Lexical Borrowing

Introduction:

• Languages borrow words from the 'open' lexical classes - nouns, verbs and adjectives of other languages
• Word to word translations (calques) borrow the meaning rather than the form (lemma)
• Lexeme - a set of forms that all have the same meaning
• Lemma - particular form chosen by convention to represent that meaning
• Lexical borrowing from English, German and Italian is particular common in French

Reasons for Borrowing:

•  In the case of a new discovery, the word is often taken from language in which the idea originated
• e.g. 'café' from Arabic
• Linguistic contact 
• borrowing between neighbouring countries frequently occurs
• borrowing from the culturally, economically and politically dominant language for that region is also common 
• e.g. English words for technology (bit) and marketing
• Anglicisms often end up being 'in competition' with other French words for some concepts
• e.g. "poster" vs "affiche" or "paneau", "on/off" vs "marche/arrête"
• Fashion - words are often borrowed from whatever language is fashionable at this point in time 

Older Entries:

• Very ancient 'emprunts' (loan words) came from Latin or Greek 
• e.g. 'academie' or 'soldat' 
• More recent examples, e.g. 'baby-boomer'/'body-building' have a Gallic pronunciation but the spelling remains anglicised
• The degree of 'gallicisation' is often dependent on how often the word is used 
• Code switching is not the same as lexical borrowing - this is a phenomenon evidenced by bilingual people who switch from one language to another
• An emprunt on the other hand has passed from one language to another and doesn't indicate that the speaker is fluent in both languages

Typology of emprunts:

• Direct - i.e. unchanged, e.g. body-building
• False etymology - sometimes the meaning of the emprunt in the new language doesn't match its meaning in the original language
• e.g. 'le lifting' means 'face lift'
• Grammatical adaption - how the emprunt should fit in with the French grammatical system
• e.g. pluralisation - for 'rugbyman' follows French rules and not English - 'les rugbymans'
• Phonological and graphical adaption - how the pronunciation changes, how the spelling changes to fit French system 
• e.g. 'faisabilité'

Examples:

•  Direct - 'walkman' (French alternative - balladeur)
• Adaption - 'conteneur' 
• French pronunciation reflected in the spelling - 'e' replaces 'ai' and 'eur' replaces 'er'
• False etymology - 'bronzing' (tanning)
• this word doesn't exist in English but it is based on it
• Semantic 'calques' (loan translations) - réaliser 
• changed from its original French meaning (to achieve or make sth happen) to English (sudden understanding)
• Borrowing of scholarly terminology - e.g. 'uni-dimensionnel'

Translations:

• Direct translations from English
• liberté de la presse, science-fiction, liste noire
• Compound words
• e.g. top-modèle (graphically modified)
• Abbreviations 
• Pull (un pullover), self (self-service, i.e. cafeteria)

Integration Problems

• Phonological problem - these phonemes don't exist in the French phonological system, therefore they are simply pronounced with a French accent
• e.g. show business, weekend, camping, gang
• Grammatical problem 
•  Gender - no easy rule 
• Some English musical terms are feminine e.g. la popmusic, la trash
• Other musical terms are masculine, le folk, le jazz 
• Other confusing issues - English words with different genders from the original French word 
• e.g. le gag vs la blague
• Plural 
• Question of whether to follow the English or French rule - e.g. les rugbymans
• English adjectives don't take the accord e.g. snob/cool
• Semantic
• The meaning of some French words changed by English influence 
• e.g. réaliser, terrible

Impact of the Emprunt:

• The loan word is a product of external processes but once it enters the French language, it undergoes internal processes
• e.g. film - filmer - filmage - filmothèque 
• Experiences suffixation e.g. sponsoriser, squattage 
• Or prefixation e.g. surbooking
• Abbreviation e.g. le trench (coat), le basket (basketball)

Prescriptive reactions: 

• There are many language regulation bodies in France which exist to control, among other things, the entry of new words 
• e.g. l'académie française
• Ministerial commissions of terminology - gather alternatives for technical terms
• Official journal of neologisms
• Prescriptive language laws, e.g. Bas-Lauriol (1975) and Toubon (1994)
• Their aim - to conserve the French linguistic heritage 

