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J’ai réalisé qu’elle était spéciale:
Semantic Anglicisms
in Contemporary Metropolitan
French
Betsy Kerr
University of Minnesota - Twin Cities,
USA
Online presentation:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~bjkerr/anglicisms.htm
Picone 1996:
Semantic anglicism:
« This is when a preexisting French word,
morpheme or locution shifts in meaning
or becomes more extended or more
restricted in meaning due to imitative
language contact with English. »
Most often cited example:
Fr. réaliser (V)• Traditional (pre-20th-century) meaning:
« to make real, i.e. concretize, make real, achieve, fulfill »
Collocations: Det + rêve, objectif, projet, économie, film, étude, tâche, travail
• New meaning added in 20th-century:
« to become aware of »
Synonym: se rendre compte de
Trésor de la langue française informatisé (TLFI): includes this meaning but notes purists’ objections; still sometimes labelled ‘colloquial’ or ‘nonstandard’.
Pedagogical issue:
How to treat such ‘anglicisms’?
OPTIONS:
1. Laissez faire: Simply accept their use by students,
since the use of cognates facilitates learning and
language production.
2. Puriste: Forbid their use, since they are criticized
by some French language authorities.
3. Approche (socio) linguistique: Tailor our response
to individual items based on research findings.
Research questions
1. What is the extent of usage of the given neologism? In what text types/registers is it most frequent?
2. Is there evidence that the neologism has displaced either of the following:a) the same form with the traditional meaning?
b) a pre-existing synonymous lexical item?
3. Is there evidence of specialization(restriction) of the neologism with respect to meaning, context, pragmatic function?
Methodology
Quantitative comparisons:• Relative frequency in different registers (where feasible)
• Comparative frequency of tokens with the new meaning vs. tokens with the traditional meaning
• Comparative frequency of the neologism vs. its older synonym (where applicable and feasible)
Qualitative comparisons:Comparison of meaning, context, pragmatic function of the
neologism with respect to those of the same word with the traditional meaning and those of the pre-existing synonym
CorporaJournalistic French
• Le monde 1998 - The Compleat Lexical Tutorhttp://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_f.html
1,110,392 words
• Chambers-Rostand Journalistic Corpus (Oxford Text Archive) http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/headers/2491.xml
Le monde, L’Humanité, La Dépêche du Midi 2002-03
Sampling of articles in 6 categories:
editorial, cultural, sports, national news, international news, finance
1,076,275 words
Concordancer: Antconc3.2.0m downloadable at
http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html
Corpora
Internet French
• Leeds Internet Corpora (2005)
Large open-source corpus; institutional and personal sites,
blogs, etc. Register varies, but generally fairly colloquial.
Approximately 200,000,000 words
Maximum concordancer output: 1000 hits
http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/internet.html
Néologismes étudiés
réaliser rejoindre
contrôler consultant
futur programme
opportunité (se) relaxer
attractif lister
connecter, etc. implémenter
Relative frequency of neologism in
different corpora: réaliser
Corpus Neologism Total tokensNeologism/
Total tokens
Le monde 1998 1 114 0.8%
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus8 189 4%
Leeds Internet Corpus
(sample)263 990 26.5%
Comparative frequency of neologism
and its synonym:
réaliser / se rendre compte (de)
Corpus(1) neologism
réaliser
(2) se rendre
compteRatio (1):(2)
Le monde 1998 1 7 14:100
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus8 10 80:100
Comparative frequency:
tu réalises / tu te rends compte
(2 sg.informal)
Leeds Internet Corpus
tu réalises 11 tokens
tu te rends compte 94 tokens
« Autonomous » discourse use 45 tokensMais tu te rends compte !!!
La nuit dernière, j' ai eu TROIS orgasmes tu te rends compte!
Tu te rends compte, dans cette ville il n’y avait plus d' eau.
Un monstre. Tu te rends compte?
Le retour se fit à vélo et fut comme tous les retours
de vol, avec encore la gueule de bois et la tête
dans les nuages. Je ne réalise pas encore tout bien -
demain, peut-être, je me rendrais mieux compte
du bonheur ineffable que m'a apporté cette journée.
