Remade in France: Anglicisms in the Lexicon and Morphology of French [1 ed.] 0190625546, 9780190625542

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Remade in France

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Remade in France ANGLICISMS IN THE LEXICON AND MORPHOLOGY OF FRENCH Valérie Saugera

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1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Saugera, Valérie, author. Title: Remade in France : Anglicisms in the lexicon and morphology of French/​ Valérie Saugera. Description: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN  2016019835 | ISBN  9780190625542 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN  9780190625566 (epub) | ISBN  9780190625573 (online) Subjects: LCSH: English language—​Gallicisms. | English language—​Foreign words—French. | French language—Influence on English. | French language—Morphology. | French language—Lexicology. Classification: LCC PE1582.F5 S38 2016 | DDC 442/​.421—​dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2016019835 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

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For Albane, Béatrice, and Éric.

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CONTENTS List of Tables and Figures  xi Acknowledgments  xiii List of Abbreviations  xv

1. Introducing French Anglicisms  1

1.1. Demystifying Anglicisms  1 1.1.1. Académie or government opposition  2 1.1.2. Opposition from a linguist  4 1.2. Anglicisms versus other-​language borrowings  6 1.3. Written versus oral Anglicisms: written versus oral (French) language  7 1.4. ‘Forgotten’ French Anglicisms and research agenda  10 1.5. Content of the book  14

2. Methodology: The Dictionary Corpus and the Newspaper Corpus  17

2.1. A dictionary corpus  18 2.1.1. Presentation of the Petit Robert (CD-​ROM version)  18 2.1.2. Inclusion of English words  19 2.1.3. Dictionary-​sanctioned Anglicisms  20 2.2. Online Libération corpus  20 2.2.1. Language of the daily press  20 2.2.2. Anglicisms and language of the press  21 2.2.3. Choice and presentation of Libération  22 2.3. Other sources for consulting and collecting Anglicisms  23 2.4. Corpus linguistics for contact linguistics  24 2.4.1. Text-​mining software: mining dictionary-​unattested words  24 2.4.2. Selection criteria and flagging devices  29 2.4.3. Database, or one year of dictionary-​unsanctioned English in Libération  31

3. From English to French: The Making of New Words  33

3.1. Periods of influence: from the eighteenth-​century Anglomania to the global English of the turn of the twenty-​first century  33 3.1.1. Eighteenth-​century anglomanie  34 3.1.2. Nineteenth-​century technical terms and more  35 3.1.3. More Anglomania at the dawn of the twentieth century  36

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3.1.4. Entre deux guerres: the debut of American English  37 3.1.5. After 1945: intensification of American English  38 3.1.6. Virtual language contact since 1990: English as a universal donor language  39 3.2. Anglicisms: etymologically English versus recognized as English  42 3.3. Lexical changes from the donor word  43 3.3.1. Grammatical shift  44 3.3.2. Semantic shift  45 3.3.3. Stylistic shift  49 3.3.4. Connotative shift or loaded Anglicisms  51 3.4. Types of Anglicisms based on the restrictive criterion ‘recognized as English’  52 3.4.1. English in form and denotation  53 3.4.2. False Anglicisms  54 3.4.3. Truncated compounds  57 3.4.4. Derivatives: French/​English affixation on English/​French bases  59 3.4.5. Serial bilingual compounds  60 3.4.6. Nonce formations based on a bilingual play on words  61 3.4.7. Orthographically or phonetically assimilated Anglicisms  62 3.5. Beyond words: borrowing of English phraseology  65 3.5.1. Famous phrases from the arts  67 3.5.2. Idioms and proverbs  68 3.5.3. Lexicalized slogans  69 3.5.4. Expressions détournées  71 3.5.5. Discourse and pragmatic markers  72 3.5.6. Three-​element [Adj/N + Adj/N + N] phraseologisms  74 3.5.7. False phrasal Anglicisms  74 3.5.8. Interpretation of phrasal borrowing  75 3.6. Summary  76

4. Dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms  77 4.1. Dictionary-​sanctioned versus -​unsanctioned  78 4.1.1. Anglicisms from the Petit Robert 2015 first attested after 1990  78 4.1.2. Ephemeral borrowed vocabulary  79 4.2. Nonce and very low-​frequency Anglicisms  79 4.3. Most frequent Anglicisms  83 4.4. Borrowed closed-​class words  86 4.4.1. Himself  88 4.4.2. Stressed the  89 4.4.3. Preposition-​like including, starring, and featuring  91 4.5. So French: serial so + X  92 4.6. Donor-​culture restricted: postcarding and global American pop culture  96

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4.7. Jargonistic ‘overuse’ of Anglicisms  97 4.8. Brief report of selected functions  99 4.8.1. Discourse functions of phrases: is back  99 4.8.2. Code-​switching  100 4.8.3. English is shorter  101 4.9. Life cycle of Anglicisms  102 4.10. Summary and conclusions  104

5. Nominal Anglicisms in the Plural  105

5.1. Bare plurals in French  106 5.2. Methodological detail  107 5.3. Factors disfavoring inflection in French  109 5.3.1. Compound Anglicisms with a non-​nominal second constituent  109 5.3.2. Proper nouns  115 5.3.3. Nouns ending in -​s, -​x, or -​z  116 5.3.4. Initialisms and acronyms  116 5.3.5. Nouns without a plural  117 5.3.6. Irregular plural in English  117 5.3.7. Nominalized onomatopoeia  120 5.3.8. Flagging devices  121 5.4. Some conclusions: so French  122

6. Adjectival Anglicisms in the Plural  123

6.1. A morphological hypothesis for adjectival Anglicisms  123 6.2. Inflection-​inhibiting constraints  125 6.2.1. Incorporation of non-​native traits  126 6.2.2. Uninflected English adjectives complying with French morphology  133 6.3 Adjectives versus nouns  135 6.4 Summary  138

7. Conclusion: What is an Anglicism?  139 Appendix: Database  143 References  183 Index of words and phrases  191 Subject index  199

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1.1

New loanwords in French, as recorded in the 1997–​2009 editions of the Petit Robert 6 Figure 2.1 Sample list of dictionary-​unattested words from the Libération corpus  26 Figure 2.2 Sample from the database (Appendix) based on the data in Figure 2.1  32 igure 3.1 Front page of Libération written entirely in English in response F to debate over the loi Fioraso 41 Table 3.1 Cash: Linguistic shifts from donor language to recipient language 47 Table 3.2 Lexical changes from the donor language to the recipient language 53 Table 3.3 Summary of general types of French Anglicisms  64 Table 3.4 Anglicisms recorded as ‘phrases’ in the Dictionary of European Anglicisms 66 Table 3.5 Typology of phraseological Anglicisms in French  76 Table 4.1 Most frequent Anglicisms in the Libération corpus not recorded in the Petit Robert 2010  84 Table 4.2 Emergence in Libération of three preposition-​like particles including/​starring/​featuring 92 Table 4.3 Lexical patterns of phrasal [so + Adj/​year] in the corpus  93 Table 4.4 Life cycle and frequency of six borrowed items in Libération over a fifteen-​year period  102 Table 5.1 Summary of inflection-​inhibiting constraints on French nominal Anglicisms  110 Table 5.2 Structure of uninflected compound Anglicisms in French  112 Table 6.1 Summary of inflection inhibitors  127 Table 6.2 Inflection-​facilitating factors for variable adjectives  128 Table 6.3 Inflected plural nouns and their uninflected adjective counterparts 137

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In the solitary process of data collection, research, and writing on the heated, creative, and constantly changing topic of French Anglicisms, I have benefited from the help of many. Patricia V. Lunn read every word of every draft. A friend and a linguist, I owe her this book for her rigorous editing, critical comments, and indomitable encouragement. The following people have very much contributed to this book as well. I list them alphabetically—​Feray J. Baskin (FJB), Yohan Boniface, Alice Bowsher, Alexander Croxton, Amanda Dalola, John Humbley, Debbie Hunt, Louise Larchbourne, Olivia Levasseur, Christopher L.  Rhodes, Stéphanie Roulon, Jean-​Pierre Rousseau, Albane Saugera, Béatrice Saugera, Éric Saugera, Hallie Stebbins, and two anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful to the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute for its grant support.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS abbr. abbreviation adj. adjective adv. adverb EN English f. feminine FR French infin. infinitive interj. interjection lit. literally m. masculine n. noun pers. person pl. plural pres. present sg. singular suff. suffix V verb var. variable DEA A Dictionary of European Anglicisms NOAD New Oxford American Dictionary PR Petit Robert

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Introducing French Anglicisms Quand l’État français réinvente le «what the fuck» (When the French state reinvents the “what the fuck”) —Slate.fr, January 19, 2010 Language being an affair of state in France, the Académie française has not failed to engage with the latest supply of English words in the French lexicon, and its arbiters periodically propose native equivalents for unwanted foreign items: liseuse, not e-book; syndrome d’épuisement professionnel, not burn-out; and acharnement contre Hollande, not Hollande bashing. E-book, burn-out, and bashing illustrate the lexical imports from the period of vigorous contact beginning in the 1990s between French and English (as the global language). Although Anglicisms from this period have received scholarly attention, over the last twenty years the academicians have followed this dynamic more closely than have the linguists. This book examines the appearance and behavior of English-origin items in the lexicon and morphology of French from the first phase of this contact period, and explains them in the context of French neology and lexical activity/renewal. It records and chronicles the status of these borrowed words and phrases, based on data collected from primary sources—a large online newspaper corpus (for unofficial Anglicisms) and the dictionary (for official Anglicisms)—and secondary sources.

1.1 Demystifying Anglicisms English loanwords have been added to other languages worldwide at an increasing rate, but no language has a history of national resistance as staunch as French. In France, there are national rules that govern the language, and each language policy is a verbal coup in the name of the defense, integrity, and clarity of the French language. Language planning dates back to at least the Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts of 1539, which prescribed the exclusive use of French in notarial and judicial acts to the detriment of Latin. In France’s 1

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singular history of language as a state matter (Judge 1993; Dubois 2003; Paveau and Rosier 2008), it is only to be expected that the accelerated adoption of Anglicisms after the Second World War should become a chosen target of legislative rebellion. This rebellion has taken the form of government institutions which have tried to replace English terms with native equivalents, as discussed in Munday 1985, Plümer 2000, and Humbley 2008a. Emblematic works of the current opposition to the alleged Anglicization of the French lexicon serve to contextualize protectionist concerns. The report of the Commission générale de terminologie et de néologie (2013) and the entries in the “Dire, ne pas dire” (Say, don’t say) section of the Académie française’s website represent the state view, while Claude Hagège’s (2012) essay Contre la pensée unique represents the view of a linguist. Protest of this kind is highly visible on the French national scene.1 1.1.1  ACADÉMIE OR GOVERNMENT OPPOSITION

The Commission générale de terminologie et de néologie, founded in 1996, aims to limit lexical inflation and supply specialized terminology to take the place of foreign, mostly English, loanwords under the rallying cry of “enrichment of the French language.” The declared long-term objective of the Commission is to protect the status of the French language as both the language of the Republic and an international language. Subsequent to the Académie française’s approval, the proposed French equivalents appear in the Journal officiel, which guarantees their compulsory use in all public and administrative spheres.2 The Commission’s annual activity report for 2013 publicizes the fact that state-sponsored neological activity produced 343 terms in thirteen thematic lists, for example, health (beuverie express for binge drinking) and foreign affairs (réfugiés de la mer for boat people3). The lists put the bad English words in one column and the good French neologisms in another column; such lists are typical outcomes of linguistic purism whose one tenet is that “only one form of the language is the correct (or even the ‘perfect’) form (generally this form is the standard form)” (Walsh 2014: 425). Since 2008

1  The Académie’s proposed substitutions produce regular commentaries in the press, and Hagège is a regular guest on numerous radio and television shows (some of which are available on YouTube). 2  This measure complies with the loi Toubon (1994), probably the most famed piece of legislation to preserve the French language via regulation of lexical imports. Humbley (2008a: 88) notes its limitation: “One of the ideas of the ‘Toubon law’ was to strengthen the penalties for not using the official terminology, but an important part of the text was declared unconstitutional for infringing the right of free speech.” Hence, only state publications are subject to linguistic regulations. 3  This dictionary-​sanctioned compound appeared in the late 1970s to refer to Vietnamese boat people. As other refugees (from Libya, Afghanistan, etc.) have fled by boat, the term has continued to spread with new referents. See morphological case study of boat people in section 5.3.6.

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the proposed terms are also recorded in the online terminological database FranceTerme (franceterme.culture.fr), a collection of some 6,500 terms.4 The “Dire, ne pas dire” section on the Académie’s website exemplifies another expression of linguistic purism. It is a new space for academicians to post standards related to both dictionary-​sanctioned and -​unsanctioned Anglicisms. Periodic posts since 2011 may include a short etymology but essentially fuel the argument that French counterparts should be used instead: the entry for adjectival cash, a colloquial false Anglicism, suggests the native paraphrase d’une franchise un peu brutale (of a slightly harsh honesty); the entry for the borrowed compound X-​friendly (vélo-​friendly (bike-​friendly), conjoint-​ friendly (partner-​friendly)), patterned on gay-​friendly, promotes the substitute sympathisant employed by seventeenth-​century poet La Fontaine in one of his fables. The academicians invariably consider the Anglicisms and the proposed French replacements to be perfect synonyms. In addition to the Anglicisms being considered unnecessary, another recurrent criticism in the posts is that they are modish or snobbish: “Ces termes [look, touch] ont connu une grande fortune, tant il semble important aux yeux de certains de se donner un air de modernité en empruntant à l’anglais mots et expressions à la mode.” (These terms [look, touch] have achieved such popularity, that it seems important in the eyes of some to give themselves an air of modernity by borrowing trendy words and expressions from English.) This sample of items discussed in the Académie’s “Dire, ne pas dire” emphasizes two perennial faults with Anglicisms—​that they are superfluous and faddish. The Académie’s website includes commentaries on Anglicisms and the English language that are beyond lexical considerations. The following post from the writer and academician Dominique Fernandez hints at a fundamental reason for the French word police to guard against English loanwords: Comment se fait-​il que l’italien, langue d’un pays bien plus inféodé, politiquement, aux États-​Unis que la France, résiste mieux aux anglicismes que le français ? […] Peut-​être parce que les Italiens connaissent et parlent l’anglais bien mieux que les Français. Ils n’ont donc pas ce complexe d’infériorité qui pousse les Français à compenser leur incompétence linguistique par une vassalité langagière. L’anglais, les Italiens le laissent là où il faut qu’il soit : dans la langue anglaise, et non dans des anglicismes, subterfuge bâtard propre à des ignorants. http://​www.academie-​francaise.fr/​comment-​se-​fait-​il-​que-​litalien —“Dire, ne pas dire,” May 3, 2012

 Symbolically, Titiou Lecoq, a journalist trained in semiotics, ridicules the policy of finding equivalence for almost every loan, including the vulgar what the fuck, in the title of her Slate article, “Quand l’État français réinvente le «what the fuck»” (epigraph of this chapter). 4

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(How is it that Italian, the language of a country much more subservient, politically, to the United States than is France, resists Anglicisms better than French does? […] It may be because Italians know and speak English better than the French. Thus, they do not have that inferiority complex which spurs the French to compensate for their linguistic incompetence by becoming linguistic vassals. The Italians leave English where it should be: in the English language, and not in Anglicisms, bastard subterfuge characteristic of the ignorant.) Fernandez, in his post, treats borrowing as a political phenomenon involving two languages of different status: French, stained with Anglicisms, has the relationship of a vassal language to a ruling language, that is to English, supplier of these words. It is undoubtedly the linguistic hegemony of American English, resulting from the now-dominant economic, political, and cultural influence of the United States, which is being denounced and which raises the hackles of the Académie. Global English leaves its lexical imprint on all the European languages, including both French and Italian (Furiassi 2010; Pulcini 2010). Throughout the website, the globalization of English is seen to occur at the expense of French. In a post from December 2, 2004, the historian and academician Hélène Carrère d’Encausse even warned that English is on its way to replacing French altogether. She reports on the ascent of English to the detriment of French on the international scene: French used to be the language of science and diplomacy, disciplines in which English now predominates; French was once the most used language of the European Union, now it is English; French occupies a central place in the founding texts of the United Nations, but over half the speeches are now delivered to the General Assembly in English, etc. To regain “the glory of the French language” Carrère d’Encausse believes in the concept of Francophonie, including the teaching of French abroad. Fernandez seconds this opinion when he reports (post from May 5, 2014) on a recent visit to Cuba: France is the only country with a cultural institution there, the Alliance française, and the Alliance in Havana claims 15,000 members. He rejoices in the French presence in Cuba: “Rhum, cigares et sympathie pour la France: un cocktail réjouissant” (Rum, cigars, and love for France: a joyful mix). The problem of Anglicisms clearly stands as a political one, relating to France’s world stature and impact.