Lexicology: Principles of Word Formation

Neologisms:

• Objective neologisms - correspond to new objects entering reality 
• Objects which previously didn't exist - e.g. le portable, la stylistique (design)
• Fashion in neologisms - words fall in and out of fashion 
• e.g. where 'chouette' and 'génial' used to be used, now 'super' or 'boum' are used
• Stylistic (subjective) neologisms - created by authors for style and sometimes enter the vocabulary of French 

Structural characteristics of lexical change: 

•  Internal process - whereby the language changes internally 
• This involves neologisms of form - where the form of a word is modified to create a new word 
• And neologisms of meaning - where the meaning is changed
• External process - lexical borrowing

Social characteristics of linguistic change:

• Neologisms have 'creators' and 'deciders' 
• People who invent words and people who decide whether or not they should be accepted into French vocabulary 
• e.g. people who write dictionaries, the Académie Française etc
• There is also the problem of how to integrate neologisms into the normalised system of the French language
• i.e. how they'll function grammatically etc
• Hence the desire to find French alternatives to external neologisms in order to preserve linguistic purity 

Derivation: 

• The process of creating a new word by adding an affix (a prefix or suffix)
• e.g. porter -> portable (suffix) monter -> remonter (prefix)
• Dérivé (derivative) - created through addition of bound morphemes 
• different morphemes can have different meanings 
• e.g. pleuvoir -> pleuvoter (diminutive - mizzle) -> pleuvasser (pejorative - drizzle) -> pleuviner (diminutive - drizzle)
• Dependent or independent morphemes can be added
• Parasynthesis - simultaneously adding a prefix and a suffix to a word
• e.g. anti-américanisme
• Composé (compound) - opposite of dérivé - formed of words which are both independent

Suffixation - Semantic Aspect:

• ant; oeur; ateur (indicate the actor)
• e.g. imprimeur, créateur
• oir; erie (indicate the locality)
• e.g. abattoir, gendarmerie
• ité; ace; isme; tude; esse (indicates a concept)
• e.g. gentillesse, inquiétude
• et(te); in(e); ot(te); eul(le) (indicates a masculine or feminine diminutive or pejorative)
• e.g. maisonette, vieillot (old fashioned), tablette
• oyer (weak quality) 
• e.g. rougeoyer (glow - weak red)
• ir (becoming - indicates process)
• e.g. blanchir, durcir
• Knowledge of the semantic aspect allows for a more nuanced understanding of the language

Prefixation - Semantic Aspect: 

• a- (sans, negation) e.g. amoral
• pré (before) e.g. pré-cuit
• dé (negation) e.g. démonter
• re (again) e.g. refaire, rappeler
• mal (bad) e.g. malbouffe (junk food)

Frequence and Productivity - Suffixes: 

• which suffixes are most frequently used in neologisms? 
• ation; isme; iste; itude
• isme - very frequent e.g. bilingualisme
• itude - very frequent e.g. bogossitude (fam. handsomeness)
• ation - very frequent - e.g. conscientisation (fact of being in public awareness)
• The French speaking population and media often create words which will never be accepted by the language authorities

Frequence and Productivity - Prefixes: 

• re e.g. reintegrer
• mé e.g. méprise
• co (together) e.g. covoiturage (car pooling)
• in (negation) invapotable
• Derivation allows for a lot of linguistic creativity

Phonetic and Semantic Constraints: 

• Adjectives ending in 'al' take 'ité' to make a noun e.g. socialité
• Adjectives ending in 'ard' and 'and' take 'ise' to make a noun e.g branchouillardise (hipterism)
• Adjectives ending in 'e' take 'sse' to make a noun e.g. noblesse
• Adjectives ending in 'ot' take 'erie' to make a noun e.g. bigoterie

Lexical Conversion - Improper Derivation: 

•  This involves the creation of new words without any affixation 
• the word is just moved to a different word category without any morphological change
• Adverbalisation (adjective to adverb) e.g. fort - un homme fort vs chanter fort
• Nominalisation (adjective to noun) e.g. un homme marginal vs un marginal
• Nominalisation (verb to noun) e.g. savoir vs le savoir