Victorien Marchand, Rêveries d’un aviateur solitairehttp://www.pilotlist.org/bestof/resultats.php3?auteur=Victorien%20Marchand
contrôler (V)
Traditional meaning: « to verify, check, inspect, supervise »
New meaning: « to exercise restraint or direction upon; dominate, command »
TLFI includes new meaning, no comment, first attestation 1936.
Relative frequency of neologism in
different registers: contrôler
Corpus Neologism Total tokensNeologism/
Total tokens
Frequency
of neologism
in corpus
Le monde 1998 32 40 80% 0.0029%
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus37 48 77% 0.0034%
Leeds Internet
Corpus (sample)73 100 73% N/A
futur (N)
Predominant use is adjectival: e.g. le futur roi
Uncontroversial nominal use referring to tense:
le temps futur -> le futur
Additional nominal use referring to future time appears to be longstanding, but has been criticized by purists, due to similarity to English.
synonym: avenir (N)
TLFI includes the latter use, with no comment; first attestations from late 19th century.
Relative frequency of putative
neologism in different registers:
futur (N)
CorpusNeologism
(N)
Total tokens
(N and Adj)
Neologism/
Total tokens
Frequency of
neologism in
corpus
Le monde 1998 26 68 38% 0.0023%
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus18 138 13% 0.0017%
Leeds Internet
Corpus (sample)46 89 52% N/A
Alice blogs 7 40 18% N/A
Comparative frequency of putative
neologism and its synonym:
futur (N) / avenir (N)
Corpus (1) futur (N) (2) avenir (N) Ratio (1):(2)
Le monde 1998 26 183 14:100
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus18 172 10:100
Chambers-Le Baron
Research Corpus33 97 34:100
Internet Corpus:
Comparative frequency of collocations
« near future »
futur proche 188 avenir proche 225
proche futur 10 proche avenir 197
Total 298 Total 432
« distant future »
futur lointain 30 avenir lointain 68
lointain futur 9 lointain avenir 12
Total 39 Total 80
opportunité (N)
Traditional meaning is abstract: « quality of something that is opportune; opportuneness »
Putative anglicism/neologism is a metonymic extension:
« favorable circumstance or occasion; opportunity »
• synonym: occasion
TLFi includes this meaning, noting its increasing frequency in the press and its condemnation by purists.
Relative frequency of neologism in
different registers: opportunité
Corpus Neologism Total tokensNeologism/
Total tokens
Frequency
of neologism
in corpus
Le monde 1998 11 16 69% 0.0010%
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus30 35 86% 0.0028%
Leeds Internet
Corpus (sample)83 100 83% N/A
Comparative frequency of ‘neologism’
and its synonym:
opportunité / occasion
Corpus
(1)
‘neologism’
opportunité
(2)
synonymous
occasion
Ratio (1):(2)
Le monde 1998 11 63 17:100
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus30 83 36:100
Additional observations:
opportunité
• In some publications, e.g. L’Express, the business sense of ‘opportunity to buy or invest’ predominates; elsewhere, including Internet Corpus, no particular context predominates.
• Frequent in sports contexts, but so is occasion .
• The vitality of the competing synonym occasion is assured by its other uses.
• Non-synonymous uses of occasion:
Chambers Corpus 171/254 = 67%
Le monde 1998 170/224 = 76%
Internet Corpus (sample) 59/100 = 59%
attractif (ADJ)• Concrete scientific meaning: « having the
capacity of attracting »
• Figurative meaning: « capable of exercising an attraction »
• Extended figurative meaning: « which attracts by seducing; pleasing, alluring »Synonym: attrayant, intéressant
TLFi: The latter sense is labelled as archaic, attested in 15th c. but not again until the 19th c. (vs. continuous use in Eng. from the 16th c. - OED).
Relative frequency of ‘neologism’
in different registers: attractif
Note: Virtually all tokens have the ‘new’ meaning. A few
exceptions from the Internet Corpus are a handful of
occurrences with force and pouvoir/puissance.
