in specialized language. By the same

token, the different cognitive perspectives adopted to conceptualize marine biology

entities through metaphor demonstrate that “experience affects representation” (Bybee,

2001, p. 67). In other words, these perspectives are an integral part of the dynamics of

cognition in specialized language, according to which “cognition is a dynamic process

in which concepts and conceptual structures adapt to the speakers’ cultural, social and

situational environment” (Fernández-Silva, Freixa & Cabré, 2001).

3.2. Quantitative study: Corpus annotation and term quantification

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 25

The second tool used was a manual tagging system. Corpus annotation has been shown

to yield optimal results concerning different aspects of metaphor description. Manual

tagging is the most frequent type of corpus formatting. For instance, Semino (2006)

annotates her corpus to describe a specific kind of metaphorical speech act annotation,

whereas Sardinha (2008) annotates his corpus to compute the probabilities of each

candidate word form being a vehicle metaphor. Another body of research relies on

artificial intelligence, which offers automatic semantic field annotation tools, such as the

UCREL Semantic Annotation System for English texts (Koller, Hardie, Rayson &

Semino, 2008; Hardie, Koller, Rayson & Semino, 2007), and metaphor extraction

systems that exploit the codification of pre-defined semantic relations between units in

lexical databases, as is the case of CorMet (Mason, 2004).

Although convincing results have been obtained, the approaches of these studies are

not suitable for our research. First of all, it is not clear how the USAS could be

systematically exploited to reflect intra-lingual differences of resemblance metaphors in

Spanish, something that is guaranteed by our tag set. Secondly, the procedure used in

projects such as CorMet is only valid for verbs7, whereas this study focuses on nouns.

All instances of intra-lingual variants in the PS and LAS corpora were annotated with

one of the tags used in Ureña & Faber (2011). Accordingly, TAXO was placed next to

each taxonomic designation co-occurring with a figurative or literal common name

term. Concordancing this tag with Wordsmith Tools was particularly useful since it also

facilitated the retrieval of those PS and LAS terms that were not metaphorical in nature.

The next step was to analyze the TAXO-tagged terms and their co-text to identify

cases of language-internal synonymy. Needless to say, non-specific markers, such as

conocido como ‘known as’, were also of great help for this purpose. The goal was not
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 26

only to quantify PS and LAS terminological synonyms, but also to classify them based

on geographic fragmentation and interlinguistic borrowings8. For this purpose, the

following tags were added to the variants identified:

- Tags indicating geographic fragmentation:

o INTER: for terms reflecting PS-LAS variation

o LAT: for terms reflecting varation in LA countries or regions

o PEN: for terms reflecting variation on the Iberian Peninsula and Islands

- Tags indicating English-Spanish interlinguistic borrowings:

o DB: direct borrowing

o ADA: adaptation

o LT: literal translation

In addition, the tag METAPH was crucial for the computation of Spanish-language

metaphorical variants.

Figure 3 is a Wordsmith Tools screenshot of some of the concordances from the

corpus by concordancing the tag INTER. This procedure facilitated the retreival of LAS-

PS terminological synonyms. The cotext of many of the terms reveals that they are used

in Latin America or Spain.

Figure 3. Concordances of the INTER tag with PS-LAS term variants.

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 27

In Figure 3, concordances 1 and 2 include the synonyms tortuga golfina ‘gulf turtle’

and tortuga olivácea ‘olive turtle’, mostly found in PS texts, and their variant tortuga

lora ‘parrot turtle’, only found in LAS texts. Concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 3) show the

LAS term tortuga cabezona ‘big-head turtle’ and tortuga boba ‘loggerhead turtle’,

widely used in the PS texts. Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 3) include the PS term lampuga

[no translation] and its LAS synonym pez dorado ‘golden fish’. Concordances 7 and 8

(Fig. 3) show the term ostión del Pacífico ‘giant oyster from the Pacific’, used in

peninsular Spanish, and the LAS variant ostra rizada ‘curly oyster’. As can be seen,

many of these terms are metaphorical in nature.