Composition:

• Creation of compound nouns
• Words of the same or of different syntactic categories are put together to form one word
• e.g. porte-monnaie  (V+N), sans-travail (Prep+N), pause-café (N+N) 
• Mots valises - whereby the end of the first word and the start of the second word are 'cut off' to create word play 
• e.g. 'adulte' + 'adolescent' = 'adulescent', i.e. an immature adult

Recomposition:

• Deliberate creation of compound nouns, usually by expert in some field 
• e.g. philogie, génocide
• Used with prefixes of which the meaning is properly known
• e.g. ultra, super, néo, trans, éco
• Usually with a Latin or Greek base
• e.g. néo-nomadisme, éco-terrorisme
• The semantic meaning is more clear here than with other affixes
• However the prefixes are not true independent morphemes

Syntagmation/Composition:

• Creating 'words' out of a combination of separate words which represent a different concept together
• e.g. le développement durable 

Abbreviations:

• Acronyms:
• Lexicalised acronyms - acronyms which are pronounced like words e.g. SMIC
• Non lexicalised acronyms - acronyms in which one just says the letters e.g. SDF, SNCF
• Derivations of acronyms can also create new words, e.g. le smicard - a person who receives the minimum wage
• Apocope - shortening of words
• e.g. prof, impec(cable), appart(ement)
• Often happens with place names - e.g. Boul'Saint-Mich = Boulevard Saint-Michel
• Often also includes adding an 'o' to the end, e.g. resto, hebdo etc
• Very 'familier' register

Integration Problems: 

• How to grammatically integrate acronyms into French language structure?
• There are various rules for pluralisation
• If a noun is formed of an adverb and a noun, only the noun is pluralised 
• e.g. les après-midis
• For an adjective and a noun, both are pluralised
• e.g. les francs-maçons (free mason) 
• Exception: les grand-mères BUT les grands-pères
• For recomposed words, the 'prefixe savant' is invariable
• e.g. les auto-écoles
• For nouns including a preposition, only the first noun is pluralised 
• e.g. 'des arcs-en-ciel'
• For a verb and a noun, the verb is invariabe 
• e.g. les porte-monnaies
• For an unhyphenated compound noun, pluralisation follows normal rules
• e.g. les portemanteaux

Semantic Change:

• Sometimes takes place through metaphor
• e.g. 'banque du sang' 
• Often for a new concept, e.g bretelle d'autoroute (lit. motorway 'strap', meaning 'slip road')
• Or through metonymy
• e.g. chaussure de tennis -> tennis (shoe)
• These are all internal processes 

Morpho-syntactic Change: 'On' vs 'Nous'

'On' vs 'Vous': 

• 'on' seems to dominate over 'nous'
• Syntactic because 'on' and 'nous' express a grammatical function
• Morphological because they can't exist independently of a sentence
• According to prescriptive norms, nous is the prestige form
• 'On' is less formal (when used to replace nous) 

History: 

• In Old French, 'nous' was the predominant form
• Since then, 'on' has emerged in modern French
• The morpheme has been undergoing change for some time 

Sociolinguistic Perspectives: 

• Söll 1969 - in a study that contrasted the variation of 'on' and 'nous' among children and police, children used 'on' categorically, while police officers tended towards 'nous'
• When language is used for professional purposes, prestige forms are used 
• Boutet 1994 - in a study on factory workers, discovered they favoured 'on' over 'nous' by and large
• Thomas 1971 - as a prescriptive grammarian, he emphasised the 'nous' form as correct
• Coveney 2000s - in a study in Picardie, the rate of use for 'nous' was 4.4%
• Meaning the 'nous' form hasn't vanished completely but it isn't common
• Laberge - in a study in Montreal, the rate of use for 'nous' was 1.6%
• Deshaies- in a study in Quebec City the rate of use for 'nous' was 0.5%
• Largely, the nous form is vanishing

Remaining uses:

• Uses which are unlikely to die out 
• Emphasis - e.g. 'c'est nous qui avons fait le travail'
• Imperative - e.g. 'sortons'

Reasons for change: 

