J’ai réalisé qu’elle était spéciale:

Semantic Anglicisms

in Contemporary Metropolitan

French

Betsy Kerr

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities,

USA

bjkerr@umn.edu

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.’

Compared frequencies:

lister

Le monde 1998 0

Chambers corpus 0

Leeds Internet Corpus 211

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.

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