Figure 4 shows concordances of the tag LAT, which contain terminological variants

in Latin America. Concordances 1 and 2 (Fig. 4) retrieve the term pargo manchado

‘stained snapper’, used in Costa Rica, and pargo lunarejo ‘spotty snapper’, which

appears in a Mexican article. Concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 4) include the Mexican,

Colombian and Ecuadorian synonyms, pata de mula ‘mule-leg (clam)’, piangua [no

translation], and concha prieta ‘swarthy shell’, respectively. These synonyms were also

retrieved by concordancing the lexical marker conocido como ‘known as’.

Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 4) contain the two common name variants of Nodipecten

subnodosus in the corpus, escalopa (no translation) and almeja mano de león ‘lion’s

paw clam’.

Figure 4. Concordances with terminological synonyms in Latin America.

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 28

Figure 5 includes concordances obtained with the tag PEN, which was used to

retrieve PS synonyms. Again, the cotext indicates the origin of the terms. Concordances

1 and 2 (Fig. 5) show the Canary Islands metaphorical synonyms sebadales ‘barley

field’ and manchones ‘soiled field’, which are variants of the standard Spanish term

pradera marina ‘marine meadow’. Concordance 3 (Fig. 5) contains chanquete

‘transparent goby’, used in Murcia to designate the species Aphia minuta. Concordance

4 (Fig. 5) shows that the standard term besugo americano ‘American sea bream’ is

called alfonsiño ‘dear/little alphonse’ and fula de altura ‘deep-sea fula’ on the Canary

Islands. Fula is a term used in Canary Islands to designate the bell-shaped umbrella of a

jellyfish (Alvar, 1975, p. 432). In Concordances 5 and 6 (Fig. 5), the standard term

boquerón ‘whitebait’ is called anchoa ‘anchovy’ in the north of Spain, including the

Cantabrian region. In concordances 7–8 (Fig. 5), the standard term pargo ‘snapper’ is

called bocinegro ‘black snout’ in the Canary Islands.

Figure 5. Concordances including terminological variants in Spain.

Figure 6 includes concordances of the tags, LAT DB and INTER DB, showing

instances of direct borrowings from English. Only a few examples reflected PS-LAS or

LA terminological divergence. Concordance 1 (Fig. 6) shows an example of direct

borrowing, halibut, extracted from an LAS article. As can be observed in the taxonomic
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 29

designation in concordance 2 (Fig. 6), this borrowing is synonymous with the

metaphorical term lenguado del Atlántico ‘tongue-shaped (fish) from the Atlantic’.

Since this term appeared in both LAS and PS publications, the tag LAT/INTER was

inserted. Concordance 3 (Fig. 6) includes the metonymic direct borrowing redclaw,

which is synonymous with the standard term langosta australiana de agua dulce

‘Australian freshwater lobster’ in concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 6). Concordances 5 and 6

(Fig. 6) contain the metaphorical PS term pez reloj ‘clock fish’ and its LAS synonym,

orange roughy, a direct borrowing from the English language.

Figure 6. Concordances with examples of direct borrowings and their synonyms.

Figures 7 and 8 show concordances of the tags LAT LT and INTER LT, which contain

terminological synonyms that are literal translations of the English terms. They were

obviously literal translations because most were extracted from English-Spanish articles

in the bilingual journal Ciencias Marinas. In other cases, the original English terms

were found in English-language articles in JCR academic journals, such as Marine

Biology and Environmental Biology of Fishes. Concordances 1 and 2 (Fig. 7) include

two LAS metaphorical variants of the seal species Otaria flavescens: lobo marino ‘sea

wolf’ and león marino ‘sea lion’. Lobo marino is the standard name in LAS and PS. As

for león marino, it is hardly a coincidence that the English common name for this

species is sea lion, as shown in (15).