Corpus Total tokens
Relative
frequency in
corpus
Le monde 1998 11 0.0010%
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus15 0.0014%
Leeds Internet Corpus 742 0.0037%
•For English, the Brown Corpus (Compleat Lexical Tutor)
shows the following:
39 total tokens of attractive
19 tokens (49%) = « visually attractive, pretty,
handsome »; 12 modifying animate nouns (11 female)
•If attractif were a direct transfer from English, one could
expect a certain proportion of tokens with the meaning
« handsome, pretty, visually appealing », most often
modifying animates.
But this is not the case.
Comparison with English usage: attractive
•Semantic content common to virtually all Fr. tokens:
« having the capacity to attract ».
•The most common (understood) object being a buyer or
investor, the most common contexts (esp. in journalistic
texts) are business/finance and technology.
•Common collocates: prix, placements, marché, taux/tarif, offre,
contenu, jeu
•In the Internet Corpus, which shows more diversity of
context, another common object is people exercising
mobility.
• Common collocates are words referring to locations: zone, territoire,
environnement, pays, site (en ligne)
Comparison with synonyms:
attrayant, intéressant
• Comparative frequency in Internet Corpus:
attractif 742 (0.0037%) attrayant 995 (0.0050%)
• Comparative frequency of collocations with prix (‘prices’):
prix attrayants 7prix attractifs 59prix intéressants 81
• Contexts of attrayant are more diverse, lacking the concentration in business/finance, but showing overlap with attractif with respect to collocates referring to places.
Common collocates of attrayant:
• aspect, chose, côté, façon, option, caractère
• paysage, lieu, ville
• aspect, présentation, forme, couleurs
connecter, déconnecter,
connexion / connection
TLFI:
• connecter (V) Elec. « to connect by means of electrical
conductors » (1951)
• déconnecter (V) Elec. and fig. « to disconnect » (1957)
• connexion (N) Abstract meaning: « link between certain
phenomena or ideas » (1338!); also Anat. and Elec.
Innovative uses:
• Officially sanctioned: déconnecté (p.p.) « disconnected »
• Not officially sanctioned:
• Fig. (se) connecter, connecté (synonyme lier )
• connexion = « person connected with another »
Innovative uses: (dé)connecter, etc.
Fig. déconnecté (p.p.) « disconnected, disenfranchised »
This form+meaning accounts for 1/2 of all forms in Chambers Corpus.
• le monde rural reste largement déconnecté de toute modernité (Le monde)
• (referring to young people) les plus déconnectés (Le monde)
Fig. (se) connecterAbsent from Le monde 1998 and Chambers CorpusInternet Corpus: 17 tokens = 0.0001% (finite sg. forms only)
• "Comment se connecter à sa spiritualité ?” (Leeds Internet Corpus)
• (in a theater review) Pour ce rendez-vous de janvier, connecté autour de l'histoire
familiale et de l'intimité, … (Le monde 2008)
connexion = « person connected with another »Very infrequent in Internet Corpus only• la bonne connexion haut placée susceptible de vous assurer une subvention (Leeds
Internet Corpus)
rejoindre (V)
Traditional meanings (TLFI):• « to join together what was separated »
• « to return to a place or to the company of a person or persons»
• « to meet up with, catch up with »
Innovative extension:• « to become a part, member, employee of »
Object is a sg. N referring to a collectivity: groupe, équipe, mouvement,
staff, organisation, nouns denoting a sports team, company,
political party
Synonyms: se joindre à, devenir membre de, adhérer à, s’inscrire à
This use is not mentioned in TLFI.
Relative frequency of neologism in
different registers: rejoindre
Corpus NeologismTotal
tokens
Neologism/
Total tokens
Frequency of
neologism in
corpus
Le monde 1998 38 127 30% 0.0034%
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus22 126 17% 0.0020%
Leeds Internet Corpus
(sample: Inf. rejoindre)5 100 5% N/A
Leeds Internet Corpus
(sample: 3 sg. rejoint)18 100 18% N/A
Additional observation:
rejoindre les rangs (de)
Occasional occurrences in journalistic and Internet corpora
• rang, N = « row » (Germ. orgin, attested in OF)
• les rangs = « group of men serving in a military unit »
• TLFI includes it as a set expression.