• Simplification - with the 'on' form, there is no need to add the longer 'ons' morpheme to the verb
• Dialect contact - early in the 20th century, many different types of French existed, however increasing modernisation has lead to increased contact between dialects
• Redundancy - The 'ons' morpheme means the same thing as 'nous', so with the correct form, no extra meaning is added
• Cacophony - avoids ugly repetition with reflexive verbs, e.g. 'nous nous donnons' vs 'on se donne' 
• To the French ear, the 'nous nous' repetition sounds childish

Morphosyntactic change: Ne deletion

Ne deletion - Variable marking of negation: 

• An example of grammatical change 
• e.g. 'on (ne) vous connaît pas" 
• double negation is unusual cross linguistically 
• communicative redundancy
• l'effacement du 'ne' (ne deletion) has become an option i.e. that simply saying 'pas' is enough to signify negation
• a choice exists, which means change could take place 
• morpho-syntactic change 
• ne = bound morpheme
• negation = grammatical, therefore syntactic 

History:

• The 'ne' is close to Latin, where the negative morpheme 'non' comes before the verb
• In Old/Middle French, the formula 'ne verb (pas)' was common - 'pas' was a choice
• In classical French, 'ne verb pas' became standard
• In modern French, the form has changed to '(ne) verb pas' where the 'ne' is not categorical
• This suggests that in the future the 'ne' could disappear entirely

Descriptive investigations:  

Study	Place	Date	% Use
Ashby	Tours	1976	37
Ashby	Tours	1995	16
Sankoff & Vincent	Montreal	1977	1
Armstrong (adolescents)	Lorraine	1990	2

Observations:

• Data collected on Quebecois French and adolescent Metropolitan French indicates almost categorical ne deletion
• as these are the groups which are generally the most advanced in terms of language change, this indicates that a change is underway
• Ashby's two studies in Tours, 20 years apart also show a significant increase in ne deletion 

Social and Stylistic Constraints: 

• Age 
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among younger age groups
• Gender
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among males
• Lorraine - minimal difference
• gender difference found in older speakers has disappeared among adolescents
• Class  
• Montreal - no great variation exists
• Tours - higher rate of deletion among lower classes 

Hyperformal Marker: 

• Current status of 'ne' - use sounds overly formal
• Weak to non-existent ties with social variables 
• Similar to 'nous' 
• nous vs on variation

The Variable Expression of Futurity

Future Time Reference:

• Inflected future (IF)- e.g. je sortirai 
• Adding a future morpheme creates an instantly recognisable future time form
• Periphrastic future (PPF)- e.g. je vais sortir
• Based on the verb 'aller'
• Historical - PPF was used very colloquially at first, then gradually became more neutral
• Present Futurate (PF) - e.g. je sors
• Having 3 possible ways of referring to the future allows for variation

Semantic Differences:

•  According to prescriptive values, choice of future time form is decided by:
• The distance of the event - is it proximal or distal in relation to the present
• Speaker interest and engagement - i.e. are they personally involved in the event
• Degree of certainty - i.e. how likely is it to happen
• Various prescriptive linguists have attempted to assign meaning to the different future forms
• PPF - Prescriptive Reasons for use
• Confais - Immediacy & proximity/intentionality/imminence/conviction 
• Fleischmann - if the speaker is personally involved in the event
• Vet - present preparation
• IF - Opposite meanings attached 
• i.e. distal, no personal involvement, uncertain, no present preparation
• PF 
• Imbs - use for certainty
• Must be used in concurrence with a temporal adverb in order to make sense
• The presence of the adverb is a linguistic constraint

 Descriptive Studies:

• Poplack & Turpin - Quebecois
• Jeanjean - Metropole
• King & Nadaseli - Acadian
• Wales - Metropole - journalistic discourse

Form	Poplack	Jeanjean	King	Wales
PPF	73%	58%	53%	10%
IF	20%	42%	47%	90%
PF	7%	-	-	-

Observations:

• PPF was the most frequently used form in Quebec, which is often more advanced in language change than Metropolitian and Acadian French
• There is little difference between Acadian and Metropolitan French - they often mirror each other
• PPF is hardly used in written language, suggesting it is only acceptable as a spoken form for the moment
• IF is hardly used in Quebec and less frequently used in Acadia and the Metropole
• IF is used almost exclusively by journalists - the prestige form in written language
• PF is minimally used across the board