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 30

Figure 7. Terminological variation in Latin America caused by the influence of English.

(15) Several major breeding areas have been defined for the South American SEA
LION (Otaria flavescens) along the Atlantic Ocean including the Uruguayan and
Patagonian coasts. (Marine Biology, 158(8), 2011: 1857-1867)

Figure 8 includes PS-LAS terminological variants. Concordance 1 (Fig. 8) contains

tiburón limón, which appeared in many LA articles, and is a literal translation of the

metaphorical English term, lemon shark (the shark is yellowish in color). Concordance

2 (Fig. 8) shows the metaphorical variant tiburón galano ‘gallant shark’ in a PS text.

Concordances 3 and 4 (Fig. 8) include the PS term langostino blanco ‘white prawn’,

and its LA synonym camarón rosado, which is the literal translation of pink shrimp.

Finally, concordances 5-6 (Fig. 8) show the PS term rabil [a type of mill] and the LA

atún aleta amarilla, which a calque of yellowfin tuna.

Figure 8. PS-LAS variation due to English.

Finally, two adaptations from English were found. Of these two, only macarela

reflects a PS-LAS divergence. In contrast, marlín/marlines (adaptations of marlin) are

used in both Spain and Latin America. Figure 9 is a concordance of the tag ADA with
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 31

the term marlines. This concordance also contains two metaphorical terms used by both

speech communities, pez vela ‘sailfish’ and pez espada ‘swordfish’.

Figure 9. Spanish adaptation of marlin.

All the corpus common names, including the previous examples, were classified and

quantified based on the tags and lexical markers. The results showed that the corpus

contained 15,327 metaphorical terms for sea organisms. Table 3 shows the figures

obtained for (metaphorical) variants of different types.

Table 3. Figures/distribution of tokens of terminological variants.

Tokens 2,309,863
PS variants
Metaphorical PS-LAS variants LAS variants
Variants (metaphorical
variants and (metaphorical) (metaphorical)
and % )
% and % and %
and %

11,589 9,468 3,189 (2,472) 3,791 (2,273) 4,609 (4,723)

0.5% 0.4% 0.14% 0.16% 0.2%

Table 3 shows the number of tokens rather than of types to provide a more accurate

quantification of Spanish-language synonyms in marine biology. This methodology was

applied by Geeraerts & Speelman (2010, p. 36), who prefer a token-based measure of

diversity. Although the terminological variation in the corpus is fairly low, the figures

still reflect the presence of synonymy in specialized language. As shown in Table 3,

intra-continental and country-internal variation outnumbers intercontinental variation. A

possible explanation for this is that in international communication scientists tend to use

standardized terminology to avoid ambiguity.

 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 32

It is also evident that metaphor is a recurrent cognitive mechanism of term creation,

especially in Latin American Spanish. In all likelihood, the reason for this is that LAS is

more influenced by English as well as indigenous languages. In fact, the corpus

revealed a good number of terms of indigenous origin (as many as 29 terminological

units of this type were identified by means of the semi-automatic strategies applied in

this study). However, many of them did not generate synonym pairs, probably because

the organisms designated are only found in Latin America. For example, (16) contains

the huachinango, which clearly stems from Quechua. Even its taxonomic designation,

L. peru, indicates the origin of this species.

(16) Se identificaron registros de pesca completos para 18 especies de importancia

comercial pertenecientes a ocho familias (tabla 1). La especie más capturada en la
Bahía de La Paz entre 1998 y 2005 fue el HUACHINANGO L. peru, con 43% de la
captura total.

