Double Conceptualization of the Human Body Lexicon in Spanish: The Case of Nouns Designating the Cheek

Abstract

Co-referents abound in the Spanish bodily lexicon. We observe the recurrence of pairs of words used in the everyday language that appear at first glance to have no distinguishing criterio, such as mejilla and carrillo, the Castillian nouns for cheek. Could this be a case of double conceptualization of the body part, manifested in the concurrent use of two forms in contemporary Castilian? To explore this possibility, we cross-reference the results of a semantic analysis of attested examples with a submorphological analysis of the signifiers. The study reveals a correspondence between the clearly distinct contexts of use of the two terms identified in the first analysis and the conceptual domains specific to each signifier that emerge from the second.