Findings:

• One could possibly predict the disappearance of other forms in favour of the PPF if the current trends continue 
• As Quebec is more advanced in language change, the Metropole and Acadia will probably eventually catch up
• a case of morphological change
• PPF used irrespective of semantic context in real speech (Quebec)
• Therefore the semantic constraints assigned by prescriptive grammarians did not hold
• No evidence that prescriptive grammarians are correct at all 

Prescriptive values:

• Prescriptive grammarians dislike variation and therefore attempt to assign a meaning to each variant form 
• Poplack's findings discredit this theory
• Proves that one form can be used to express multiple meanings

Lexical vs Grammatical Morphology

The meaning behind our use of morphology

Types of morphology:

• Lexical
• Derivational - changes word class (creates new words)
• e.g. nouvelle -> renouveller (adj -> verb)
• Grammatical 
• Inflectional - does not change word class 
• e.g. nouvelle -> nouvelles, fermer -> fermerai 
• word form changed but no new word created

Types of Morphemes:

•  Bound - can't exist independently
• e.g. donn-ais - 'ais' can't exist independently
• has to be bound to make sense
• Free - can make sense independently
• e.g. - "les sans travail"

Morphological Meaning:

• The underlying meanings of morphology are very universal - e.g. the idea that certain morphemes indicate certain times exists across many languages

Tense - morphemes which indicate tense anchor events in time

• e.g. je donne vs j'ai donné vs je donnerai
• -e = present morpheme, -é= past morpheme, -erai = future morpheme

Aspect - the different ways of presenting an event within one time frame

• e.g. two verbs can be in the past tense, yet present the event in different ways 
• French - passé composé vs imparfait - aka the perfective and imperfective 
• Perfective - implies action completed, once
• Imperfective - implies a habitual, incomplete action
• English examples of aspect - progressive vs non-progressive
• I am speaking English vs I speak English
• Doesn't exist in French
• languages differ in how they mark aspect

Aspectual values:

• Perfective
• Perfect value e.g. j'ai déjà vu le film
• relating to present 
• Aorist e.g. je suis sorti à cinq heures
• completed, not related to the present
• Imperfective 
• Characterising/Continuous 
• e.g. j'habitais dans un appartement quand j'étais à Paris
• characterises the continuous whole of the time in Paris
• Habitual 
• e.g. "je sortais de temps en temps quand j'étais ..."
• refers to several incidents, habits during this time
• Progressive 
• e.g. il quittait quand je suis arrivé"
• expresses a sense of 'was doing', of being in progress during one particular moment

 Modality:

•  expresses possibility or doubt concerning an event 
• e.g. "il est possible qu'il soit en retard"
• soit = may, might

The concepts of Tense, Aspect, Modality are so universal that they are known as TAM

Number and Person:

• Verbs:
• Morphemes can indicate plurality e.g. 'e' vs 'ent'
• And which person the verb is referring to (1st, 2nd, 3rd)
• Nouns 
• Morphemes can indicate plurality of a noun
• e.g. livre-s interessant-s - plural markers on nouns and adjectives
• also on past participles - e.g. les livres que j'ai achetés
• English has less markers of plurality than French
• less differentiation for verb endings
• no adjective endings

Gender:

• Often expressed morphologically, moreso in French than in English
• e.g. le livre vs la langue
• French articles express gender, English articles do not
• e.g. elle est sortie 
• French past participles (verbs) express gender, English do not

Pronominal Reference: 

• Pronouns are used to avoid repeating nouns
• e.g. J'ai vu le film. Il était très intéressant.  
• French and English pronoun use differs, especially under word order
• Can refer to a noun or people 
• e.g. mes amis m'ont accompagné
• Pronouns don't exist independently of sentences, i.e. they're morphemes 

 Conclusions: 

