<em>ALEFANGINAS</em>: THE GRAPHIC ERROR AS GENERATOR OF LEXICAL VARIANTS IN THE ARABIC EXPRESSIONS
Keywords:
Alephanginae, Ancient Pharmacological Lexica, Arabic Loanwords into Latin, Graphical Errors, Mesuae, Avicenna.Abstract
The word alefangina is a pharmacological
technical term stemming from mediaeval translations from Arabic into
Latin, which fell afterwards into disuse. Since its introduction in
Spanish and in other languages of Europe, an imprecise idea of its
possible etymology was circulating among researchers. However, this
idea should be considered merely a conjecture, as it did not conform
to usual methods of analysis of phonological adaptation of lexical
interferences between languages. Moreover, it is not possible to
collate the Latin translation in which the term firstly appears
-the so-called Antidotarium Mesuae- with the original text
in Arabic, which has not been yet found nor accurately
identified. In this article, we suggest that a graphical confusion
is at the origin of the word. By means of comparing the alleged
etymon with its correlate in another text translated into Latin, the
Canon of Avicenna, we explain the kind of graphical confusion
that resulted in the emergence of this particular form.
