English and Spanish «Love» Collocations : A Historical Evolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to trace the evolution and usage of several collocations with the English word love and their correspondent translations into Spanish. Corpora such as The Helsinki Corpus of the English Language, The Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler and The British National Corpus will provide us the data about the presence, prevalence and / or disappearance of these collocations along the history of the English language. In order to see if the same evolution can be established for the Spanish language, Spanish corpora such as CREA and CORDE will be used. Once the English terms such as affair, matter, case, story and accident among others in collocation with the word love, have been analyzed and they have been compared to their Spanish correspondent form(s), we will be able to determine why these different words have been used along the history of both languages and also the reasons for the appearance of one or other translations. The corpora will therefore prove a very useful tool to understand translations of specific terms such as the one by Bartholomew Young of the Spanish form «causa amorosa» into English as «love matters» in his translation of Jorge de Montemayor's Diana (1598).