• Are grammatical morphemes a communicative luxury in language?
• it is possible to be comprehensible without morphology 
• however without morphemes, many subtleties of language would be lost
• e.g. Moi hier aller cinéma vs Je suis allé au cinéma hier
• Morphology allows communicative efficiency
• Cross linguistic differences (i.e. between languages) exist
• Is it possible for variation to exist within the grammar of a language when grammatical rules for morphology invariably apply 
• Does morphological homogeneity exist across time/people/space (geographical variation)
• see 'futurity' and 'on' vs 'nous' variation

Syntax & Morphology

Syntax:

• The study of word order patterns 
• Language functions based on systematic patterns 
• French word order generally follows the Subject/Verb/Object pattern
• This is known as its canonical word order, the order which underlies every language and is known by all speakers of a language
• Question forms reverse the canonical pattern, i.e. VSO instead of SVO
• 'Sentences' are used to describe written language, while spoken language has 'utterances' 

Phrase level: 

• Beyond the SVO, sentence level there exists an order within phrases as well
• e.g. Adjective after noun - 'un livre intéressant,' or adverb before adjective - 'peu évident'
• Surface structure, the numerous patterns we can pick out by examining sentences, makes language seem incredibly complex
• However these are determined by rules, known as deep structure - the rule that governs the pattern

4 Phrase Types:

• NP - noun phrase - where the noun is the 'head' (defining linguistic element) of the phrase
•  e.g. 'les enfants' - made up of a specifier (les) and a noun (enfants)

• Specifier to the left of the head is a rule which applies to all phrase types
• VP - Verb phrase - where the verb is the 'head' of the phrase
• E.g. 'Michel lisait'
• Michel is the specifier, and lisait is the head, ergo the rule has been followed 
• AP - Adjectival phrases - where the adjective is the 'head' of the phrase
• e.g. 'très intéressant' 
• très = specifier, intéressant = head, therefore the rule has been followed
• PP - Prepositional Phrase - where the preposition is the 'head' of the phrase
• e.g. presque dans
• presque = specifier, dans = head, therefore the rule has been followed
• The same basic rule is at work for all the examples - therefore the deep structure pattern is the same for all phrase types

 More complex phrases: 

• NP - Mes amis en France 
• The complement adds supplementary information to the NP 
• Specifier = mes, head = amis, en France = complement
• The full rule = specifier to the left of the head, complement to the right
• The same pattern can be observed in other phrase types
• VP - Je parle à mes amis 
• Je = specifier, parle = head, à mes amis = complement
• AP - sûr de la décision
• sûr = head, de la décison = complement
• PP - vers la fenêtre 
• vers = head, la fenêtre = complement

Sentence level: 

• Sentences can contain multiple types of phrases and can be broken down into 'syntactic trees' 
• e.g. "Mes amis à l'étranger sont partis en vacances" 

 Noam Chomsky:

• According to Chomskian theory - native speakers have the innate ability to generate words in the proper speech pattern
• This is known as the generative paradigm - which means that we can generate a limitless number of correct sentences
• X rule - the X bar rule 
• the idea that we have basic syntactic rules that we follow all the time 
• according to this theory language is not as creative as we might think and does not allow for much variation - in the sense that all speakers have the same basic rule in their heads 

Morphology: 

• the study of the shape of a word
• the unit of morphology is the morpheme - the smallest unit of language that a word can be broken down into and still make sense 
• morphology is a grammatical entity  
• Verb morphology e.g. the verb donner
• donn-e/donn-ais/donn-é/donn-erai
• donn has meaning and the endings have meaning, however neither can exist by themselves 
• Nominal morphology 
• much more limited choice of morphemes
• e.g. livre-s, porte-s
• Adjectival morphology 
• e.g. ancien-s, vert-e
• Articles are morphemes
• the don't exist independently as they must go before a noun
• In English, we have no adjectival morphology or different articles and the imperfect tense doesn't have morphological changes the way French does (i.e. we use the same endings in the present and the perfect unlike French)
• Some languages have no morphology at all 

Uses of morphology:

• Grammatical morphology - allows for greater clarity/specificity
• Lexical morphology - creation of words 
• Prefixes, e.g. re + faire = refaire & suffixes e.g. gouverner + ment = gouvernement, can be used to create new words aka neologisms
• Infixes - the insertion of a morpheme into the middle of a word - also exist but not in French or English