1.1.2 OPPOSITION FROM A LINGUIST

The concept that words are vehicles of thinking and culture forms the core of Claude Hagège’s (2012) essay, Contre la pensée unique. Hagège, emeritus professor of linguistics at the Collège de France, argues that the universal use of English is imposed to the detriment of other languages and thus of other ways of thinking. His thesis is roughly based on the controversial Humboldt-​Sapir-​ Whorf hypothesis (p. 59), which proposes that the structure of a language affects the thought, imagination, and worldview of its speakers. If this is so,

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then a diversity of grammars and structures would promote diversified thinking, which is hindered by the current domination of English. Hagège argues that in scientific research, for example, the pressure to publish in English and conform to American standards represents a threat to innovation, for innovation often goes hand in hand with resistance or challenge to the norm (pp. 128–​9). He contends that English, whose importance as a vehicular language is unprecedented in human history, hides behind a mask of altruism an American ideology of maximal profit and neoliberal globalization. A symbolic demonstration of Hagège’s thinking is his provocative request in a French McDonald’s for a burger au fromage, a loanblend he coined for cheeseburger (p. 92). Although Hagège recognizes that cheeseburger serves to single out the referent, he perceives a danger in loanwords which reflect the American way of life: that these words will inevitably propagate new customs, morals, etc. in the nations which borrow them. He sees the terms benchmarking, fast​food, management, teenager, correct, loser, and whistleblower, for example, as promoters of an American ideology and a resultant pensée unique (pp. 61–4). Hagège further claims that English loanwords do not meet a need for linguistic enrichment and precision, as was the case with technical words coined from classical Greek during the Renaissance; according to him, contemporary borrowing from English is not only unnecessary, but is imposed, mostly via pressure from the media (p. 208). Hagège refers to the “massive intrusion of American references and words” (p. 207), though without defining “massive.” His rejection of borrowing does not rely on representative data samples, that is, on a corpus, but on isolated, idiosyncratic examples. In fact, such discussions of the influence of English on French are typically reduced to a handful of Anglicisms to illustrate big claims that English defaces French. Hagège’s concern and wording mirror those of the Académie when he refers to the “vassalisation de la France à l’empire économique américain, dont la mondialisation est une forteresse avancée” (p. 104) (vassalization of France to the American economic empire of which globalization is a developed fortress). In the media, Hagège, who qualifies the English language as laide (ugly), argues that French has the features of an international language (presence in five continents, prestigious culture, official language of the United Nations), and therefore, deplores cuts in government funding for promoting the “rayon­ nement du français” (flourishing of French). These well-known opinions show that the objections to Anglicisms are explicitly lexical (substitution of French words for English words) and implicitly political (Anglicisms as products of the hegemonic United States). Because the Académie française and Hagège receive preeminent media attention, their views have contributed to shaping a national image of Anglicisms as lexical polluters. The Académie refers to French as the bon langage (good language), to English as the triste sabir (sad jargon), and to Anglicisms as croisement bâtard (bastardized crossbreed), étrange verbe (strange verb), and étrange mélange (strange mixture). Such opinions, however, do not address the linguistic behavior,

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features, and functions of these donor words in the lexicon and morphology of French. One motivation for the writing of this book was to provide a thorough, systematic linguistic study that would confront (or not) the state-built myth that Anglicisms are “bastardized” or “strange” forms.

1.2 Anglicisms versus other-​language borrowings This study concentrates on Anglicisms because they overwhelmingly outnumber borrowings from other languages and thus provide a substantial corpus for investigation. Over its 1997–​2009 editions, the Petit Robert (PR), a reference dictionary of French general language, accepted 368 new words from fifty languages: half of them were from English, followed by loans from Latin, Italian, Arabic, and Japanese, as indicated in more detail in Table 1.1 (Martinez 2011). It is important to recognize that borrowings from different donor languages may not behave similarly. Based on the criteria of sense pattern (monosemous or polysemous) and cultural context (donor restricted or unrestricted), Chesley (2010) argues that Anglicisms differ from non-​English borrowings in being polysemous and in occurring more often in culturally unrestricted contexts, that is, not only in English-​speaking countries. The contrast with official loans from the donor language Turkish is instructive. The Petit Robert chronicles about seventy loanwords from Turkish, all of which are not only just nouns but concrete nouns (e.g. kilim, houmous), a characteristic that is shared by the dictionary-​unsanctioned Turkish loans in the Libération corpus, the newspaper corpus of this study. In short, borrowings from Turkish are strikingly homogeneous, while English borrowings—​as this book demonstrates—​are strikingly heterogeneous. Both quantitative and qualitative considerations, then, have contributed to the delimiting of this study to recent borrowings from English. Arabic is the second commonest language spoken in France, but official recognition of its recent influence on the development of the French lexicon has been minimal: the Petit Robert records no more than forty words borrowed

TABLE 1.1

New loanwords in French, as recorded in the 1997–​2009 editions of the Petit Robert.a Donor languages

N loans

English

190

52

alien, fan-​club

Languages that supplied more than 5 words: Latin, Italian, Arabic, Japanese, Greek, Spanish, and Chinese

108

29

aloe vera (Latin), feng shui (Chinese)

70

19

kot (Flemish), naan (Hindi)

368

100

Languages that supplied fewer than 5 words Total a

Adapted from Martinez (2011).

%

Examples

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from Arabic since 1945 (hal(l)al,5 fatwa, wech (what)). This is because many of the loans belong to slang that is not recorded in general language dictionaries, especially the argot coined by the youth of the banlieues (hèbs (jail), walou (nothing)), for whom borrowings from Arabic serve as a marker of identity. Although the Arabic contributions to French date from the Middle Ages (athanor, calife), it is the post-Second World War period of reconstruction that is the source of modern argot from Arabic, a direct result of immigration from French colonies in North Africa. Tengour (2013: 17) comments on the recent intensification of Arabic influence on French slang: “Au début assez marginal, cet apport s’est considérablement amplifié ces vingt dernières années avec la crise et le repli communautaire.” (At first marginal, this contribution has drastically increased these last twenty years with the crisis and community withdrawal from society.) English, in contrast, is not a language of France but has unparalleled cultural, economic, and political prestige as an international language. It has been the world’s first global language since circa 1990, owing to its rapid spread and resultant use on five continents. The unavoidable consequence of a hegemonic language is its heavy lexical impact on other languages, as meticulously recorded for sixteen languages in A Dictionary of European Anglicisms (DEA), an ingenious lexical enterprise directed by Görlach (2001). The influence of English on other languages has been magnified significantly by the advent of the World Wide Web, and the concurrent widespread use of English as its lingua franca. More than previous forms of media, the mass media and associated technologies facilitate the rapid development and diffusion of borrowings. The escalating global influence of English raises the issue of potentially novel and deeper contact outcomes. The edited volume The Anglicization of European Lexis (Pulcini, Furiassi, and Rodríguez González 2012), for instance, focuses on the increasing borrowing of phraseological units rather than single words, particularly in the guise of calques, that is, literal translations.

1.3 Written versus oral Anglicisms: written versus oral (French) language In line with the tradition of Anglicism research, this study uses a newspaper corpus, because the language of the press is a robust supplier of these borrowings. The online edition of daily newspapers has opened up new computational avenues for facilitating the collection of loanwords, which will also permit

5 See El Khamissy (2014) for a semantic and morphological study of the numerous usages of borrowed halal in journalistic writing. Halal is dictionary-recorded only as an adjective referring to meat, whereas press samples show it describing various nouns (dentifrice halal (halal toothpaste)) as well as appearing in derived forms (halalisation).

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future diachronic comparisons by documenting the development of Anglicisms within French and across European and other languages. Another factor in the use of written/digital data is purely linguistic: the fundamental differences between spoken and written French. Written Anglicisms reveal borrowing phenomena that would not be discernible in the spoken language. Written and oral French are so different that it has been suggested they might be two separate languages or co-exist in a diglossic situation (Massot and Rowlett 2013). Variationist research (Gadet 1989; Coveney 2002) has identified numerous patterns of oral to written variation in the lexicon, morphology, syntax, phonology, and orthography. For example, many morphological categories that have no overt realization in oral French are overtly marked in written French. The plural morpheme -s is realized orthographically on both adjectives and nouns (sg. film noir vs. pl. films noirs), but not in the spoken language (sg. /film nwaʀ/ vs. pl. /film nwaʀ/). Phonological contexts in which pluralization is audible, such as liaison (prenominal adjective: beaux_ arts /bozaʀ/ (fine arts)), and irregular/fusional forms (sg. loyal vs. pl. loyaux), are exceptions (Battye, Hintze, and Rowlett 2000). With respect to verbs, it has been argued that written and spoken verb forms belong to different morphological systems (Auger 1998). Inflection for person and number is completely transparent on written verbs, but not on spoken forms (3rd pers. sg. il pense /il pɑ̃s/ (he thinks) vs. 3rd pers. pl. ils pensent /il pɑ̃s/ (they think)). These differences are relevant to the study of the integration of foreign words. The language of the press facilitates the observation of inaudible borrowing phenomena, as illustrated with a data sample from the newspaper corpus of this study:



¤ Inflected nominal des baggys (baggies) vs. uninflected adjectival des

jeans baggyØ (baggy jeans). ¤ Feminine adjectival nerde (EN nerd + FR suffix -​e). ¤ Inflected present forms of tchater (to (online) chat): 2nd pers. sg. verb form tchates /​tʃat/​vs. 3rd pers. pl. verb form tchatent /​tʃat/​. ¤ Phonetically spelled words such as famousse (famous), toffie (toffee), and non-​pipeules (< people) (non-​celebrities). ¤ Capitalized stressed definite article: “THE adresse de l’Upper East Side: le Carlyle, bijou Art déco.” (THE address on the Upper East Side: the Carlyle, an Art Deco jewel.) ¤ Homophonous puns, such as melting potes patterned on melting pots.6 ¤ Words that tend to occur almost exclusively in the written (as opposed to spoken) language.

Research on spoken Anglicisms has been hampered by the lack of national reference corpora for oral French similar to those that exist for English, Dutch,

 In the corpus, the punning term melting potes (lit. melting buddies) refers to a band composed of two buddies ‘potes’ with different personal stories and eclectic music styles. 6

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Introducing French Anglicisms

German, Spanish, and Portuguese (Blanche-​Benveniste 2010: 11). Nonetheless, the situation is improving with the recent online availability of the Corpus International Écologique de la Langue Française (CIEL-​F), an extensive corpus composed of audio and video recordings of spoken French in real social contexts (see Gadet et al. 2012 for methodological reflections on the CIEL-​F). The following example points to ways in which Anglicisms can be marked in spoken French. It is an excerpt from an interview of Jean-Paul Cluzel, president of the Grand Palais in Paris, broadcast on the public radio channel France Culture (“Secret professionnel” show, May 5, 2012). This twenty-eight-minute interview about art exhibitions includes two etymologically related forms of English origin: curatorial and curator. Their occurrence is marked by a flurry of flagging devices, as shown in transcription (1a), whereas the newspaper corpus contains one occurrence of curator, which is devoid of any flagging (1b). 1. (a) Nous produisons systématiquement toutes les expositions qu’on dit curatoriales pour reprendre un mot anglais à la mode, c’est-​à-​ dire qui ont un curator [said with an English accent], c’est-​à-​dire un commissaire. [20’30] (We systematically produce all of the exhibitions that are said to be curatorial, to use a trendy English word, that is, that have a curator [said with an English accent], that is, an exhibition director. [20’30])

(b) La municipalité de Dinard […] a demandé à Ashok Adicéam, qui a été de la galaxie Pinault à Venise, de monter une exposition autour de l’espoir («hope» dans la langue des curators internationaux). —​(Libération, September 7, 2010) ( The municipality of Dinard […] asked Ashok Adicéam, who was from the Pinault galaxy in Venice, to set up an exhibition about hope (“hope” in the language of international curators).)

The speaker in (1a) signals his use of the adjectival curatorial with no fewer than four flags. The foreign form is indirectly introduced via the phrase qu’on dit (that are said to be). It is followed by the commentary pour reprendre un mot anglais à la mode (to use a trendy English word), which justifies his lexical choice with reference to one of the general functions of borrowing—“to display knowledge of a second or foreign language for social prestige or status” (Loveday 1996: 190). The speaker then provides an etymological definition (c’est-à-dire qui ont un curator), pronouncing the word curator with an English accent before giving its French equivalent (c’est-à-dire un commissaire).7 The phonologically nonintegrated curator may echo the sociolinguistic phenomenon of elite closure,

7  In contrast with these oral markers of borrowing, phonological integration in the written language may be expressed through phonetic spelling that reproduces or mimics a French pronunciation, for instance, angliche (English), britiche (British), and bizness (business).

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the near-native pronunciation of loanwords meant to distinguish the speaker, reported by Myers-Scotton (1993a, 2006). Once Anglicisms have been phonetically remodeled, which is the norm in French, there is little to mark them as Anglicisms in the oral language; therefore, flagging becomes necessary to show that speakers recognize their status. In the written language, however, orthographic and morphological markers make such flagging less necessary. In addition to flagging, other differences between oral and written Anglicisms may be found in frequency, borrowing types, semantic fields, text genres, degrees of (in)formality, sociolinguistic profiles of users, etc.

1.4 ‘Forgotten’ French Anglicisms and research agenda Lexical borrowing presents the following singular feature: “[it] can be found even in the total absence of bilingualism of any kind” (Thomason 2001: 72). Although the contact between two or more languages occurs in both monolingual and bilingual situations, the fertile field of contact linguistics tends to be concerned with bilingual encounters, communities, outcomes, and issues, such as the disputed distinction between borrowing and code-​switching. The influence of English as a global language on other languages departs from these purely bi- and multilingual issues, though lexical borrowing is a shared linguistic outcome. Contact with English in weak contact settings, such as Europe, is typically indirect and remote (Onysko 2009). Data in contact linguistics also come essentially from oral corpora, but in the study of European Anglicisms data come essentially from the written/digital language of the press. Loanword studies are more a German specialty than a French one: “Within this expanding circle [one of Kachru’s three circles of English], and more specifically within German linguistics, a longstanding tradition of research on English loanwords has emerged since the post-​war period” (Zenner, Speelman, and Geeraerts 2013: 42). In France, pressure from the state and an elite has turned the use and study of Anglicisms into a political, polemical, and even ultimately a tiresome matter, which might partly account for the smaller number of studies there.8 Working on the linguistics of words banished by the Académie, a respected 400-​year-​old institution, could be a delicate enterprise. It is striking that many researchers on French Anglicisms are not French: John Humbley

 Anglicisms in Québec French present a different scenario in terms of contact setting, language policy, borrowed forms, and speaker attitudes. Auger (2005) calls Anglicisms the “bête noire” of Québécois speakers. The belief that the French are uniquely puristic when it comes to the French language is disputed in Walsh’s (2014) sociolinguistic study. Walsh used a questionnaire to measure the effect of state language ideology on the linguistic consciousness of “ordinary French and Québécois speakers.” A core finding is that the French display a milder level of external purism (aimed at foreign elements) than the Québécois. 8

 1



Introducing French Anglicisms

(Australian) is an authority in the field; Michael Picone (American) wrote the seminal Anglicisms, Neologisms and Dynamic French (1996); and Esme Winter-​Froemel (German) has produced articles on various topics of French Anglicisms (2005 [as Esme Winter], 2009, 2011). In this historical context of government pressure against Anglicisms, it is not surprising that Humbley’s scholarly bibliography of French Anglicisms (2002a: 67–​95) overwhelmingly includes studies that deal with language planning, specialized terminology, and lexicography. This bibliography makes evident that Anglicisms have been less studied in purely linguistic terms. In fact, no large-​scale study has been published since the work of Michael Picone. Picone’s Anglicisms, Neologisms and Dynamic French is a lexicographic inventory of 1980s French Anglicisms manually collected between 1982 and 1987 from eclectic sources, especially advertising. The data fuel an in-depth investigation of the processes of word creation in French, with a focus on juxtapositional neology (for example, fast-X: fast-food, fast-bistouri (lit. fastscalpel), Fast-Frites (French-fries vending machine)). A central argument of Picone’s research is that the emerging synthetic tendencies of French, an analytic language, are not due solely to English influence (French allemand de l’Est vs. est-allemand < English East German), as is often claimed. Among other factors, Picone cites the productive use of neoclassical forms, which also results in synthetic constructions (Greek neo: néozélandais vs. English new: new-yorkais). Borrowing from English has continued to impact the French lexicon since Picone’s study and entered a distinctive period of intense contact in the 1990s against the backdrop of global English. Scholarly interest has been less intense over the past twenty years, at least among French linguists. Intentionally or not, linguists may have dismissed these borrowings as objects of scientific study because of cultural controversy, not to say persistent politicization. There has been, nevertheless, a significant number of studies conducted by German scholars on different aspects of French Anglicisms (for example, Plümer 2000 for a sociolinguistic approach tied to purism; Jansen 2005 for English neologisms in Internet terminology). Picone’s data were collected manually in the 1980s, but a trove of online data and advanced text-​mining software tools now permit the collection of large and diverse amounts of text material. Despite advances in text-​mining software tools and the gargantuan lexicon available online, comprehensive databases of French Anglicisms have not been made available (until this study). Pulcini, Furiassi, and Rodríguez González (2012: 18) list the benefits of using corpora in the study of European Anglicisms: “C‌orpora are indispensable because they offer up-​to-​date source material from which new Anglicisms or new meanings/​senses of Anglicisms can be detected. Through corpus-​based research it is possible to carry out qualitative studies […], i.e. obtain information about frequency, period of adoption, usage context and authentic examples.” The newspaper corpus

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designed for this study comprehends one year of the online national daily Libération, consisting of 27,670 newspaper articles, which permits the identification of dictionary-​unsanctioned words of English origin. This study is the first to capture some of the influence of English on French journalistic writing using an electronic corpus. The change is not only in method; the object under study has changed as well. The first twenty-​five years (1990–​2015) of this contact period have produced neologisms and lexical developments that frequently appear outside of the dictionary boundaries. A glance at the database appended to this volume immediately reveals large numbers of low-​frequency loan items, for example. Although they fulfill spur-​of-​the-​moment functions in the French language, these temporarily (or not) borrowed words might otherwise disappear without ever being recorded. A concern of this study was to identify the nature of these short-​lived words. The following sample of four articles containing dictionary-​ unsanctioned Anglicisms from the Libération corpus shows that cheeseburger is hardly representative of the heterogeneity, complexity, and playfulness of the borrowing process.9 2.  (a) Un funambule de la finance, qui a toujours le déguisement d’un trader-​killer. Costard noir, chemise pink rayée, col blanc, chaussures noires à lacets lilas. —​(Libération, June 10, 2010) (A finance tightrope walker, always in the disguise of a trader-​killer. Black suit, pink striped shirt, white collar, black shoes with lilac laces.)