Also found were PS terms with no correlates in the LAS texts (as many as 45 terms

of this type were identified). In some cases, the reason was cultural (19 metaphorical

terms were found to be culture-dependent). An example is ochavo (no translation) in

(17), a metaphorical term that designates a fish typically found off the coasts of Spain,

and which has a roundish shape (Picture 8). This shape prompts the comparison

between the fish and an ochavo, a coin used in Spain from the reign of King Philip III

until the 19th. This clearly shows that culture affects conceptualization and designation

of specialized concepts through metaphor (see Ureña & Tercedor, 2011 for a fine-

grained classification of culture-bound metaphorical terms). It should thus not be

surprising that this fish did not appear in the LAS texts.
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 33

(17) EL MAR DE ALBORÁN, que está delimitado al oeste por el ESTRECHO DE

GIBRALTAR y al este por la línea imaginaria que une el CABO DE GATA (ESPAÑA)
con el cabo Figalo (Argelia), ocupa una superficie de unos 54 000 km2 y su fondo
posee una compleja topografía con variadas subcuencas, altos estructurales y
plataformas. […] En la zona costera septentrional han estado presentes, a lo largo
de todo el ciclo estacional considerado (primavera, verano y otoño), las larvas de
peces de diferentes grupos taxonómicos (mictófidos, espáridos, góbidos,
callyonimidos, blénidos y bótidos) y de la especie Capros aper (OCHAVO). (IEO,
Microfichas, 1997).

Picture 8. Ochavo (Capros aper).

The corpus contained 32 PS variants from the Canary Islands. The geographical

distance of these Islands from the Iberian Peninsula is certainly a major cause of

variation. Table 4 shows the number of variant pairs/triples produced because of

geographical fragmentation and types of borrowing.

Table 4. Pairs/triples of terminological synonyms and their causes.

PS-LAS synonym PS synonym LAS synonym

pairs/triples pairs/triples pairs/triples

65 83 111

Direct borrowing
9 0 3
from English

Adaptation from
1 0 1
English
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 34

Literal translation
16 2 21
from English

Those pairs/triples that do not fit in any of the three borrowing types are triggered by

different cognitive perspectives, which are primarily shaped by metaphorical thought.

As many as 206 pairs/triples of this type were retrieved from the texts, including 13

terms stemming from indigenous languages (it should be noted that not all terms of this

origin could be coupled to their corresponding equivalents since these latter were not

always found in the texts). Adding up, 259 pairs/triples were identified in the corpus.

4. Conclusions

Language-internal variation remains a little studied area in general language (Geeraerts

et al. 2010, 6) and even more so in terminology research. To fill this gap, this paper

presented the results of a corpus-based study on language variation in peninsular and

Latin American Spanish in marine biology. The qualitative and quantitative results of

the study show that although the percentage of terminological variation is not significant

compared to the total number of tokens in the corpus, the number and types of

synonyms reflect that denominative diversity is a common phenomenon in specialized

language.

The strategies for the semi-automatic retrieval of (metaphorical) terms focused on in

this study were found to be highly productive since they effectively provided the

onomasiological range of the set of sea organism concepts extracted from the corpus.

The strategies also enabled us to quantify the incidence of the types of intra-linguistic

term variation. The results show that geographical fragmentation, reinforced by the

influence of languages other than Spanish (especially English, but also indigenous

languages), is a crucial factor that triggers inter- and intracontinental variation. The
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 35

figures show that in contrast to PS, LAS has a greater tendency to incorporate terms

stemming directly or indirectly from the English language (25 and 2 terminological

variants of this type were found in the corpus, respectively). Indigenous languages

(particularly Quechua) have an influence on term coinage in LAS, which further

increases terminological diversity. In fact, the results of this study provide evidence that

LAS is more prone to producing terminological variants (4,609) than PS (3,791). In our

opinion, it is not only the geographic closeness between North and Central/South

America that prompts this phenomenon, but also the fact that in Latin America, there is

more of a willingness to embrace new terms. Peninsular Spanish is more conservative in

this regard though an exception is evidently the role of dialects from the Canary Islands

(42 PS variants were identified).

Inter-continental diversity, which is regarded as an effect of geographic

fragmentation as well, is a less common phenomenon. Experts’ observation of

international standardization is most likely to be a crucial factor. In any case, the

number of PS-LAS variants obtained — 2,472 — is significant.

