Palabras para todo en la historia del léxico español. Sobre cacharros, chismes y otros trastos

The present study tackles the semantic change processes affecting the words cacharro, chisme and trasto in their path towards “placeholder words” in Spanish. The study analyzes data extracted from several, both historical and contemporary, textual corpus in order to reconstruct, from complementary and integrative approaches, the lexico-semantic evolution undertaken by the analyzed nouns. This path follows a broadening process resulting from the desemanticization of the basic descriptive meaning of these terms and leading to an increase of their contexts of use. This extension widening determines their conversion into nominal placeholders, indexical elements with pragmatic and discursive functions. As a major conclusion, the study identifies the bridging contexts favoring this extension enlargement. Thanks to the current distribution of these nouns in rural varieties of european Spanish, it has been possible to delimit areas of semantic and lexical variation, and also to locate the diffusion center of innovations concerning these items. In brief, the study contributes significantly to the fields of historical lexicology and diachronic semantics.