(b) Derrière ses grosses lunettes rondes, elle cache mal sa ressemblance avec Annie Hall, une homonyme de fiction campée par Diane Keaton pour Woody Allen. Depuis 1964, l’Annie de Ben, c’est plutôt Annie «all», amante, aimante, et première fan. —​(Libération, April 3, 2010) (Behind her big round glasses, she has a hard time hiding her resemblance to Annie Hall, a fictitious namesake portrayed by Diane Keaton for Woody Allen. Since 1964, Ben’s Annie is instead Annie “all,” lover, loving, and number one fan.)

(c) Pour ceux qui ont raté la version papier, le making of ainsi que la présentation du produit avec O’Leary himself déguisé en miss sont visibles sur Internet. —​(Libération, September 10, 2010)

9  The examples used throughout this book are taken from the French daily newspaper Libération, unless otherwise specified, and the borrowed forms are underlined to highlight them.

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Introducing French Anglicisms

(For those who missed the printed version, the making of as well as the presentation of the product with O’Leary himself, disguised as a beauty queen, are visible on the Internet.) (d)  B  ref, la machine étatique aurait pour mission première et, en un sens, unique d’assurer un rééquilibrage qui ne serait qu’une affaire de temps – as we know : «Time is money» ! —​(Libération, December 2, 2010) (In short, the state machine would have for its first and, in one sense, its only mission re-establishing an equilibrium that would only be a matter of time—as we know: “Time is money”!) The corpus includes very low-​frequency Anglicisms (2a), wordplays (2b), pronouns (2c), and phraseological units (2d). Brief details of these examples follow, to introduce some borrowing features and issues discussed at length in this book. The French Anglicisms trader-​killer and pink in (2a) are among the very low-​frequency items that occur fewer than three times in the corpus. The compound trader-​killer, potentially patterned on the well-​established loan serial-​ killer,10 was coined to describe, and ridicule, the style of French trader Kerviel for resembling that of a fictional character, a superhero. The form all in (2b) provides a use of English for linguistic humor, with the subtle pun based on the homophonous pair when pronounced in French: Annie Hall and Annie all. Pronouns are a part of speech rarely borrowed, so the occurrence of himself in (2c) seems surprising. Example (2d) includes an English discursive marker (as we know) used to introduce an English maxim (Time is money) and shows that borrowing from English extends beyond single words. Chapters 3 and 4 investigate such contact data in depth in order to determine how they contribute to derivational and neological activity. This loanword project also investigates the question of the inflectional behavior and integration of nominal and adjectival Anglicisms.11 Nouns borrowed from English usually receive the standard silent suffix -​s when used in the plural, that is, they are treated as native words (des posts, des pitchs (film synopses)). Nevertheless, a small set of English nouns, particularly compounds, fails to receive inflection in French (des black-​out vs. des black-​jacks) and a smaller subset exhibits variation (des people vs. des peoples (celebrities)). In contrast, borrowed adjectives usually reject inflection, that is, they are seemingly

 The form serial-​killer has provided the productive pattern serial-​X > serial noceur (serial wedder), serial agitatrice (serial agitator) (examined in section 3.4.5), and occasionally provides the reverse X-​killer pattern > trader-​killer. 11  Verbs are consistently integrated into the recipient language by virtue of traditional first-​group conjugation, e.g. booster, checker (see section 4.2). 10

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not treated as native words (des notes funky vs. des notes modernes), but a small set exhibits variation (des jeans slim vs. des jeans slims (slim-​fit jeans)). As a noun, however, slim invariably pluralizes (des slims (slim-​fit pants)). A second and quite puzzling feature of these adjectival Anglicisms is that their nominal counterpart, if it exists, always receives native inflection (des jeans baggy vs. des baggys (baggies)). The goal was to account for all these plural forms via identification of inflection-inhibiting or -favoring constraints. Although the initial objective of this investigation was to understand how English nouns and adjectives do and do not pluralize in French, examination of the plural of Anglicisms revealed other findings—for instance, patterns of simplification, Anglicisms as tools for language play, and case studies of individual loans.

1.5 Content of the book The loan project Remade in France: Anglicisms in the Lexicon and Morphology of French characterizes the (current) influence of English on French, a heated topic in the history of the French language since 1945. This chapter questions the official view of Anglicisms as ‘bad words,’ because it is not well-founded in linguistic arguments. Chapter 2 explains the motives for both a dictionary corpus and a newspaper corpus as primary sources for English loanwords. The methodology also describes the semi-automatic approach used to extract only dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms from a year of press language. Chapter 3 offers a brief history of the contact of French with English, from eighteenthcentury Anglomania to the global English of the turn of the twenty-first century, including characteristic linguistic outcomes for each period. It chronicles the changes that commonly occur as donor words become new French words, and illustrates them with many borrowed items from the period of ‘virtual’ contact (1990–2015). Identification of these changes and of lexicogenic devices involved in the borrowing process serves to organize the data into typologies of loanwords and loan phrases. Chapter 4 reports on the findings from the investigation of the Libération corpus: systematic tracking of dictionary-unattested Anglicisms occurring over a year of press language reveals that contact with global English has resulted in new patterns of borrowing and processes for extending the French lexicon, for the short and long term. Chapters 5 and 6 comprehensively investigate the inflectional integration of nouns and adjectives, respectively, and identify morphological constraints on pluralization patterns.12 Additionally, analysis of the pluralization of Anglicisms results in the

12  Chapters 5 and 6 are revised and augmented versions of articles that appeared in Lingvisticæ Investigationes (Saugera 2012a) and Journal of French Language Studies (Saugera 2012b), respectively.

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Introducing French Anglicisms

discovery of etymological stories and of phases, mechanisms, and processes of integration of these borrowed words. The seventh chapter summarizes the findings, thus assessing the linguistic status of Anglicisms in French lexical activity, creation, and renewal, and accounting for the title Remade in France. Last but not least, the database, a lexicographic document chronicling one year of dictionary-unsanctioned items of English origin from the Libération corpus, is presented in the Appendix.

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Methodology THE DICTIONARY CORPUS AND THE NEWSPAPER CORPUS

LOL est entré dans le dictionnaire donc je quitte la France. (LOL has entered the dictionary, so I’m leaving France.) —​Web & Tech, June 22, 2012 “That’s the trouble with all you guys,” Stan told him. “You’re all Manhattancentric.” John looked at him. “What kinda word is that?” “A word from the newspaper,” Stan said. “And therefore authentic.” —​Donald E. Westlake, What’s so funny?, 2007 What corpus could provide a linguistic photograph that would exactly capture the influence of English on French? The short answer is—​none. First, the choice of a corpus is necessarily reductionist for failing to represent all speakers and all language settings. Secondly, French Anglicisms are the result of a contact phenomenon that is constantly being renewed. Nevertheless, a corpus can certainly be representative of certain significant linguistic trends, patterns, and features. The dictionary is a product of language authority in France, while the press is language read every day. Therefore, the dictionary and the press serve as valuable sources of contact data, despite the limitations addressed in this chapter. The dictionary corpus of this study, a closed corpus of Anglicisms from the Petit Robert, provides a useful reference list because dictionary attestation indicates that the donor lexical items have reached a stable status in the recipient language. By definition, dictionary data may be tainted with prescriptivism, which newspaper data can attenuate by reflecting actual usage. The daily newspaper Libération offers the other corpus of this study, one year of dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms in Libération (2010), as well as additional online archives for the years 1994–​2015. Detection and extraction of English-origin items benefited from a semi-​automatic approach that uses a text-​mining tool tailored to the specifics of this loan project. 17

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2.1 A dictionary corpus Since Anglicisms are seen as trespassers and dictionaries as authorities, the inclusion of Anglicisms in dictionaries inevitably causes controversy. The title of a Web & Tech article “LOL est entré dans le dictionnaire donc je quitte la France” (an epigraph of this chapter) says it all about dictionaries as a French cultural particularity (Pruvost 2000). The entry of the English acronym lol in the Petit Robert 2013 is perceived as a national betrayal by the journalist who commented that “a‌vec un peu d’objectivité, disons simplement que l’utilisation de «lol» n’est pas si dramatique, mais son inscription au dictionnaire l’est complètement” (with a bit of objectivity, let us simply say that the use of “lol” is not so tragic, but its entry into the dictionary totally is). Following the release of the Petit Robert 2014, sociolinguist Thierry Bulot goes as far as to claim that, in French culture, the dictionary is understood to be the language (Atlantico interview, May 30, 2013). 2.1.1 PRESENTATION OF THE PETIT ROBERT (CD-​ROM VERSION)

The Petit Robert is a dictionary of general language of 60,000 words. It differs from the Petit Larousse, the other general dictionary, because it focuses on “la description du fonctionnement de ce que sont les mots du point de vue de la linguistique” (Boulanger in Harvey 2005) (the description of how words work from the linguistic point of view). The Petit Robert is notable for its refined definitions of words, its treatment of etymology, and its body of citations, three useful features for the study of Anglicisms. Examples, when not invented, once came mainly from literary sources, still the seal of approval par excellence for language use. Additional sources include the press, reference works, and screenplays, all written sources. An update on the dictionary website adds that the sources include basically everything that is written, on paper and on the Internet. Spoken corpora are not used, or at least not acknowledged. The Petit Robert aims to supply a comprehensive word list that reflects real usage, regardless of the norm, which is a perennially influential concept in France—see Wolf (1983) for a historical survey of the linguistic norm, including Malherbe, Vaugelas, the Académie française, Dupré, and Grevisse as spokespersons for this norm. Editor Alain Rey states in the afterword to the dictionary: “Le «bon usage» convenait peut-être à l’Ancien Régime, mais demande sérieuse révision, et ce sont plusieurs usages, plus ou moins licites et que personne ne peut juger «bons» ou «mauvais», qui forment la réalité d’une langue.” (“Proper usage” might have been appropriate for the Old Regime, but it requires serious revision, and there are several usages, more or less licit, that cannot be judged “proper” or “improper,” which form the reality of a language.) The Petit Robert corpus provides a convenient and representative corpus for investigation, because it is assumed that the sanctioned Anglicisms are well-​ established forms in the French language: “T‌hough institutionalization does not necessarily go hand in hand with adaptation, it often does” (Fischer 2008: 9).

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Methodology

Acceptance in the dictionary testifies that a word has sufficient usage and longevity and, for borrowings in particular, a sufficient degree of assimilation to be considered a member of the recipient lexicon (Lieber 2010: 27). 2.1.2 INCLUSION OF ENGLISH WORDS

Through a systematic study of new words included in the Petit Robert and the Petit Larousse editions over the 1997–​2009 period, Martinez (2011) shows that Anglicisms, and loans in general, are regularly incorporated into both dictionaries. In numbers, 368 of the 1,985 new entries in the Petit Robert for this period were borrowings, which is a significant 20% (see Table 1.1 for specific donor-language repartition of loans). And of the words that left the dictionary, very few were borrowings, which indicates their steady entrenchment in the lexicon. Martinez reports a marked acceptance of borrowings in these latest dictionary editions, testifying to globalization and the global village, while at the same time the position, discourse of lexicographers does not appear as open to this vigorous lexical contact phenomenon. The yearly release of the Petit Robert is a national event, and it is a convention in the press to comment on the new words included in the dictionary. In an interview for the daily Le Parisien (June 21, 2012) following the release of the 2013 edition, which included such Anglicisms as biopic, botox, cupcake, notebook, and lol, Alain Rey explained that the editorial team cannot avoid Anglicisms because inclusion is correlated with frequency of usage (as confirmed in section 4.3). Based on the articles posted on the dictionary website and Rey’s interviews, it is clear that the writers of the dictionary prefer the use of native terms to Anglicisms, but allow usage to have the last word: On aime mieux courriel que mail, mais on est bien obligé de constater que mail est plus courant et quand on fait du buzz en tweetant, il n’y a pas moyen de l’exprimer autrement. Quand il y a une recommandation officielle pour une francisation, on la donne, mais ça ne veut pas dire que ça fonctionne vraiment dans le public. (June 2011) (We prefer e-​mail [native term] to mail [Anglicism], but we really must take into consideration that mail is more common and when we make a buzz [Anglicism] when tweeting [Anglicism], there is no other way of expressing it. When there is an official recommendation for a Gallicization, we give it, but that does not mean that it really works with the public.) The neologisms created by the Commission générale de terminologie et de néologie to replace Anglicisms (see section 1.1.1) trigger the lexicological issue of their inclusion in general language dictionaries. Humbley (2008b) evaluates their inclusion over a period of twenty years by comparing the treatment of official neologisms in two editions of the dictionary—​the Petit Robert 1986 and the Petit Robert 2007. On a sample of twenty-​four Anglicisms, he verifies for both editions whether the entries for Anglicisms refer to the official terms, and

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vice versa. The entry for the false Anglicism camping-​car (recreational vehicle (RV)), for example, does not refer to its neologism autocaravane in the Petit Robert 1986, but it does in the Petit Robert 2007. Humbley’s study reveals that official recommendations are more systematically included in the 2007 edition. Increased recognition of official equivalents is surely due in part to Rey’s collaboration with the governmental terminology commissions since 1997. 2.1.3 DICTIONARY-​SANCTIONED ANGLICISMS

The dictionary corpus provides this study with a reference list of Anglicisms. A closed corpus reduces the scope of data collection and provides words which have had a life in the native lexicon, implying a certain degree of stability. The etymology search function of the Petit Robert’s electronic version facilitated the identification of English-​origin words in the dictionary. The etymological label ‘English’ in the Petit Robert covers all forms that can be documented as stemming from the English language (nugget, SMS, profilage (profiling), webmestre (webmaster), goji (< English < Chinese), etc.). This etymological definition contrasts with the more restrictive definition of ‘recognized as English’ in spelling, pronunciation, and/​or morphology, which is the definition adopted for this study, as explained in detail in section 3.2. The 2010 edition of the Petit Robert serves as the main reference, but the 2015 edition was subsequently consulted for diachronic comparisons, especially in the development of dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms chronicled in ­chapter 4.

2.2 Online Libération corpus The Libération corpus was designed to complement the Petit Robert corpus in two ways.

1. It augments the list with dictionary-​unattested Anglicisms, as there is significant borrowing not captured in the dictionary (­chapters 3 and 4). 2. It tests the morphological findings identified for the Anglicisms in the Petit Robert (­chapters 5 and 6).

2.2.1 LANGUAGE OF THE DAILY PRESS

Citations in dictionaries to illustrate word usage no longer come exclusively from literature, but also from the press. In fact, Libération is one of the suppliers of examples for the Petit Robert. This innovation acknowledges the influential role of the press in lexical evolution, as addressed in the dictionary preface: Le Nouveau Petit Robert présente de nombreuses citations de journaux qui ne sont que des attestations, la presse «allant plus vite» que la littérature dans l’emploi spontané des mots et des sens nouveaux.

