Los nombres generales para humanos en Español

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the properties of a set of general nouns for humans; that is, linguistic units with minimal semantic traces used to refer to one or more people, such as humano (‘human’), individuo (‘individual’), persona (‘person’), ser humano (‘human being’) and sujeto (‘subject’). The theoretical framework includes studies that investigate the morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of this set of words, and those that highlight their importance in grammaticalization processes. In terms of methodological procedures, the properties of these nouns are investigated in three data sets: lexicographic works from the 18th to the 21st centuries, electronic corpora of ancient and contemporary language, and the results of applied acceptability tests for speakers of Argentinian Spanish. The results show similarities and differences between the five nouns, particularly in relation to their inclusion in dictionaries, changes in the frequency of their use in written Spanish over previous centuries, and their acceptability in specific contexts by language speakers.