The quantitative analysis also revealed the pivotal role of metaphor in prompting

denominative diversity. In fact, as many as 9,468 metaphorical terms out of 11,589

variants were identified in the corpus. Again, it is LAS that is more open to

metaphorical denominations than PS (4,723 and 2,273 variants, respectively). The

occurrence of metaphor in LAS-PS pairs/triples is also representative (2,472 terms were

extracted). It can thus be argued that conceptual salience significantly influences the

occurrence of onomasiological heterogeneity in specialized communication as well. As

reflected in this research, metaphoric thought is instrumental in helping experts to

highlight and recall the physical and/or behavioral features that characterize sea
 Metaphor and denominative variation in science 36

organisms. A direct consequence of this might be that experts referred to such organisms

more easily than using taxonomic designations, which are longer and opaque names.

However, this is something that requires validation.

Notes
1
This research was carried out within the framework of the projects RECORD (FFI2011-22397) and VARIMED (FFI2011-
23120), both funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
2
http://www.scimagojr.com/index.php.
3
The SciELO website’s criteria for journal evaluation and selection can be accessed at http://www.scielo.org/php/level.php?
lang=es&component=44&item=2.
4
The taxonomic designation of a species is the Latin name in binomial nomenclature used by the scientific
community to classify such a species into a specific taxon. The first and the second constituents of the binomial refer to the
genus and the specific name, respectively. Both constituents must be written in italics (e.g. Dicentrarchus labrax).
5
Resemblance metaphors arise from physical and/or behavioural analogy. In contrast, non-resemblance metaphors are
grounded in more abstract aspects (Lakoff, 1993), although they also involve the retrieval of mental images (Ureña & Faber,
2010).
6
As the corpus showed, this phonological adaptation is widespread in the marine biology terminology, giving rise to
different names, such as pejerrey and pejesapo “toad fish”. This finding supports the claim that “some systemic factors in
the terminology of a domain determine the formation of new terms and the growth of terminology” (Kageura, 2002, p. 34).
7
CorMet identifies metaphors by finding systematic differences in selectional preferences between domains. A selectional
preference is “a verb’s predilection for a particular type of argument in a particular role” (Mason, 2004, p. 23).
8
The third cause, cognitive perspective, was not quantified because it is comprehensive. Each of the common names
included in one onomasiological range offers a distinct cognitive standpoint, which may or may not be figuratively
motivated (tagged with METAPH in the corpus). Moreover, it is pointless to tag those synonyms that have the same
cognitive perspective (e.g. doublet-terms).

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Authors’ addresses + emails

José Manuel Ureña Gómez-Moreno

Department of Modern Philology

University of Castile-La Mancha

Faculty of Arts

Avda. Camilo José Cela, s/n, University Campus

13071 Ciudad Real, Spain

josemanuel.urena@uclm.es

Pamela Faber

Department of Translation and Interpreting

University of Granada

C/ Buensuceso, 11

18071 Granada, Spain

pfaber@ugr.es

About the authors

José Manuel Ureña obtained his PhD in Translation and Interpreting from the University of Granada.

He is currently a Junior Professor at the Department of Modern Philology of the University of Castile-

La-Mancha, Spain, where he teaches Translation and Academic English. His main research interests lie

in (socio)cognitive semantics and Terminology, with a special focus on figurative language and

English-Spanish contrastive studies. He has published in high-impact journals, such as Cognitive

Linguistics, Metaphor and Symbol, Terminology, and Language Sciences.

Pamela Faber holds degrees from the University of North Carolina, the University of

Paris IV, and the University of Granada where she has been a full professor in

Translation and Interpreting since 2001. She is the author of various articles and books

on Lexical Semantics and Terminology. She is also the Head of the LexiCon research

group, with whom she has carried out various research projects on terminological
knowledge bases, conceptual modeling, ontologies, and cognitive semantics.