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Methodology

(The Nouveau Petit Robert includes numerous citations from newspapers which are only attestations, because new words and meanings “appear more quickly” in the press than in literature.) Newspaper language is a good compromise in terms of representativeness. Because it is produced and read daily, it documents a significant form of the language. According to the 2011 ONE survey conducted by AudiPresse,1 every day 21.9 million French people, 43% of the population over age 15, read at least one paper. Daily newspapers typically include varied topics and therefore varied semantic fields (arts, style, sports, politics, etc.), which results in varied styles and registers, even including spoken language as recorded in interviews. The press is a space for everyday neologisms, such as Manhattancentric in the second epigraph of this chapter. While press language may embody the stylistic continuum, from the most formal to the most informal, it is language accessible to a general audience. Daily ordinary journalistic language is also a reflection of society. Moirand (2007: 2) argues for the role played by the discourse of daily press in shaping and sharing the collective memory: Contrairement à l’idée reçue que les discours des médias seraient éphémères, la thèse que l’on défend ici est que ceux-​ci sont devenus aujourd’hui un lieu de construction des mémoires collectives des sociétés actuelles. (Contrary to the preconceived idea that media discourse would be ephemeral, the thesis that we defend here is that this type of discourse has become, today, a space for the construction of the collective memories of contemporary societies.) This historical contribution further legitimizes the linguistic value of journalistic writing. 2.2.2 ANGLICISMS AND LANGUAGE OF THE PRESS

The choice of newspaper language for detecting Anglicisms in French was straightforward: “The press is the richest source of Anglicisms and the major vehicle for their diffusion” (Pulcini, Furiassi, and Rodríguez González 2012: 19–20). This accounts for the dominance of newspaper- or magazine-​based studies in the literature (for example, Onysko 2007 for German Anglicisms; Graedler 2012 for Norwegian Anglicisms; Zenner, Speelman, and Geeraerts 2013 for Dutch Anglicisms). The research convention of using the language of the press has notably failed to chronicle Anglicisms found in other places.

1

 AudiPresse is a company that specializes in measuring press readership in France.

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2.2.3 CHOICE AND PRESENTATION OF LIBÉRATION

The online daily newspaper Libération provided the main source of journalistic language. It was selected because it is a major French newspaper; it is the nation’s fourth-most-read general-interest daily (Office de Justification de la Diffusion (OJD) 2011).2 It is also the most linguistically innovative of the national papers, which ensures a style that does not condemn Anglicisms. The newspaper’s leftist, combative roots in the 1970s3 have certainly contributed to the development of its own style as the most informal of the national dailies. Libération was the first French daily newspaper to have an online edition (1994), an indicator of its pioneering tradition. Online news has won Libération wider readership than print news; in 2010 it had nearly a million daily online readers, in contrast with 118,785 print readers, according to the OJD. The newspaper, however, was distinguished by the OJD in 2012 for its significantly increased print circulation (8,176 more copies in 2011 than in 2010). Libération’s database permits access to online archives dating from 1994, a useful tool for diachronic queries of English words. Last but not least, since a restructuring plan in 2007 the newspaper is devoid of a service de la correction (proofreading department). This deficiency is a real advantage for this study, because it means that the language investigated reflects authentic language produced by the newspaper’s journalists. For the linguist Encrevé (Vallaeys 2003), Libération is a pioneer in press language for its innovative and witty linguistic uses of language, such as headlines based on wordplay (Sullet-Nylander 2005) and formerly notes de la claviste (typesetter’s notes) in which typesetters were allowed to supplement articles with personal comments signed with the initialism ndlc. He underscores the influence of the paper’s lexical experimentation on the French language itself: “Libé est un des véhicules écrits qui contribue le plus à l’évolution du vocabulaire commun : les dictionnaires y trouvent très vite des attestations.” (Libé is one of the written media that most contributes to the development of common vocabulary: dictionaries very quickly find attestations in it.) One of the most striking features of Libération’s language today derives from what Encrevé called the “pragmatique du jeu de langage généralisé” (pragmatics of generalized wordplay) that is based on a “passage du critique au ludique” (shift from critical to playful). The newspaper excerpt below about the expulsion of the Roma in France provides a typical example: 1. On veut transformer les Roms en yoyos. Le gouvernement aboie et les caravanes passent. On connaissait les jetlaggés, voici le temps des jetlargués. On reproche aux nomades de camper tellement on a

2  The national trio consists of Le Parisien, the leading generalist newspaper, which includes local Paris news, Le Figaro, the oldest newspaper, which is conservative, and Le Monde, regarded as the newspaper of record. 3  The newspaper was founded under the aegis of Jean-​Paul Sartre in 1973, that is, after the events of May 1968.

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Methodology

envie qu’ils décampent. L’ambition doit être de profiter des progrès technologiques pour flanquer les Roms sur orbite dans des charters spatiaux. L’Europe, ce n’est pas l’auberge espagnole. Il ne nous manquerait plus que les réfugiés martiens. «E.T., go home.» —​(Libération, August 28, 2010) (We want to transform the Roma into yo-​yos. The government barks and the wagons move on. We had heard of the jetlagged, now is the time of the jetbanned. We reproach the nomads for camping as we so intensely want them to decamp. The ambition must be to take advantage of technological progress so as to put the Roma into orbit in space charters. Europe is not an experiment in multicultural living. We lack only refugees from Mars. “E.T., go home.”) The noun jetlagg[u]é is the Gallicized adaptation of English jetlagged (with morpheme replacement); it fills a lexical gap in French since there is no word available for victims of jetlag (see section 3.4.4). The form here serves as a model for the witty compound jetlargué (jet + largué (banned, kicked out)), which refers to the Roma, who were deported via chartered jet and abandoned in their countries of origin (largués). The paragraph ends with a variation on the well-​known film exhortation E.T., phone home, which ironically reveals Libération’s position on this policy. Libération includes the traditional sections of a daily, but culture—and counterculture—occupy a central place (Guisnel 2003), as attested by its supplement Next, which is dedicated to pieces about culture and whose title is, significantly, an Anglicism. The paper is well known for its cultivated allusions addressed to cosmopolitan readers and its “‘audaces’ culturelles” (Rimbert 20054). The culture sections of Libération, including Next, are the main suppliers of Anglicisms in the newspaper. These not only come from the arts (biopic, songwriter, ambient music, etc.) since the arts constitute a concentrated source of Anglicisms (Walter 1997; Puɫaczewska 2008), but also from all sorts of semantic domains. Articles about the arts provide a space for writing that is creative, humorous, and informal, qualifiers that are frequently identified with Anglicisms in French.

2.3 Other sources for consulting and collecting Anglicisms Two dictionaries of Anglicisms were consulted as additional references for various matters throughout the book. The Dictionnaire des anglicismes by ReyDebove and Gagnon (first edition 1980, second edition 1986) is the authority for French Anglicisms. It is regrettable that this extremely well documented

4  Although Rimbert perceives them as a tool with which the paper seeks to conceal its economic conformism.

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dictionary of about 2,700 loanwords has not been updated in thirty years. Boccuzzi (2010) details her methodology for a new dictionary of Anglicisms in the making. A Dictionary of European Anglicisms (DEA) (2001), a collaborative comparative piece edited by Manfred Görlach, presents about 1,500 Anglicisms in sixteen European languages. Both of these seminal works include French Anglicisms not sanctioned by the Petit Robert, hence their utility for this project. Other newspapers, in particular the other national dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro, and women’s magazines (Elle and Madame Figaro) were also consulted to confirm the use of an English word or borrowing pattern as significant (rather than idiosyncratic). Literature supplied a few additional Anglicisms as well.

2.4 Corpus linguistics for contact linguistics Tracking the use of English in one year of journalistic French language was facilitated by the newspaper’s e-​edition and advances in text-​mining software tools. This section presents the steps involved to retrieve, select, and record the English data, including the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology, which can most appropriately be characterized as semi-​automatic. 2.4.1 TEXT-​MINING SOFTWARE: MINING DICTIONARY-​UNATTESTED WORDS

This loanword project benefited from the custom-designed technical assistance of Yohan Boniface, director of web development at Libération. With the French text-mining tool Sulci, originally designed for the corpus and thesaurus analysis of the newspaper, he has optimized the algorithms for extraction of all the dictionary-unsanctioned forms used in the 27,670 online articles of Libération in 2010. The dictionary Boniface used is not an official dictionary, but an online list of words published by the ABU (Association des Bibliophiles Universels), a registered organization founded in 1993 to develop and promote a large corpus of digitized public domain texts representative of francophone culture. In addition to offering a digital library, the ABU makes available for use and copy a list of over 300,000 common nouns (http://abu.cnam.fr/DICO/ mots-communs.html). An attribute of this list is its inclusion of base forms (infinitive abaisser) as well as inflected forms (abaissa, abaissai, abaissaient, etc.), hence the quantitative difference between the Petit Robert’s list of 60,000 words and the ABU list of 300,000. Sulci, then, did not return those inflected forms from the Libération corpus which appear on the ABU list; this constituted a valuable search filter. This project works with a negative list, meaning that all the words used in the Libération corpus that are not on the ABU list were retrieved, including those that the project is seeking: words of English origin not recorded in the Petit Robert.

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Methodology

The result is in the form of alphabetical lists of words, accompanied by links to the newspaper articles in which they occur, as illustrated with a sample from the letter B in Figure 2.1. It was then necessary to go through the computerized lists in search of English-​looking words. Once an English item was identified, activation of its newspaper link(s) made it possible to examine the item in its context of use in order to decide whether it qualified for inclusion in the database in compliance with the selection criteria presented below.5 Locating Anglicisms with a negative list relies on precision and recall, key concepts in information retrieval research: “The two aspects of search accuracy are ‘precision’ (i.e. the search does not return too many ‘wrong’ hits, called ‘false positives’; see also Meurers 2005) and ‘recall’ (i.e. the search does not miss too many correct items, called ‘false negatives’)” (Lüdeling, Evert, and Baroni 2006: 12). The main advantage of this method is the virtual non-​return of false negatives, which guaranteed the accuracy of the corpus search. The only obvious false negatives are English-​French homographs, which were unavoidably missed. One example is the English word date (in the social sense), which was not retrieved because date (in the chronological sense) appears in the French dictionary. However, borrowed date circulates in the language of the press, as revealed in the contexts of use for other items in the corpus. Because the search for date in the Libération archives for the year 2010 yielded over 1,000 hits, a manual search of each link for potential occurrences of English date was impractical. Conversely, the word cute came up as a candidate in the C list, though it corresponded not to the English adjective but to a reference to the Latin epigraph intus et in cute in Rousseau’s Confessions. This type of false positive is less problematic, since it does not result in the loss of wanted items. The main disadvantage of the method is the high return of false positives (ephemeral coinages, other-​language loanwords, misspelled items, etc.), as shown in Figure 2.1. One of the sources of the many misspelled words is the lack of institutional control over the language used in the paper (because of the elimination of the proofreading department, mentioned above). These numerous false positives required a time-​consuming manual search of the alphabetical lists in order to identify and extract qualified English words. The final outcome, a list of dictionary-​unsanctioned English words that would have otherwise been forgotten as lexical contributors, exemplifies the development of neologisms in routine lexical creativity, and thus constitutes a reference database for borrowing. This is a large corpus, considering that it consists of dictionary-​unsanctioned borrowings. Words can be tracked by entering them in the search space provided in all online French newspapers and magazines, but one cannot search systematically for emerging Anglicisms that are generally unfamiliar and unknown. It was a goal of this corpus to reveal their unofficial presence in the lexicon. 5

 A small number of links to the newspaper articles were invalid when the data were collected.

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FIGURE 2.1 

Sample list of dictionary-​unattested words from the Libération corpus.

This is a sample from the B list used to represent the alphabetical lists of dictionary-​unattested words generated by the text-​mining tool Sulci from the 27,670 online Libération articles in 2010. The symbol ➢ was added to indicate an English-looking form, a potential qualifier for the database (Figure 2.2).

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Methodology

FIGURE 2.1 Continued.

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FIGURE 2.1 Continued.

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Methodology

FIGURE 2.1 Continued.

2.4.2 SELECTION CRITERIA AND FLAGGING DEVICES

Candidates for inclusion in the DEA are words “recognizably English in form (spelling, pronunciation, morphology)” (Görlach 20001: vxiii). This definition also applies to this project, except that words with English bases and French morphology were also selected (serial-​killeuse (female serial killer), se déjetlag[u]er (to recover from jetlag)). After identifying an English-​looking word in the list and opening the link(s) to examine its context(s) of use, the following criteria applied. The main restriction is that the use of English is examined only in journalistic writing; English words in replies to interviews and in tweets reproduced in Libération, for example, represent voices other than those of the journalists, and so were discarded. The database excludes the following:



¤ Dictionary-​attested Anglicisms included in the Petit Robert 2010. ¤ Reproduced language: quoted speech, reported speech, excerpts from books, emails, slogans, signs, song lyrics, etc. When Anglicisms from reproduced language appear in contexts detached from their original source, they are counted. For example, the phrase And the winner is qualifies if it occurs outside of the context of the Academy Awards, see excerpt (12e) in ­chapter 3. ¤ Proper names (Bodleian Library, Boxing Day).

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¤ Names of products (Ray-​Ban «pilot»), of roads (highway 99), of

theories (too big to fail), etc. acting as proper names despite their lack of capitalization.6 ¤ English words used in etymological comments—​for example, “Son nom en anglais est d’ailleurs elephant fish.” (In fact, its name in English is elephant fish.) ¤ Calques (FR confusant < EN confusing, FR double-​cliquer < EN to double-​click).

English words in journalistic language may be flagged, often through the use of italics. More rarely, other flagging devices take the form of inverted commas, glossing, and metalinguistic commentaries. Since flagging indicates the writer’s awareness that a word is foreign, it often implies that the word is not yet (well) integrated into the native lexicon. However, the use of flagging for Anglicisms lacks consistency, or obvious motivation, in the press. The form geek, to be found in the Petit Robert and a frequently occurring Anglicism (about 200 search hits in Libération in 2010), occurs with both italics and a gloss in (2a). In contrast, the dictionary-unsanctioned nonce item bright smile occurs without any flags in (2b). 2.  (a)  D  ans le jargon des geeks (les mordus de l’informatique), dont fait partie Rahul Sonnad, qui a créé l’application Geodelic à Santa Monica en 2008, on appelle ces mini-​programmes des «apps». —​(Libération, January 11, 2010) (In the jargon of geeks (computer science buffs), a group to which Rahul Sonnad, who created the Geodelic application in Santa Monica in 2008, belongs, these mini-​programs are called “apps.”)    (b) Mireille, l’organisatrice de l’événement, encore étourdie après un rock endiablé avec le sémillant JC Swing, le prof du jour à la houppette digne de James Dean et au bright smile engageant, synthétise : «Le bal, c’est l’âme de Paris, et pourtant, il est en voie de disparition.» —​(Libération, August 12, 2010) (Mireille, the organizer of the event, still giddy after rocking wildly with the sparkling JC Swing, the teacher of the day with a pompadour worthy of James Dean and an engaging bright smile, sums up: “Open-​air dancing is the soul of Paris, and yet, it is in the process of disappearing.”) In the same fashion, two dictionary-​unsanctioned English compounds present in (3) a puzzling contrast within the same sentence. The first one, bubble-​gum, is used devoid of flagging, but the second, teddy boys, is italicized:

6

Generic trademarked words were included (e.g. botoxique (< Botox), Blu-ray).

