Onomasiological symmetries and asymmetries in psychological terminology in Spanish and Slovak

Abstract

The aim of this article is to apply the theory of lexical motivation formulated by the Slovak linguist Juraj Furdík to Spanish and Slovak psychological terminology. We focus on the types of motivations which are relevant for our research: word-formation, syntactic, semantic, morphological, interlingual, abbreviation and terminological motivation. The article consists of theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part makes clear the basic concepts of the theory of lexical motivation. The practical part offers the application of this theory to the Spanish psychological terms while confronting them with their Slovak equivalents. This part consists of six groups which have been created based on the motivation of Spanish terms. By confronting the terms with their Slovak equivalents, it observes symmetries and asymmetries between both languages from the point of view of the lexical motivation. Based on this comparison, the author offers some conclusions which have been observed.