Google shows it to be very common, along with joindre les rangs, on the Internet. Frequent context: invitation to join a company or organization.
Outside of this idiom, joindre does not show the same extension as rejoindre to the English-like usage.
consultant, -e (N)
• Archaic meaning but undergoing revival: « one who
consults (asks advice of) another »
This usage is common in the Internet Corpus in occult and psychiatric
contexts: Le consultant jette lui-même des grains au hasard sur les cartes.
• Appositive use: médecin/avocat consultant (« consulting
doctor/lawyer ») - early 19th C. (OED traces the comparable Eng.
usage to Fr.: obs. sense of consulter = « to give professional
counsel »)
• Putative synonyms: conseil (« counsel »), conseiller (« adviser »),
expert
Relative frequency of neologism
in different registers: consultant
Note: For the following corpora, all tokens have the ‘new’
meaning.
Corpus Total tokensRelative
frequency
Le monde 1998 14 0.0013%
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus8 0.0007%
Leeds Internet Corpus: In a sample of 659 nominal tokens:
44 (7%) = « one who seeks advice »
615 (93%) = Eng. « consultant »
programme (N)
• « set of actions one proposes to accomplish toward a
certain purpose »
• attested from the 17th C.
• Specific uses: « program (set of projects), agenda,
political platform, schedule, plan, course of study,
computer program »
• TLFI does not include « TV / radio program »
• Dictionnaire TV5 monde: ‘Ensemble des émissions
[« broadcasts »] d’une station de radio ou de
télévision. Une émission en particulier. ’
Relative frequency of neologism in
different registers: programme
Corpus NeologismTotal
tokens
Neologism/
Total tokens
Frequency of
neologism in
corpus
Le monde 1998 [31]* 113 [30%] [0.0038%]
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus6 216 3% 0.0006%
Leeds Internet Corpus
(sample)1 100 1% N/A
Alice blogs 0 23 0% N/A
*Note: Some skepticism is in order here, due to difficulty of distinguishing the
two meanings cited in TV5 Dictionary.
All contexts are related to buying/selling, importation/exportation.
Comparative frequency of neologism
and its synonym:
programme / émission ‘broadcast’
Corpus(1) ‘neologism’
programme
(2) synonym
émissionRatio (1):(2)
Le monde 1998 31* 20 N/A
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus6 34 18:100
Alice blogs 0 5 N/A
(se) relaxer
• relaxer trans. v.: 12th C. « to pardon (sins) »; 14th C. « to
liberate, acquit »; 15th C. « to release »; 17th C. MED. « to
cause to relax (muscle) ».
• relax(e) adj., n. & adv.: 1955-66 « favoring relaxation » (fauteuil
relaxe); Colloq. « relaxed » (une soirée relax); « relaxation »
(cure de relaxe); « in a relaxed manner » (conduire relax).
• se relaxer ref. v.: 1957 PSYCHOL. « to relax, to rest by
relaxing » (Relaxez-vous).
• relaxé p.part. used as adj. 1964 « relaxed » (l’ambiance
détendue, relaxée des vacances; Source: Radio advertisement.)
Compared frequencies:
relax, relaxé, relaxation
Corpus Total tokens
Le monde 1998 2
Chambers-Rostand
Journalistic Corpus4
Leeds Internet Corpus 1,088
Internet Corpus Results
• relaxation 813
Collocations: technique, exercice, méthode de ____
• relaxant(es) 211
Collocations: bain, ambiance, effet, musique ____
• relax adj./adv. 159
Notre chauffeur, relax , sort du véhicule, ouvre le capot,…
Lundi 10 janvier Matinée relax. Je m’en vais seule au village…
Travailler relax et sans être dérangé est une condition …
relaxer Verb forms
Total verb forms: 812
Distribution (based on smaller sample):
• Reflexive 35%
• Transitive* 34%
• Intransitive (je relaxe) 13%
• Past participle (adj.) 18%
*includes both legal and general meanings
Comparison: relaxer / détendre
Détendre, though almost as rare as relaxer in the journalistic corpora, is much more frequent in the Internet corpus.