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Methodology

3. En sous-​main, pourtant, dès qu’on s’approche de ses productions, dès qu’on écoute tous ses 45 tours destinés au marché émergent des teenagers, le malaise est palpable derrière ce qui semble n’être, à l’oreille distraite, qu’une pop bubble-​gum destinée aux teddy boys. —​(Libération, July 16, 2010) (Secretly, however, as soon as one approaches his productions, as soon as one listens to all of his singles made for the emerging teenage market, the malaise is palpable behind what seems, to the unobservant ear, to be only bubble-​gum pop meant for teddy boys.) The contrast is difficult to justify and may simply reflect the individual journalist’s perception of the Anglicisms, so there is no well-founded argument for excluding teddy boys from the corpus. Borrowed words may also be flagged not for their Englishness but in order to draw attention to their meaning, context, or style, qualities that may be flagged for native words. Flagging is not an infallible cue to assimilation, nor a strategy specific to the use of foreign words, for it is also practiced with native words, as shown by markers such as comme on dit, comme dirait l’autre, and other variants used to introduce somebody else’s words, whether these are borrowed (5a) or native (5b): 5.  (a) Le Boxing Day est peut-​être la limite ultime de mon assimilation, «my last frontier» comme diraient les Américains. —​(Libération, January 2, 2010) (Boxing Day is perhaps the outer limit of my assimilation, “my last frontier” as the Americans would say.) (b) Alors, quand vous dégustez une Page 24 [bière locale] sur la place des Héros d’Arras, comme dirait l’autre, «c’est le bon Dieu qui vous descend en culotte de velours dans l’estomac». —​(Libération, June 20, 2013) (So, when you taste a Page 24 [local beer] in the Place des Héros in Arras, as they say, “it is the good Lord who slides down into your stomach in velvet underpants.”) Flagged English words (e.g. my last frontier) were not excluded from the data collection. Even when flagging is used to convey conscious use of an Anglicism, there is no clear proof that it indicates a lack of integration into the recipient language. 2.4.3 DATABASE, OR ONE YEAR OF DICTIONARY-​UNSANCTIONED ENGLISH IN LIBÉRATION

The sample list of dictionary-unattested words in Figure 2.1 includes twentyseven English-looking words, hence potential candidates. After their context

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FIGURE 2.2 

Sample from the database (Appendix) based on the data in Figure 2.1.

of use in online Libération was verified, only eight items qualified for the study in conformity with the selection criteria. For example, boomer was in fact part of the unhyphenated compound baby boomer, a dictionary member; booksmag was also disqualified for being the name of a website; and borderline, which yielded seventeen links, supplied only nine tokens, the others being used in quoted speech. The winners were recorded in a sub-corpus of the newspaper corpus, including the English word or phrase as an entry, the sentence or paragraph in which it was used, the newspaper section in which the article appeared (politics, science, etc.), and any features observed while recording the item, such as absence of inflection and presence of other neighboring English words. All the items were subsequently recorded in the database (sample for the eight items in Figure 2.2), which serves as the foundation of a synchronic assessment of some of the Anglicization of the French lexis. This database of English loanwords and loan phrases is an alphabetical catalog with each lexical item listed with its part of speech in context, its total number of occurrences in the newspaper corpus (absolute frequency), and the number of different articles in which it appears (relative frequency). This exhaustive database, available in the Appendix, is a useful lexicographic resource and a snapshot of a synchronic period of linguistic contact between French and English (as the global language).

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3

From English to French THE MAKING OF NEW WORDS

Puisque vous le voulez, répondit Odette sur un ton de marivaudage, et elle ajouta : vous savez que je ne suis pas fishing for compliments. (Just as you like, replied Odette in an affected tone, and then added: you know I’m not fishing for compliments.) —​Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way), 1913 Based on dictionary-​attested and -​unattested Anglicisms, this chapter demonstrates how English fuels the French lexis. The chapter first offers a brief history of the contact of French with English by introducing the socio-​historical periods of intensive contact since the eighteenth century, including characteristic lexical outcomes of each. This survey serves to contextualize the singular current status of English as the world’s first global donor language; the democratization of the World Wide Web has resulted in an influx of neologisms and novel language contact trends and patterns. The data analysis captures the common changes occurring from donor to receptor language, and examines the traditional borrowing of single words alongside the newer practice of borrowing phraseologisms, a seemingly atypical outcome in a weak language contact setting. These up-​to-​date contact findings show how English morphemes continue to be used to create neologisms via creative and complex word-​formation devices in the latest period of Anglicisms, since 1990.

3.1 Periods of influence: from the eighteenth-​century Anglomania to the global English of the turn of the twenty-​first century In the Middle Ages, lexical borrowing from foreign languages (langues vivantes) was rare in French. The practice became significant in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries only for Italianisms in the fields of finance, war, and navigation 33

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(Huchon 1988: 71). The sixteenth century provided the largest supply of Italianisms, with the borrowing of about 2,000 words (bouffon, corniche, escarpin). Linguistic contact with Italian was rooted in the fascination with Italian arts (Francis I invited Leonardo da Vinci to France) and the presence of Italian figures at the court of France (Catherine de Medici and Marie de Medici acted as regents and later Cardinal Mazarin as chief minister). In his Deux dialogues du nouveau langage françois italianizé, et autrement desguizé, principalement entre les courtisans de ce temps (1578), Henri Estienne scorns lexical imports from Italian and mocks users of Italianisms: “Je m’esbahi comment vous imbrattez notre langue d’une telle spurquesse de paroles.” (I am astonished at how you stain our language with such filthy words.) An obvious parallel can be established with the attitude observed in the twentieth century towards the use of Anglicisms perceived as an expression of linguistic snobbism. Borrowing from English, in contrast, was barely significant before the French Revolution (Walter 2001). The continuous influx of English words into the French lexis began in the eighteenth century. During this period of intense Anglomania (Grieder 1985), English became the primary supplier of foreign loans, unseating Italian.1 3.1.1 EIGHTEENTH-​CENTURY ANGLOMANIE

Admiration for England’s philosophers and political institutions à la Voltaire (Lettres anglaises 1734) is the foundation for the first notable inflow of Anglicisms in the French language. The craze for English customs, opinions, and clothing in the mid-​eighteenth century is characterized as “snobisme anglomane” (Rouvillois 2008). Brunot’s (1966) multi-​volume Histoire de la langue française des origines à nos jours includes a detailed history of the eighteenth-​ century borrowing of English and other foreign words, and provides semantic lists of Anglicisms drawn from Bonnaffé’s (1920) Dictionnaire étymologique et historique des anglicismes.2 The most productive semantic field is that of politics and jurisprudence (allégeance, budget, impeachment, meeting, vote), as Seguin (1972: 176) reports, not without bitterness: “La pénétration du lexique anglais […] est loin d’être négligeable, et il faut se faire à l’idée que pour une bonne part notre vocabulaire politique est «franglais».” (The penetration of the English lexicon […] is far from being negligible, and one must get used to the fact that

One of the sources consulted for tracing Anglicisms attested from these periods was the general dictionary Petit Robert, which resulted in the exclusion of Anglicisms that are no longer in use today. Official recognition once lagged well behind actual usage, so the representation of borrowings from earlier periods of contact is necessarily incomplete. Official recognition, that is, inclusion in electronic dictionaries, is a speedier process since the 1990s, on account of the Internet, electronic corpora, sophisticated text-mining software, etc. 2  See Brunot’s volume VI, chapter VI, “Le mot conquérant.” 1

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a large part of our political vocabulary is “Frenglish.”) Anglomania left further lexical marks in the fields of navigation (commodore, midship, schooner), textiles (velvet, tartan), food and beverage (corned-​beef, stilton, grog, whisk(e)y), and zoology (sprat, puffin). This period also introduces a few calques, for instance, chien-​loup (wolf-​ dog) and hors-​la-​loi (outlaw). A trigger for calques is the French translation of English novels (Brunot 1966; Humbley 1986); in a compilation of prefaces to French translations of eighteenth-​century English novels, Cointre and Rivara (2006) refer to calquing as a translation style. The prevailing attitude is exemplified in the preface to the French translation of Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison: “Et si les traductions, en nous familiarisant peu à peu avec les tours des autres langues, augmentaient par là nos richesses faudrait-​il en savoir si mauvais gré aux traducteurs?” (p. 70). (And if translations, by familiarizing us little by little with the turns of phrase of other languages, made us richer in this way, must we be so ungrateful to translators?) 3.1.2 NINETEENTH-​CENTURY TECHNICAL TERMS AND MORE

The development of an industrialized France led to increased importation of Anglicisms, for England was the forerunner of this historic transition: “Since the Industrial Revolution took place much earlier in England than it did in France, many of the words borrowed in the early—​and in the later—​stages were English” (Rickard 1989: 131). The lexical impact is evident in technical terminology, for instance, cantilever, coaltar, and guiderope. Pruvost (2010) reports on the premises of the press as a lexical promoter, including that of loanwords: “The expanding press worked as a standard to the French language countrywide and went along with the daily evolution of the lexicon through the contact of new realities such as public transportation (tunnel, rail, wagon, tender, tramway, steamer …).” Although it is traditionally reported that this period is characterized by the borrowing of technical terms, an examination of the loans in the dictionary also reveals a strikingly eclectic inventory for this contact period (baby, barmaid, breakfast, moleskine, lemon-​grass, etc.). Saint-​Gérand (1999: 450–​2) emphasizes the already notable fascination with the English language as a characteristic trait of the nineteenth-​century French lexicon (along with the development of argots). English words (policeman, speech, steamboat, etc.) occur in discourse related to commerce and politics, as in journalistic accounts of England’s 1812 Luddite riots. Another place for English words is the discourse of an elite who aspire to an “apparence d’élégance” (glass, happy few, keepsake, soda-water); and this type of usage and function will only increase with the second period of Anglomania in France.

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3.1.3 MORE ANGLOMANIA AT THE DAWN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

In Proust’s (1913) Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way), the dialogic use of the English phrase “je ne suis pas fishing for compliments,” the epigraph of this chapter, finds a historical explanation in the endnotes of the volume: the Anglomania characteristic of the last quarter of the nineteenth century was reinforced by frequent visits to Paris of the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII (Proust 1987: 1195). On his 1903 visit he was hailed as a statesman because of his assistance in the negotiations leading to the historic Entente Cordiale of 1904, which settled a century of colonial conflict between France and Great Britain. This period of Anglomania occured during the Belle Époque, when Englishness was identified with being chic. The leading designer of late nineteenth-century Parisian fashion was British Charles Frederick Worth. The British aristocracy, imitated by the French bourgeoisie, visited French spa towns (Vichy) and seaside resorts (Biarritz), bringing with them their passion for yachts, lawn tennis, horse races, etc. The borrowing of English sports terminology was particularly concentrated, as exemplified by golf (drive, links, putter), rugby (drop-goal, pack, rugbyman (rugby player)), and tennis (break, let, out). English also continued to impact French in other varied domains—automobiles (roadster, spider), games (bridge, puzzle), food (bacon, cheddar), style (garden-party, smoking, smart), and other less classifiable items (hello, interjection hip, made in, etc.). Many English words were used in proper nouns as well, including Normandy Hôtel, Modern Hôtel, and Touring Club de France, an association founded in 1890 to develop tourism. This period of Anglomania is famously embodied in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past),3 in which the character Odette epitomizes the fashion for all things English, as mockingly exemplified in this excerpt: 1. «Comme il est gentil ! il est déjà galant, il a un petit œil pour les femmes : il tient de son oncle. Ce sera un parfait gentleman », ajouta-​t-​ elle en serrant les dents pour donner à la phrase un accent légèrement britannique. « Est-​ce qu’il ne pourrait pas venir une fois prendre a cup of tea, comme disent nos voisins les Anglais […].» —​Du côté de chez Swann, 1913 (Proust 1987: 77) (“Isn’t he delicious! Quite a ladies’ man already; he takes after his uncle. He’ll be a perfect ‘gentleman,’ ” she added, clenching her teeth so as to give the word a kind of English accentuation. “Couldn’t he come to me some day for ‘a cup of tea,’ as our friends across the Channel say […].”) Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin (1981: 84) 3  In an original piece, Karlin (2005) characterizes English as the “second language” of Proust’s Recherche and reveals the author as both a user and critic of these English words and phrases.

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From English to French

What is characteristic of the use of English in this dialogue is that both occurrences are accompanied by metalinguistic observations. The first one—en serrant les dents pour donner à la phrase un accent légèrement britannique—is a case of elite closure (see section 1.3), as Odette’s pronunciation of gentleman demonstrates her adherence to the English vogue of her time. The second one— comme disent nos voisins les Anglais—explicitly justifies her use of a cup of tea, rather than une tasse de thé. Although it is often claimed that Proust’s writing is peppered with Anglicisms,4 this claim is not based on frequency. Rather, and as is typical of commentaries on the use of English in French, it is based on perception of salient English words in otherwise French discourse. The English found in Du côté de chez Swann, a book of 181,434 words, includes the following collection of one-word English loans,5 borrowed primarily in the nineteenth century: 1 bifteck, 1 bristol, 1 budget, 2 buggy, 3 cab, 1 clubmen, 1 darling, 3 flirt, 1 frac, 3 gentleman, 3 groom, 1 hall, 1 liberty, 1 muffin, 2 plaid, 1 poker, 1 skunks (fur), 2 smart, 7 snob, 7 snobisme, 1 speech, 1 toast, 8 victoria, and 4 wagon. It also includes the phrases a cup of tea, my love, and fishing for compliments. As proper nouns, the compound name Jockey Club6 and its truncated form Jockey were not counted. The percentage of Anglicisms in the volume amounts to only 0.04%, which epitomizes the gap between the high perception and low frequency of Anglicisms. A little later, during the First World War, the presence of soldiers from the British Expeditionary Force increases contact, particularly in Paris. An illustration is André Maurois’s (1918) popular novel Les Silences du colonel Bramble, which draws on the experience of a British soldier in France in dialogues peppered with English words and phrases—fellow, my boy, my dear major, well, etc. Maurois wrote Histoire d’Angleterre (1937), which was read up to the 1950s, as well as biographies of Shelley, Byron, Edward VII, and Disrareli. An Anglophile, he also became an Americanophile after the First World War (for example, Chantiers américains 1933). 3.1.4  ENTRE DEUX GUERRES: THE DEBUT OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

The first significant introduction of Anglicisms from American English dates from the period between the two World Wars. As always happens in the initial phase of language contact, these borrowings refer to American realities, such as blue-jean, bootlegger, hamburger, hot-dog, gangster, ranch, and speakeasy. Jazz,

4  In fact, Proust’s use of Anglicisms in his writing legitimizes the practice. If Proust, a respected writer, uses Anglicisms, then borrowing must be an authorized linguistic practice. The use of Anglicisms can even become a trait characteristic of an author’s style (e.g. Queneau, Vian). 5  This search was facilitated by the e-​book version of the novel and word count function provided by the ARTFL-​Frantext database. 6  An elitist club founded in Paris in 1834 which still exists today.

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specifically, is acquiring mainstream popularity: big band, break, feeling, hot, jam-session, jazzman, scat, etc. Another group of American English borrowings originates in the Hollywood film: moviola, oscar, star, starlet (later Gallicized starlette 1953), technicolor, western, etc. A valuable reference is Giraud’s (1958) Le Lexique du cinéma des origines à 1930 which records the early development of cinematographic jargon in French, with a list of ninety-eight Anglicisms, excluding calques (p. 230): all star cast, close shot, director, superfeature, etc. Word entries are documented with example sentences from French works on cinema, newspapers, periodicals, and catalogs. 3.1.5 AFTER 1945: INTENSIFICATION OF AMERICAN ENGLISH

Organized government resistance to Anglicisms (­chapter 1) is a response to the rapid increase of words borrowed from American English after the Second World War. The linguistic surge of American English is, of course, a reflection of the superpower status of the United States, as expressed in its economy, politics, and popular culture, as reported in Kaspi (1986: 465) for the 1945–​64 phase: “Plus que jamais auparavant les États-​Unis se conduisent en leaders du monde libre. Ils assument pleinement leurs responsabilités de puissance impériale sur le plan militaire, diplomatique et, ce qui est nouveau, culturel.” (More than ever before, the United States acts like the leader of the free world. It fully assumes its responsibilities as an imperial power in military, diplomatic, and most recently, cultural affairs.) Hollywood films, television, and rock ’n’ roll exemplify the new popular culture created in the United States and exported around the world. Étiemble’s ([1964] 1991) Parlez-​vous franglais? famously captured this period of Anglicisms. The lampoon-​style essay is an early denunciation of post-​war Anglicisms, with pronounced anti-​Americanism, as exemplified in the following excerpt: Nous devons parler anglais, ou mieux américain, afin de penser comme des Yanquis, et de nous laisser évaporer sans rechigner par «la manière américaine de vivre», the best in the world. Et si, moi, j’ai horreur de voir des vaches sacrées mâchonner du chewing-​gum, et même du chouine gomme, et même de la gomme à mâcher? Et si, moi, j’ai horreur du Ku Klux Klan et de la «ségrégation» ? —​(1991: 272) (We have to speak English, or better American English, in order to think like Yankees and to take on board “the American way of life,” the best in the world, without reluctance. And what if I hate to see sacred cows chomping on chewing gum [direct borrowing] and even chouine gomme [phonetic spelling], and even gum for chewing [calque]. And what if I hate the Ku Klux Klan and “segregation”?)

