Lexical Italianisms in Paraguayan Spanish: An Exploratory Study from the Newspaper «Última hora» (2001-2020)

Abstract

Language contact between Spanish and Italian has been widely studied in the Río de la Plata area, whilst its impact on Paraguayan Spanish has received comparatively less scholarly attention. In this context, the present study explores the documentation of lexical Italianisms in digital materials from the newspaper Última Hora published between 2001 and 2020. The study aims to identify and morphologically classify the recorded items, analyse qualitatively their degree of integration and discursive uses in digital written registers, describe their distribution across semantic fields, and compare their presence or absence with the previously proposed inventory, adopting a descriptive and exploratory perspective. The results indicate that a substantial portion of the Italianisms considered is attested in the analyzed materials, with a notable concentration in the gastronomic domain and reveal relevant differences in integration and discursive marking according to text type (journalistic articles vs. readers’ comments).