• Past participle: 1,000+ détendu(es) vs. 197 relaxé(es) (reduced to 96 if legal sense is excluded)
Occurrences of détendre include figurative uses not found for relaxer:
• Les taux d'intérêt à dix ans se sont donc détendus, à 4,82 % vendredi, contre 5,11 % trois semaines plus tôt
• Pour détendre l' atmosphère,…
lister (trans. v.)• TLFI:
A. MÉCANOGRAPHIE. Sortir sur une imprimante des informations
traitées avec un ordinateur ou un équipement informatique. Comme
exemple de cartes d'objets binaires, on peut citer les cartes des
fichiers de personnel dans lesquels les renseignements concernant
chaque employé sont listés sur une carte pleine, sans encoche ni trou
(JOLLEY, Trait. inform., 1968, p. 34).
B. INFORMAT. Établir automatiquement au moyen d'un ordinateur les
listes dans lesquelles sont classées par catégorie les objets d'un
ensemble (d'apr. Informat. 1972).
• Lister = ‘to list’ is included in the Dictionnaire TV5monde
with no special designation; WordReference.com includes
this meaning with the designation ‘Comput.’
Exemples de corpus:
listerCher Monsieur, je crois que lorsque vous listez les valeurs
chrétiennes, vous en oubliez une fondamentale: la liberté: Dieu n'
a pas créé l' homme - pantin mais l' homme libre.
Le ministre liste aussi les pays récalcitrants à limiter la
délivrance de laissez-passer pour rapatrier leurs ressortissants:
Serbie-Monténégro, Guinée, Soudan, Cameroun, Pakistan,
Géorgie, Biélorussie et Égypte seront sanctionnés, …
j' ai noté un certain nombre de propositions que je vous listeci-dessous…
Quoi que, c' est pe un coup à se faire black lister sur google aussi
implémenter, implémentation
Dictionnaire TV5monde:
implémenter, v. tr. [Informatique] Réaliser la phase
finale d’élaboration d'un système qui permet au matériel,
aux logiciels et aux procédures d'entrer en fonction.
implémentation, n.f. [Informatique] Action
d’implémenter, résultat de cette action.
Both are absent from journalistic corpora.
Internet Corpus: 308 implémentation, 340 implémenter
All with technical sense, in technical contexts
Results
1. Neither journalistic nor Internet French are overrun by English-like uses of French words.
1. Particular patterns of comparative frequency vary with the particular lexical item.
1. In no case did we find any evidence of displacement of either the ‘traditional’ use of the same item or of its pre-existing synonyms.
Conclusions
• In every case, the shift in question is sufficiently motivated by factors internal to French, that recourse to the influence of English as the sole or primary explanation of the shift is unnecessary. These motivating factors include:• high degree of semantic proximity of the traditional and new
meanings
• slight nuance of meaning or shift in context of use distinguishing the neologism from pre-existing synonym(s) (opportunité, attractif, relaxer)
• shift of syntactic category (Adj->N) (futur, consultant)
• greater syntactic simplicity of the neologism compared to the pre-existing synonym(s) (réaliser, rejoindre, lister)
Pedagogical Implications
• Instruction should be based on current usage. Of the 12 items studied here:• 4 appear to be marginal (limited use in colloquial contexts) or
unacceptable (connecter, programme, lister, implémenter). Students should understand sociolinguistic connotations of their use.
• 2 are entirely acceptable and have no precise synonym (contrôler, consultant).
• 6 are entirely acceptable but have co-existing synonyms (réaliser, opportunité, attractif, futur (n.), rejoindre, relaxer) Learners should be able to use these alternative means of expression and should understand any constraints on the use of the neologism. In other words, they should understand the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic particularities of each of the given items.
References
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