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From English to French

The range of semantic fields the new Anglicisms covers is inevitably broad—​ economics (joint-​venture, outplacement), military (G.I., half-​track), technology (pixel, software), film (happy end (happy ending), road movie), music (riff, soul), drugs (junkie, speedé (high)), food (banana split, milkshake), and clothing (jean (jeans), tee-​shirt). An early collection of American terms is the Grand dictionnaire d’américanismes, an American English-French dictionary compiled by Étienne and Simone Deak, first published in 1956, with a ninth edition released in 1993. In the original foreword (available in the fifth edition (1973), consulted here), philologist É. Deak praises American neologisms and makes a facile connection between language and national character: L’Américain, dynamique par sa nature, n’a point peur des néologismes […]. Dans le domaine de la hardiesse, il suffit de jeter un coup d’oeil sur le chapitre des innovations linguistiques des Américains et notamment sur les «blends», comme motel, brunch, smog, travelogue, shamateur, happenstance, guesstimate, warphan […]. (Americans, dynamic by nature, have no fear of neologisms […]. When it comes to boldness, one just needs to take a look at the chapter on American linguistic innovations and particularly “blends,” such as motel, brunch, smog, travelogue, shamateur, happenstance, guesstimate, warphan […].) The author of the dictionary describes American slang as the motor of lexical vitality, and goes as far as to assert that the numerous new words and phrases contribute to making American English “the richest language” (foreword to third edition, 1962). 3.1.6  V  IRTUAL LANGUAGE CONTACT SINCE 1990: ENGLISH AS A UNIVERSAL DONOR LANGUAGE

Northrup (2013: 139) ascribes the ascendancy of English as the global language to four major events: “(1) the rise of the Internet; (2) the fall of the Soviet Bloc; (3) the economic ascendancy of Asia; and (4) the creation of an international educational marketplace.” The extent to which English has spread is unusual in terms of geographic dispersion and functions. According to the Ethnologue (2013), English has approximately 1,200 million speakers (400 million L1 speakers and 800 million L2 speakers). It is the first language learned by non-native speakers, and is well represented on all five continents. Based on studies from various disciplines, economist Melitz (2016) identifies the areas in which English serves as a lingua franca: international safety, international political organizations, private international associations, international press, international sport, and science and scholarship. Though still in the lead, English faces serious competition from the other major languages in the areas of the press, television, publishing, trade, and the Internet.

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Online English has seen its market share reduced by the increasing presence of other languages. Internet World Stats (2013) includes the estimate that English is the most used language of the Internet—it represents 34% of the top ten languages and 29% of all languages used on the Internet (http://www.internetworldstats.com/ stats7.htm). Melitz (2016: 591) cites “the massive catch-up of English by Arabic, Russian and Chinese since 2000,” yet English—mainly American English, channeled through mass media—is still the lingua franca of the Internet. Global English has become a prime loanword donor, and electronic communication has contributed instrumentally to this unprecedented contact scenario. Northrup (2013: 141) names two major factors for the early, almost-exclusive dominance of English as the language of the World Wide Web. First, the United States was the forerunner of Internet technology, including Internet posting and usage. And, international exchanges in transportation, business, and scientific and technological writing were already the privilege of English, which subsequent web usage only increased. Anglicisms appear and are diffused via the digital press, social networks, YouTube, online education, advertising, etc. Attested in European languages circa 1990 (DEA), the loan noun e-mail is a symbol for the current period of ‘virtual’ contact between French (and other languages) and English, also embodied in borrowings from computer and Internet terminology, such as chat, cyberspace, and geek. Nonetheless, this latest period of contact, or at least its first phase, goes beyond specialized terminology, and has its own complex linguistic characterization, as detailed in this book for French. Four singular linguistic outcomes have appeared in the first twenty-five years (1990–2015): (1) a significant influx of nonce borrowings and very low-frequency Anglicisms (see database for frequency counts); (2) a diversity of borrowing types (pink, e-déchets (e-trash), all aprèm long (all afternoon long)); (3) reinterpretations and manipulations of loan materials (desserts XXL (giant desserts), men in white (after men in black)); and (4) direct phraseological borrowing (crunchy bad boy, people have the power, home sweet home). These four patterns characterize the emergence of innovative lexical phenomena in a setting of virtual contact whose community is not bilingual in English in any conventional way. The global nature of English may be the cause of the current influx of loanwords and loan phrases, but the French are not characteristically bilingual.7 Although an evaluation of the English proficiency of the French can be only approximate, there is no evidence of a significant degree of societal bilingualism in France. In fact, French students’ limited proficiency in English was

7 In a TV5 interview (March 26, 2010), lexicographer Alain Rey questions the assumed global dominance of English and argues that this is not typical of the spontaneous use of the masses, that is, most of the world’s population. Rather, he specifies that the prevailing use of English is characteristic only of certain domains. And even this restriction can be tightened, as demonstrated by the telling example of French researchers who deliver talks they have had translated into English, thus masking their limited proficiency. Rey concludes that the label anglophone is based on the simplistic criterion that researchers publish in English, even though the published version is often the product of a translator.

 41



FIGURE 3.1 

From English to French

Front page of Libération written entirely in English in response to debate over the

loi Fioraso. Page from the May 21, 2013 issue reproduced with permission from EDD (35125539).

recently discussed at the national level following the debate on the proposed loi Fioraso (May 2013), which would allow certain university courses to be taught in English. The elites, fronted by the Académie, raised their voices in opposition, but Libération’s response was a front page written entirely in English, and the banner headline, “Teaching in English/LET’S DO IT,” reproduced in Figure 3.1.8 As part of the debate on the proposed law, which was eventually 8  This front page also exemplifies Libération’s witty, and here provocative, style, as reported in section 2.2.3.

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passed, Le Monde compiled a series of statistics: English is the primary foreign language taught in French schools, but France placed twenty-third in the European Union on the 2012 TOEFL test.9 (The highest scores of twenty-seven member states went to the Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium.)

3.2 Anglicisms: etymologically English versus recognized as English There is no consensus in the literature as to the criteria for classification as an Anglicism. In both French general language dictionaries and dictionaries of Anglicisms (Höfler 1982; Rey-​Debove and Gagnon 1986), all forms that can be historically documented as stemming from the English language are classified as Anglicisms. This etymological umbrella covers obvious items, such as baggy, girly, himself, redneck, scrapbooking, and street artist, but also includes less obvious types, such as Angloclassicalisms (or internationalisms), calques (or loan translations), and borrowings from English via other languages (L1 < L2 < L3), all of which are briefly discussed below. Numerous forms have an English etymon that cannot readily be recognized, since it is Latinate or neo-Greek (French alias [computing] < English < Latin). As a result, their form or pronunciation may not be obviously English, and they are readily Gallicized when borrowed (e.g. déontique, flaveur). Angloclassicalisms are excluded from the DEA unless an English pronunciation is attested in at least one of the European languages (Görlach 2001: xix). Calques or loan translations (Haugen 1950), hide their English source, for they are French word(s) built on an English model. They may extend the meaning of already existing words (réaliser (to accomplish) 1611—réaliser 1895 < to realize (to grasp); tablette (small table) thirteenth century—tablette twentyfirst century < tablette (tablet computer)) or give rise to new words (végane < vegan, métrosexuel < metrosexual). Traditionally, two types of calque are distinguished (Vinay and Darbelnet 1995). Whereas lexical calques respect the syntax of the recipient language (téléréalité < reality TV, parent hélicoptère < helicopter parent), structural calques violate the recipient syntax (and are criticized by purists)—for example, libre-penseur and libre-échange, calqued on free thinker and free trade, show English adjective-noun order (vs. French nounadjective). Haugen’s loanblends (1950, 1953) are hybrid forms with fully transferred meaning but partially transferred form (mix énergétique < energy mix, home cinéma < home cinema), resulting in a semi-calque.

 An anecdotal though significant indicator of deficient proficiency in L2 English is the documented correlation between film dubbing as opposed to subtitling: L2 proficiency is higher in countries which favor dubbing over subtitling, which is not the case for France (MacKenzie 2012: 33). A related practice is the use of simplified English titles for the French audience: EN “Up in The Air” > FR “In The Air,” EN “Get Him To The Greek” > FR “American Trip,” EN “The Boat That Rocked” > FR “Good Morning England,” etc. 9

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From English to French

English serves as a medium of transmission for words from other foreign languages, which means that French borrows from English words that English had already borrowed: L1 French barista < L2 English barista < L3 Italian barista. Adaptation to English occurs to different degrees, and therefore when these words enter the French language, their English source may not be apparent. For instance, the forms mustang and pastrami originated in Spanish mestengo > English mustang and Romanian pastramă > Yiddish pastrame > American English pastrami, respectively, and were channeled into the French language through English. Mustang was orthographically and phonetically integrated into English, making it an Anglicism in form and denotation (see section 3.4.1); in contrast, barista and pastrami cannot be recognized as words borrowed from English. This etymological definition contrasts with the more restrictive definition adopted in other dictionaries of Anglicisms. The Dictionary of European Anglicisms counts words “recognizably English in form (spelling, pronunciation, morphology)” (Görlach 2001: xviii). In a reflection on criteria for inclusion in a forthcoming dictionary of Italian Anglicisms, Pulcini (2010: 324) argues that “e‌tymology does not have a role in the identification of a word as an Anglicism.” Pulcini counts as an Anglicism a word whose formal appearance means it “is normally perceived by Italians as an English word.” The borrowed form bungalow (< EN < Hindi bengla) thus counts as an Italian Anglicism because of its transparently English spelling. Identification based on the form of the donor word unavoidably requires a dose of subjectivity. While the etymology of street art can readily be recognized, the English source of pastrami absolutely cannot be, and that of biopic probably falls between these two extremes. Unclassifiable cases, though, are not the norm. Two working definitions of an Anglicism then compete: one based on etymology, and the other based on native speaker recognition of English words in the recipient language. The forms discussed in this chapter reflect the second definition. As presented in ­chapter 2, the sources of data collection consisted of the dictionary (the 2010 and 2015 editions of the Petit Robert) and online press (the Libération corpus (2010) and archives (1994–2015), and, sporadically, other online national dailies/magazines). Capturing the essence and heterogeneity of the borrowing phenomenon involved reporting on lexical changes from the donor language to the recipient language (section 3.3), reviewing types of simple and complex words of English origin (section 3.4), and proposing a classification for the borrowed phraseological units that increasingly appear in French (section 3.5).

3.3 Lexical changes from the donor word Borrowing begins with the transfer of raw materials from one language to another. Through this process, words no longer belong to the donor language, but rather embark on another life cycle in the recipient language, which may be very different from their donor life. Changes from the donor language are, in

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fact, the norm, as epitomized in the title of this book, Remade in France. The words of English origin classified in 3.4 may undergo grammatical shift, semantic shift, and/​or stylistic shift when becoming members of the French lexicon. 3.3.1 GRAMMATICAL SHIFT

In the borrowing process, the donor form can be assigned to a new or additional grammatical class. The loanword fashion has been lexicalized as an adjective in French from the borrowed nominal: lunettes fashion (trendy/fashionable glasses vs. *fashion glasses) and se sentir fashion (to feel trendy vs. *to feel fashion).10 In the Libération corpus, the form fashion occurs nineteen times adjectivally, but only eight times nominally, which verifies the recipient-acquired grammatical class. The grammatical shift of the word slim from an English adjective to a French nominal originated in the regular process of truncating English compounds: FR n. un slim < adj. slim < EN slim-fit pants/jeans. Other similarly formed examples include: FR nominalized preposition after (party following a dinner, a show, etc.) < EN after hours or after-party;11 FR v. bader (to freak out) < FR v. bad-triper < EN compound n. bad trip. Grammatical shift may coincide with the creation of false Anglicisms: the nominal false Anglicism cash with the sense of ‘upfront, blunt’ can be both an adjective (2a) and an adverb (2b): 2.  (a) «Avec Manuel Valls, […] il y a cette fluidité des relations anciennes. On est assez cash l’un avec l’autre, on se parle très directement.» Fin août 2012, son commentaire dans Le Monde sur Jean-​Marc Ayrault, qu’elle [Marisol Touraine] jugeait trop en retrait, avait dégradé les relations. —​(Le Monde, April 21, 2015) (“With Manuel Valls, […] there is the ease of a long-​time relationship. We’re rather upfront with each other, we talk to each other very directly.” In late August 2012, her comment in Le Monde about Jean-​Marc Ayrault, whom she [Marisol Touraine] judged too withdrawn, had damaged their relations.)

10  Fashion was initially borrowed in the nineteenth century in the context of dandyism and used for half a century at a much lesser frequency than fashionable, which also died away (Rey-​Debove and Gagnon 1986: 291). This is then a second life for fashion, which reappeared significantly in the 2000s (possibly under the influence of such items as fashion-​victim and F/​fashion W/​week). 11  The Petit Robert records borrowed after as truncated from after-​hours and indicates 1995 as a date of first attestation in French. The dictionary-​unsanctioned compound after-​hours circulates in French, specifically in jazz contexts. Another more plausible etymon for after is after-​party, whose generic meaning directly corresponds to the meaning of its French truncated form.

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From English to French

(b) Fumant cigarette sur cigarette, ne cessant de vous interpeller par votre prénom, elle parle cash de beaucoup de sujets. —​(Libération, October 8, 2010) (Smoking cigarette after cigarette, constantly addressing you by your first name, she discusses many subjects in an upfront manner.) Assigning a new grammatical category to existing words is a common and economical process for forging neologisms, that applies to both native and borrowed forms. In a book chapter on lexical changes for the period 1945–2000, Humbley (2000: 83) reports on a neological feature of informal French consisting of coining new words by using already available words and changing their grammatical class (for example, n. soin (care) > adj. (être) soin ((to be) well groomed, put together). 3.3.2 SEMANTIC SHIFT

Semantic change can be organized into general categories, including the following: broadening, narrowing, pejoration, amelioration, metaphor, and metonymy. It is a regular phenomenon of both native (Durkin 2009: 222–​65) and contact (Fischer 2008: 5–​6) lexicons. In language contact, the meaning of the donor word may be altered when integrated into the recipient language—for example, the English Gallicism à la mode ‘served with ice cream’ means only ‘in fashion’ in French. Lexical alterations take place through various means and to various degrees (from subtle new referents to outright new meanings), but they generally correspond to either semantic restriction or extension from the donor meanings. 3.3.2.1 Semantic restriction

Semantic restriction occurs when only one meaning of a polysemous donor word or only some of the semantic properties of a donor word are transferred. Examples of narrowing include the words deale(u)r, cookie (foodstuff), and top (garment), which have all become less generic in French than in English: dealer refers only to a drug dealer, cookie is only a chocolate chip cookie, and top denotes only a women’s top. By selecting only certain semantic properties of the donor words, these loans provide semantic particularities not previously available in the recipient lexicon. 3.3.2.2 Semantic extension

Adjectival XXL entered the 2014 edition of the Petit Robert with both the literal donor meaning of a clothing size (sweat XXL (XXL sweatshirt)), and a recipient figurative meaning outside of the clothing sphere (projet XXL (largescale project)). A press sample suggests even broader usage; in 2015, the form occurs fifty times in Libération: 20% referring to clothing, and 80% to eclectic referents, both abstract and concrete. It may, for instance, express humor (desserts XXL) or mockery (arrogance XXL), or serve as a euphemism (hommes

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XXL (plus-sized men)). This innovative metaphorical usage belongs to informal French, as classified in the dictionary. Historical lexicographer Philip Durkin (2009: 236) defines extension as “the process by which a word comes to have wider semantic application.” Wider semantic application may simply involve additional word referents, or more complex metaphorical meanings, or both, as exemplified with the Anglicism XXL. A non-​donor meaning can be grafted onto a loanword, adding new semantic properties, as illustrated with the loan adjective light. (See examples (1a–b) in c­ hapter 6 for contextual usage and inflectional behavior.) In French, the term light originally described only food, drinks, and cigarettes, as defined in its dictionary entry. When referring to food, light has two meanings. It denotes either low-​calorie (desserts light(s)), a restriction of the polysemous meaning of the word in English as recorded in the New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD) (“low in fat, cholesterol, sugar, or other rich ingredients”), or the inclusion of artificial sweeteners, in the sense of ‘diet’ in English (barres et boissons light(s) (diet bars and drinks)), an extension of its donor meaning. Borrowed light can in fact be used to modify a wide range of nouns: livre light (short book), prix light (low price), racisme light (et décaféiné) (covert (and decaffeinated) racism), etc. The loan slim is a case of semantic broadening in progress. As an adjective, it entered the language with the meaning of ‘slim-fit,’ after truncation of the nominal compound slim-fit pants. Initially exclusive to the clothing domain (jean slim, costume slim (slim-fit suit), cravate slim (skinny tie)), this use is shifting to new contexts, as in the following examples, in which slim modifies a paper planner (3a) and a day of eating (3b): 3.  (a)  S  i, pour cause de nomadisme, les versions «mini» et «slim» ont le vent en poupe, «les gens continuent à avoir besoin de ce support». —​(Libération, January 18, 2010) (If, because of a nomadic lifestyle, the “mini” and “thin” versions enjoy great success, “people still need this support.”) (b) Ou bien j’alterne une journée normale et une journée slim, avec juste un plat à midi et le soir, soupe et compote. Je perds 3 kg. —​(Madame Figaro, March 17, 2011) (Or rather, I alternate between a regular day and a light day, with just one dish for lunch and for dinner, a soup and some applesauce. I lose 3 kg.) Slim can be used in both English and French to describe objects, as famously illustrated with EN slim cigarettes/FR cigarettes slim (< Virginia Slims brand). It is not the case that emerging French uses of the word are necessarily unlike those of English, but rather that the use of slim in French often correlates with the

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semantic field of design as illustrated in (3a). The sense of slim in (3b) is a (rarer) metaphorical use of the Anglicism when applied to a journée (day). The additional sense supplements the French lexicon, for une journée légère (lit. a light day) also denotes light eating (or a light workload) but does not connote dieting as does une journée slim. The loan slim has undergone gradual extension: from its original use in describing jeans (jean slim) to describing other pieces of clothing (cravate slim), modern objects of design (étui slim pour iPhone (thin iPhone case)), and then to ad hoc metaphorical uses (journée slim). The French adjective cash has come to signify ‘direct, upfront’ through metonymic interpretation of the original sense of this Anglicism (payer cash). The definition of cash in the NOAD is “money in any form, esp. that which is immediately available.” The property “immediately available” is the one that applies in the new sense of cash as ‘upfront.’ The term has also acquired informal recipient style, and a potential function of style is to transmit pejorative or complimentary properties (Mortureux 2001: 111): in informal French, cash refers specifically to frankness that may be hurtful. Excerpt (2a) above contributes to the construction of a definition for cash; it is used in characterizing the speech style of Minister of Social Affairs and Health Marisol Touraine when talking with Prime Minister Manuel Valls. As a serial effect, cash is immediately followed by the French gloss très directement, which both explains and reinforces the English form. The second sentence of the excerpt refers to a harsh comment made by Touraine. In other words, très directement provides the genus category for the definition of cash, and the implicature of harsh words provides a differentia. Therefore, in order to define borrowed cash (as opposed to a potential native equivalent), it is necessary to graft a negative denotation onto the generic sense of direct. By its specific difference, this Anglicism augments the French lexicon; borrowed cash is a hyponym of native franc, a more generic term. This case study shows the various changes at work in the borrowing process: foreign materials are reinterpreted at different levels in the recipient language, as summarized in Table 3.1. 3.3.2.3  Donor-​culture restricted versus unrestricted

A semantic extension specific to loanwords (as opposed to native words) may involve the shift from restricted to unrestricted cultural contexts (Chesley 2010; TABLE 3.1

Cash: Linguistic shifts from donor language to recipient language. Shifts

English

French

Grammatical

n.

adv. and adj.

Semantic

coins or notes money in any form, esp. that which is immediately available

frank and hurtful

Stylistic

neutral

informal

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Chesley and Baayen 2010). An Anglicism is culturally restricted when it is used exclusively in English-speaking settings, and culturally unrestricted when it applies outside of these. The loanword busing, the transportation of children of one race to a school where another race predominates, no longer appears in exclusively American contexts. This practice to promote racial and, occasionally, religious desegregation, as in example (4), has been reproduced and experimented with in France since 1996. 4. À Nice, un système de “busing”, qui permet d’acheminer les fidèles d’un lieu de culte à un autre, fonctionne en partie depuis quelques semaines. —​(Le Monde, June 1, 2011) (In Nice, a “busing” system, which permits transportation of believers from one place of prayer to another, has been in limited use for a few weeks.) A more subtle shift from restricted to unrestricted settings reveals the figurative use of loanwords. The dictionary-​unattested Anglicism redneck from American English illustrates this contrast: 5.  (a)  Buck est la caricature du redneck : homophobe, grossier et alcoolo. —​(Libération, May 13, 2010) (Buck is the caricature of the redneck: homophobe, uncouth, and alcoholic.)

(b)  C  e midi-​là, il est en Dolce Gabbana pour la chemise «très country, très redneck», en Diesel pour le jeans «rentré dans les bottines». —​(Libération, June 2, 2010) (At midday on that day, he was in Dolce Gabbana for the “very country, very redneck” shirt, and in Diesel for the jeans “tucked into the boots.”)

In example (5a), nominal redneck describes a character in an American TV series, whereas in (5b) adjectival redneck denotes the style of a plaid flannel shirt. The NOAD definition of redneck is “a working-​class white person, esp. a politically reactionary one from a rural area;” the property of being rural was transferred here via synecdoche to a clothing style. In the Libération corpus, redneck circulates predominantly in restricted contexts, but the few unrestricted contexts indicate a step toward deeper native assimilation. A non-negligible scene for cultural semantic extension is the shift from donor brand names to common nouns into the recipient language. This mechanism of semantic bleaching, the lessening of a word’s precise content through generalization, is illustrated with the change from Slim Fast to slim fast. In the

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following excerpt, the phrase régime slim fast refers not to a diet consisting of American Slim Fast brand diet shakes but to a generic weight-loss diet: 6. D’autant que je suis agrégée en médécine ayurvédique et que je pourrais donc entreprendre Daniel Auteuil, autre membre du jury, pour qu’il adopte d’urgence mon régime slim fast, rapport à sa tendance visible à reprendre quatre fois du cassoulet. —​(Libération, May 16, 2013) (Given that I am qualified in Ayurvedic medicine and that I could therefore exert some influence on Daniel Auteuil, another member of the jury, so that he would immediately adopt my quick weight-​loss diet, considering his noticeable tendency to eat four servings of cassoulet.) For this type of change, only time will tell if the generic meaning will win out over the narrow meaning, thus eradicating the reference to the brand name, as happened with the loan trademark tupperware (first attested circa 1988) which has come to refer to sealable plastic containers generically. Chesley (2010: 243) reports that Anglicisms are more likely to occur in such unrestricted contexts than borrowings from other languages: “While almost half of all Anglicisms are found in unrestricted cultural contexts, non-​English borrowings are almost always found in restricted contexts.” The causes of this difference are still to be investigated, beyond the obvious parameter of higher frequency of English loanwords. 3.3.3 STYLISTIC SHIFT

A stylistic shift occurs when the style12 of a loanword (formal, neutral, or informal) no longer matches that of the donor language. A compelling case is the form because: neutral in English, it was assigned informality when borrowed into French. The first salient feature of borrowed because, however, concerns its grammatical class. In French, it serves both as a conjunction (7a) and preposition (7b), which are closed classes of words, that is, classes of words with limited membership. Members of closed classes are rarely borrowed, as shown by hierarchies of borrowability (see section 4.4). The DEA claims that French is the only European language to have borrowed the item because and that its use has a facetious nature, as detailed in the Dictionnaire des anglicismes: “Ce mot s’est introduit en argot, puis dans le français familier grâce à cause (à cause de) et aux sonorités amusantes du mot” (Rey-Debove and Gagnon 1986: 57). (This word

12  Even though they both refer to language variation, style deals specifically with variation in formality, whereas register focuses on variation due to specific functions and situations (Halliday, McIntosh, and Strevens 1964: 87).

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entered slang and then colloquial French on account of both the similar French form cause (à cause de) and its amusing sound.) The PR records the item as stylistically informal, a classification which is reinforced by the playfully spelled variants bicause (7b), bicose, and bicoze, representing native pronunciation. When because appears as a preposition (7b), the article accompanying the following noun can be dropped (bicause élection vs. bicause l’élection), which deviates from syntactic norms; the dropping of the article contributes to stylistic informality. 7.  (a) Nos camarades de projos nous agonissent d’injures because cet article s’écrit en ce moment-​même sur notre Nokia 3310. —​(Libération, May 19, 2016) (Our screening fellows are swearing at us because this article is being written right now on our Nokia 3310.)

(b) Dès janvier, tout film qui se prépare et qui ne sort pas dans la seconde est un prétendant pour figurer dans une des sélections du Festival de Cannes (du 16 au 27 mai), décalé cette année d’une semaine bicause élection présidentielle. —​(Libération, January 4, 2012) (As early as January, any film in the making that is not immediately released will be a candidate for one of the selections of the Cannes Festival (from May 16 to 27), which is delayed one week this year because of the presidential election.)

Given that native counterparts (conjunction parce que, preposition à cause de) share the same definition as closed-​class items, the form because has the appearance of a superfluous Anglicism. Yet the loan because does not produce redundancy: it augments the lexicon of informal French, and fulfills the function of adding expressiveness via humor. This stylistic shift is a significant borrowing phenomenon: other English loans which have acquired informality (in a departure from their donor style) include booster (to boost), cash (upfront), clean, destroy (intoxicated; slovenly), groggy, gun, look, peace (calm), strange, XXL, and yes. In the Dictionnaire de la zone (Tengour 2013), which chronicles the argot des banlieues, English is the first supplier of slangy loanwords, followed by Arabic, with eighty-six and sixty-six items, respectively. The intriguing question of the genesis of stylistic shift has barely been addressed in etymological and stylistic research. Why is the style of an English word borrowed into French no longer that of English? On the stylistic continuum, Anglicisms tend to shift toward the informal style.13 What are the

13  Saint-​Gérand (1999: 452) discusses the variability of styles characteristic of nineteenth-​century French with the form glasse/​glace (glass), first attested in the seventeenth century, and hints at an

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explanations for this one-​way shift? If it affects only English, rather than other-​ language loanwords, what does it reveal about English as a donor language? 3.3.4 CONNOTATIVE SHIFT OR LOADED ANGLICISMS

A traditional dichotomy opposes necessary Anglicisms to superfluous (or luxury) Anglicisms (Rey-​Debove 1986: xii–iii), or cultural borrowings to core borrowings (Myers-​ Scotton 1993b: 169). The former category (necessary or cultural) fills a recipient lexical gap by designating a foreign reality (for instance, cupcake and grunge have no equivalents in French), while the latter (superfluous or core) competes with a pre-​existing native word (for instance, English loan chip (microchip) borrowed in 1980 for the already existing French puce attested in 1960). The supposedly useless coexistence of an English word and a native word brings up the issue of synonymy. The Académie française and its followers argue that the French words are absolute synonyms of the Anglicisms they reject (see examples in section 1.1.1). Absolute synonymy, though, is a rare lexical phenomenon: Picoche (1977: 98) locates these uncommon pairs of perfect synonyms in scientific lexicons, which, in the course of their elaboration, may coin two words for a single concept, as exemplified in the field of semantics with the words hypéronyme (hyperonym) and superordonné (superordinate). Based on the rarity of absolute synonyms, it can be hypothesized that a French term and its English competitor cannot exist as perfect synonyms.14 In fact, can any word in the lexicon be truly unnecessary? The basic attribute of synonyms is that they share meaning to some extent. The recognition of a form as deriving from (American) English often immediately connotes ‘something else,’ which may well distinguish Anglicisms from their supposed French counterparts. That something else depends on factors such as the context in which the word appears, the intention of its user, the perception of its receiver, etc. However, in general, there is a value judgment—​ positive or negative—​about the (in)famous Americanization of the French

already informal style for Anglicisms. He explains that the form glasse later acquired a negative value, as indicated by an example from the nineteenth century which includes only informal words (journaille (day) < journée + pejorative suffix -​aille, bistro, fric (dough, money)), thus suggesting that glasse (drink) must be informal, too: “Cette [valeur dépréciative] n’apparaît qu’à la fin du XIXe siècle, en des contextes où le vocable est naturellement irradié par les effets de vulgarité de son contexte : ‘La journaille, j’vas chez l’bistro, quand j’ai assez d’fric pour un glasse.’ Quelle est la valeur des anglicismes ? Notre langue de la fin du XXe siècle ne procède guère autrement !” (This [pejorative value] appeared only in the late 19th century in contexts in which the term is naturally infused with the effects of the vulgarity of its context. [Example]. What is the value of Anglicisms? Our language in the late 20th century does not function much differently!) 14  From a sociolinguistic point of view, Anglicisms may serve to display knowledge of English for social prestige: the use of language as a social marker is another non-​superfluous function of partially synonymous Anglicisms.

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language and culture. These English words become loaded as borrowed words, especially during this current period of sustained contact. In simplified terms, this connotative shift has two opposing sources.15



1. Anglicisms bear negative American cultural and political associations à la Étiemble (see section 3.1.5). The following anecdote says it all: French stage director Ariane Mnouchkine labeled Euro Disney, now Disneyland Paris, a “cultural Chernobyl” following the opening of the American amusement park in 1992. These Anglicisms ensue from the status of English as a global language to the detriment of the former status of French as an international language, as recognized by the Académie française. 2. Anglicisms bear positive American cultural and political associations: pop culture (TV series, Hollywood film industry, pop music, fashion, fast food, etc.) and technological advances (iPhones, social networks, etc.). This positive value accounts for the accepted, widespread practice of using nonce and low-​frequency Anglicisms in the language of the press (see section 4.2). It also explains their modish use, as found in the DEA as a label for Anglicisms that are not expected to last.

This connotative shift partially accounts for the sociolinguistics of Anglicisms, that is, the stereotypical ‘love or hate’ attached to them. It can be proposed that Anglicisms carry with them a metalinguistic value added that prevents them from being perfect synonyms to French equivalents. Loaded Anglicisms provide further evidence that absolute synonymy rarely happens and that near-​synonymy brings expressivity to the lexicon. The title of this book, Remade in France, originates partly in the four kinds of shift summarized in Table 3.2. They clearly demonstrate that the donor forms are creatively reinterpreted to fit recipient neological needs. The English noun cash, for example, has changed grammatical category, meaning, and style as a member of the French lexicon. Such shifts may affect all the types of French Anglicisms identified and considered in the following section.

3.4  T ypes of Anglicisms based on the restrictive criterion ‘recognized as English’ Again, the data considered are forms whose etyma can immediately be recognized as English. The typology of dictionary-​ attested and -​ unattested English words that follows relies on the identification of processes of word creation within the French language, and thus examines linguistic mechanisms.

15  A very useful reference for understanding the roots of French resistance to Americanization is Gordon and Meunier’s (2001) book The French Challenge: Adapting to Globalization.

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TABLE 3.2

Lexical changes from the donor language to the recipient language. Types of change

EN donor form

FR recipient form

1. Grammatical shift

n. cash

→ adj. cash (direct, upfront) → adv. cash (1) (directly) and (2) (in cash)

2. Semantic shift a. Restriction

cookie (generic)

→ cookie (chocolate chip cookie) (specific)

b. Extension

slim (x referent)

→ cravate slim (skinny tie) (y referent)

busing (US context)

→ busing (French context)

redneck (people)

→ redneck (rural) for style of a plaid flannel shirt (metaphoric use)

3. Stylistic shift

neutral because

→ informal because (and variants bicause, bicoze)

4. Connotative shift

neutral

→ loaded Anglicisms:

c. Donor-​culture (un)restricted

positive or negative associations

Researchers have designed different typologies for English loanwords in the French lexicon for different purposes: for example, Humbley (1974) applies Haugen’s (1950) classic typology of borrowing to French Anglicisms; Rey-​ Debove (1986) presents useful comments on types of loanwords in the introduction of the Dictionnaire des anglicismes; and Boccuzzi (2010) organizes types in the context of a dictionary of Anglicisms in the making. The objectives here were to determine whether the traditional types of lexical borrowing continued to produce new words in the period of investigation, and then, to identify the nature and emergence of novel types and outcomes. 3.4.1 ENGLISH IN FORM AND DENOTATION

This type of English lexical influence is contingent on donor form and meaning: the words burn-​out, doggy bag, hipster, mustang, and seventies have been borrowed from English without being orthographically and semantically reinterpreted or remodeled. The English origin of these words is almost always unequivocally recognizable because their donor form appears English in spelling, pronunciation, and morphology. Rarely, the borrowed form may look French for accidental reasons (magnet, locavore, fixie, bobo < bourgeois bohemian16), thus concealing its English source. The sense is also fully or partially transferred. If a semantic shift occurs to the extent that the relationship between the donor meaning and the recipient meaning is remote, the result is a false Anglicism.

 Although this blend was coined by American journalist David Brooks (2001) in his book Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, it is much more frequently used in French than in English. 16

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3.4.2 FALSE ANGLICISMS

False Anglicisms (also pseudo-Anglicisms) are usually defined as English morphemes that acquire a new meaning exclusive to the recipient language (babyfoot (foosball), pitch (film synopsis), slangy space (weird) < probably EN spaced out [on drugs]). The cross-linguistic occurrence of these borrowings makes clear that they are a feature of language contact—Dutch and Belgian French fancy fair (charity fair/bazaar), German handy (cell phone), and Italian open space (loft).17 False Anglicisms are even heavily traded among European languages; footing (jog), for example, is recorded in seven European languages (DEA). To a certain extent, false Anglicisms echo eighteenth-century neologisms coined in French from Greek elements and nonexistent in the Greek language. These ‘false Hellenisms’ augmented the scientific and philosophical lexicon of French (oxygène, éristique). Cataloging false Anglicisms into one single type masks the processes of word creation involved. Cypionka (1994) proposed a detailed sevenfold model of French false Anglicisms collected from the dictionary: (1) compounding (auto-​coat (car coat)), (2) derivation (bluesman (blues musician)), (3) clipping (FR trench < EN trench coat), (4) semantic shift (brushing (blow dry)), (5) morphological shift (n. and adj. yé(-​)yé), (6) graphic-​phonetic Anglicization (only one member: rallye-​paper), and (7) borrowing of proper names (oxford (cotton cloth)).18 Pulcini (2010: 328) offers a reduced threefold typology for Italian false Anglicisms: (1) elliptical forms of English compounds (night (night club)), (2) autonomous compounds (recordman (record holder)), and (3) semantic shifts (mister (coach, trainer)). The words labeled ‘faux anglicismes’ in the Petit Robert19 fit into Pulcini’s model; its first type, compound ellipsis, is extended to abbreviations in general, applying to both simplexes and compounds.

1. Autonomous compounds: camping-​car (RV (recreational vehicle)), clapman (clapper boy), taximan (taxi driver), wattman (streetcar driver). 2. Semantic shifts: hype (trendy, hip), Belgian French kicker (foosball), performer (record holder [sports]), slip (briefs, panties). 3. Abbreviations from donor simplexes and compounds: kitesurf (< kitesurfing), scratch (< scratching, that is, record scratching in DJ technique), collector (< collector’s item).

 Furiassi (2010) has created a dictionary of Italian false Anglicisms, which testifies to the importance of the phenomenon. 18  In his dictionary, Furiassi (2010) produced a comparable eightfold typology for Italian false Anglicisms: (1) autonomous compounds, (2) autonomous derivatives, (3) compound ellipses, (4) clipping, (5) semantic shifts, (6) eponyms, (7) toponyms, and (8) generic trademarks. 19  This collection, however, is incomplete:  flipper (pinball), cash (upfront), and speed (hyper), among others, are not labeled false Anglicisms, which reveals the unclear nature of the term. In addition, the compound coming out (of the closet) and Belgian French zoning in the sense of ‘land-​use planning,’ are recorded as false Anglicisms, but they have the same definition in both French and English. 17

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From English to French

The three types, quite simply, differ in linguistic complexity. The creation of new native meaning out of donor forms, as in autonomous compounds (camping-​car) and semantic shifts (hype), is significantly more complex than the morphological process consisting of truncating forms (collector), as demonstrated below. Autonomous compounds are composed of two English words whose lexicalization as compounds occurs outside of the English language. This phenomenon requires generating a native meaning via the semantic relationship between the two parts of an English compound. Autonomous compounds tend to include at least one element previously known to French: one of these elements, man > recordman (record holder), taximan (taxi driver), is discussed in detail in Picone (1996: 296–307). First attested in 2007, the trademarked coinage flashcode (QR code) includes the established loan morpheme flash, which has produced the recipient derivatives flashant, flash-back, trademarked flash-ball, flasher, and flasheuse (laser imagesetter). Obviously, familiarity with a loan morpheme facilitates the creation and subsequent entrenchment of derived words in the recipient language. Semantic changes involve endowing an English word with a non-​English sense either at the time of borrowing or subsequently. These shifts create novel meaning through semantic extension, a process discussed in detail in section 3.3.2.2. The somewhat informal loan form hype (hip, trendy) innovates from its donor meaning: English nominal hype became adjectival in French and took on a more general sense than that of donor hype (“extravagant or intensive publicity or promotion” (NOAD)). This seme was applied to the domain of fashion in French usage. Another example is adjectival speed, which has two dictionaryrecorded meanings in French, ‘high’ and the more recent ‘hyper.’ When speed means ‘high’ in the sense of being under the influence of a drug, it is not a false Anglicism, for the word is nominal in English and the adjectival form in French is simply a case of grammatical shift. In contrast, when through metaphor speed comes to mean ‘hyper’ (8a–b), it is a clear instance of a false Anglicism because the extension of the definition took place in the French language. 8.  (a) Né le 31 juillet 1914, Louis de Funès, comédien speed préféré des Français, a quitté ce monde hilarant en 1983. —​(Libération, January 29, 2013) (Born July 31, 1914, Louis de Funès, the hyper comic actor beloved of the French, left this hilarious world in 1983.)

(b) En fin de matinée on a le temps de discuter, mais le soir c’est souvent plus speed. Et comme le kiosque est petit, une personne chasse l’autre. —​(Libération, February 19, 2013) (In late morning we have time to talk, but evenings are often more hectic. And as the newspaper stand is small, one person is on the heels of the next.)

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The dictionary definition and example focus on the sense of ‘hyper’ as colloquially applied to people (8a). However, press samples reveal that adjectival speed can modify nouns other than people through polysemic values, all deriving from the basic sense of velocity. Informal speed in (8b) refers to the hectic activity of a Parisian newspaper stand in the evening. The noun lose or variant loose,20 or less common orthographically adapted variant louze, exemplifies a case of a false Anglicism in the making. The form, which does not exist as a noun in English, derives from the dictionary-​sanctioned lo(o)ser. While the word undoubtedly belongs to a very informal style, its definition is difficult to construct contextually despite an evident general meaning of failure. A sample of three occurrences of lo(o)se (9a–​c) in the newspaper corpus suggests variations on the same theme:21 9.  (a) Un réalisateur de la lose se filme en train de tenter de faire fortune sur Second Life. —​(Libération, March 26, 2010) (A loser director films himself trying to make his fortune on “Second Life.”)

(b) Le groupe vient d’être remis en selle après des années de lose par un documentaire épatant, The Story of Anvil. —​(Libération, January 23, 2010) (The band was just given a boost by a stunning documentary, “The Story of Anvil,” after years of being unrecognized.)



(c) À savoir : plein de commentaires, c’est qu’on est aimé, pas de commentaire, c’est trop la lose, on est virtuellement (donc désormais réellement) ostracisé. —​(Libération, February 18, 2010) (Something to know: lots of comments, that means you’re loved, no comment, that’s too uncool, you are virtually (which nowadays is really) ostracized.)

The term lose in the first example of the series (9a) defines the life of a penniless director cared for by his girlfriend. It has a meaning explicitly rooted in nominal loser and thus refers to a general state of failure. With the definite article (réalisateur de la lose vs. de lose), lose seems almost associated to a movement, a lifestyle. In (9b) the term lose is less generic and refers to the period in which

20  This common spelling error is based on the tendency of French learners of English to confuse the spellings of lose and choose. 21  The Dictionnaire de la zone (Tengour 2013) defines lose only with the sense of bad luck, but this sense is not conveyed in the dataset.

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a heavy metal band lost public recognition. An additional meaning is found in (9c) in which lose is used as an informal synonym for social shame attributed to exclusion on Facebook. The word ostracisé that follows lose confirms lose as referring here to a form of shameful modern social shunning. This false Anglicism refers in the corpus to three sub-​definitions with a common derogatory sense: general life failure, specific hardship, and shame (for not adhering to social norms). The phonetic shape of the word in fact contributes to its derogatory meaning. The borrowed form lose is produced /​luz/​, imitating a near-​English pronunciation, since the letter ‘o’ cannot be pronounced /​u/​for native words. In French, the sounds /​uz/​in final position sometimes have pejorative associations and so act as a phonestheme, that is, a sound that readily triggers a meaning. The suffix -​ouse, -​ouze22 is used to create informal and slangy words in French by attaching it to already existing words: for instance, bague (ring) + -​ouse > bagouse; barbe (beard) + -​ouze > barbouze. Nouns derived with this suffix are feminine, and it is clear that lose, louze was assigned its own feminine gender through suffixal analogy. False loans arise from a word-formation technique that consists of borrowing an English morpheme and adding semantic properties exclusive to the recipient language. This definition excludes English loanwords resulting from processes of truncation alone: the terms shorty (< shortie panty), free (< free jazz), and kitesurf (< kitesurfing) are real loans, because they preserve the meaning of morphologically related English words, hence their characterization as a distinct type of Anglicism in the following section. 3.4.3 TRUNCATED COMPOUNDS

The truncation of English compounds is a simple process of word formation and a productive contact process for coining new Anglicisms. The modifying element of a donor compound becomes a simplex through deletion of the head and lexicalization in the recipient lexicon—for instance, EN drag queen > FR drag, EN body shirt > FR body. The morphological process does not trigger a change in meaning. In English, none of these compounds occurs as a simplex, which validates shortening as a native process. Even autonomous compounds can be back-truncated as in une partie de baby (< baby-foot) (a foosball game). More rarely, the truncation does not affect the full head and occurs elsewhere—for instance, deletion of the suffix in EN smoking jacket > FR smoking > FR smok, or of the modifying element in EN press-book (portfolio) > FR book.

 Plausibly representing an old form of the feminine suffix -​euse, preserved in patois, from which it could have been borrowed in the nineteenth century, as reported in the online dictionary Trésor de la langue française informatisé (TLFI). 22

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An explanation for the truncation of compound Anglicisms is rooted in the fundamental differences between French and English morphosyntax: French is an analytic language, which makes use of prepositions to define relationships within expressions, while English, a synthetic language, uses juxtaposition, like all Germanic languages—​FR dent de lait vs. EN milk tooth; FR arc-​en-​ciel vs. EN rainbow. This characteristic partially accounts for the predilection for compound nouns in English and the consequent number of compound Anglicisms in French. Because compounds of the structure [X + X] do not occur as frequently in French, a regularization process is plausibly at play in turning them into simplexes. Another more specific feature concerns word order within the compounds. In the Romance languages, the modifier usually follows the modified. Most French borrowings follow the Romance model,23 resulting in truncated English compounds in French that do not occur in English, as exemplified with the recently borrowed runnings < running shoes. 10. Le lendemain, on doit l’accompagner nous aussi, sans les runnings aux pieds, juste pour la photo. —​(Libération, April 12, 2013) (The next day, we too have to accompany him, without running shoes on our feet, just for the photo.) Since borrowing of the compound running shoes did not occur in standard French (but did in Québec French), it may well be that clipping occurred here at the time of borrowing rather than subsequently. Or, running may be the truncated form of the common bilingual compound structures chaussures de running and baskets de running (running shoes). This latter option is viable given the increased use of the English noun running, to describe the activity, in French (applications de running, Le dico du running). This process of truncating loan compounds also reveals a widespread tendency for abbreviation in general, which is no longer exclusively a feature of the informal and/​or spoken French language. Humbley (2000: 74) reports on a reduced gap between styles as a common feature of postwar lexical evolution, as illustrated with abbreviated forms that are used freely in the press and even recorded in the dictionary (e.g. bourge < bourgeois, pattes d’ef < pattes d’éléphant (bell bottoms)). There are interesting questions about the truncation of borrowings which must still be addressed. For instance, does truncation occur simultaneously with entrance into the recipient language, or only after the full compound has

23  In French, the clipped form of the Rolling Stones, les Stones, may simply reflect an outright borrowing of the lexicalized the Stones in English rather than a native front truncation. In contrast, Spanish analyzes the compound Rolling Stones in compliance with native morphological rules, resulting in loss of the head Stones and nominalization of the modifier to produce abbreviated los Rolling.

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had a recipient life? Do the compound Anglicism and its truncated form coexist as variants? Diachronic data are required in order to answer these questions, and it is likely that each clipped compound has its own story. 3.4.4  D  ERIVATIVES: FRENCH/​ENGLISH AFFIXATION ON ENGLISH/​FRENCH BASES

The French lexicon produces new words derived from English bases to which French affixes are attached. Contact affixation brings about a technical distinction between a native suffix that takes over an existing donor suffix (EN -​er vs. FR -​eur: performer vs. performeur m., -​euse f.) and a native suffix that does not replace any donor one (slameur m., -​euse f. (slam poet); relookage (makeover) < FR re- + EN look + FR -​age). Suffix substitution is a straightforward translation process. In contrast, affixation originating in the recipient language represents a true coinage of words, since the words were not previously available in either the donor or recipient language. Established use and morphological integration logically correlate in the regular process of native affixation in Anglicisms. Nonce derivatives in the database are based on well-established borrowings: for instance, artyisme < arty, bling-blinguant (bling-blinging) < bling-bling + present participle -ant, and se déjetlag[u]er (to recover from jet lag) < dé- + jetlag24[u] + -er. The slightly pejorative value that the French suffix -erie may communicate (ânerie (nonsense)) applies to the neologisms derived from the Anglicisms pipole, Disneyland, and vintage: pipolerie (gossip about celebrities), disneylanderie (Disneyland-like structure), and vintagerie (vintagish object). These forms testify to their straightforward morphological integration. Double stylistic marking also occurs when informal donor adjectives receive the informal native suffix -os, as in blackos, cakos (braggy person), cheapos, coolos, and hardos. This double stylistic marking further entrenches the words as members of the slangy lexicon of French (see stylistic shift in section 3.3.3). Conversely, the borrowing of bound morphemes is a rare phenomenon in language contact (Weinreich 1953). It is nonetheless attested in French, as exemplified in the borrowing of the productive morpheme -ing, the emerging prefix e- (electronic), and the non-productive suffix -ed. The morpheme -ing is used in the making of false Anglicisms, but the stems are English (lifting (face lift), zapping (channel surfing)). Its affixation to French stems is recorded but seems to correspond to short-lived creations. In her online corpus, Lewis (2007) captures a few of these, for instance, canaping (< n. canapé (couch)), which means roughly

Nominal jetlag circulates in French and is recorded in the DEA. It may bring a semantic distinction and erase semantic generalization with native décalage horaire, which refers to both jet lag and time difference. 24

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being a couch potato. The form e-mail has provided a word-formation pattern (e-X > e-book, e-commerce) with the new prefix e-, pronounced /i/ in imitation of English, to which native words may also be attached (e-déchets (e-trash), e-marché (e-market)). Another borrowed morpheme is the English suffix -ed, used to form participial adjectives, marginally replacing a French morpheme in the adjectival form crevé (tired, pooped) to produce creved (FR crev[é] + EN -ed). This mainly spoken form, playfully produced with a native pronunciation /kʀəvɛd/, also occurs in informal writing, especially in electronic language. 3.4.5 SERIAL BILINGUAL COMPOUNDS

A bilingual compound arises when a donor English compound is used as a model for coining new words in the recipient language. The process involves keeping the English head and replacing the modifying element with a French word. (More rarely, the replacement affects the English head.) These compound Anglicisms provide patterns for open series of bilingual compounds in French. The primary function of these serial bilingual neologisms is to supply ephemeral words for spur-​of-​the-​moment communicative needs, though they may result in repeated use and dictionary attestation. The Anglicism living room (1920), for example, yielded the jocular pipi room ((public) restroom) (1950s), still a dictionary member in 2015, but X room has not become a productive mold for other new compounds. Productive series include, for example: —X bashing < French bashing: Hollande bashing, Sénat bashing, syndica­ lisme bashing, etc. —it X < it girl: it accessoire, it galurin (it hat), it couple, it coiffure (it hairstyle), etc. —X party < garden party: crêpe(s) party, troc party (swap party), mousses party (apprentice sailor party),25 etc. —X attitude < ?: bio attitude, écolo attitude (green attitude), locavore attitude, béatitude attitude, etc. —serial X < serial killer. Sample from the Libération corpus: serial anticipateur, serial dragueur (serial flirt), and serial entrepreneur. As contact outcomes, bilingual compounds mean that English provides one constituent and French provides the other, but the word-formation story behind the outcomes requires further commentary. English supplies a model

In its context of occurrence in a women’s magazine article, the term mousses party refers to the event that takes place in Malo-les-Bains on the first of January, when people swim dressed as apprentice sailors (Madame Figaro, June 2, 2013). 25

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donor compound morphological construction (serial killer). French preserves one constituent (serial X), that is, core semantic traits (repeated behavior) to be transferred to a new compound. The vacant spot in the donor compound is filled with a native word (serial dragueur) whose semantic traits contribute to building a new word or meaning in the recipient language (a man who repeatedly flirts). Sablayrolles (2012) observes that when productive patterns eventually regularize, the new lexemes they generate may be understood without reference to the donor compound which serves as a model. The reason for this loss of etymological recognition is the switch to “une nouvelle règle de création qui est mémorisée et activée, tant pour la création que pour l’interprétation” (a new formation rule that is memorized and activated, as much for formation as for interpretation), hence the relative transparency of the construction despite its foreign origin. A regularized model is Xgate, from Watergate (1972). Younger speakers might not identify the source of the newly derivatives Hollandegate and Gayetgate, for example, but the sense of political scandal is nevertheless retrievable. The morpheme -​gate has even entered the Petit Robert 2014, proof of a surprising longevity. In similar fashion, the series serial X has become so productive that it can be expected that its etymon serial killer may become eventually opaque. These serial bilingual compounds are born out of both external and internal matrices. They yield novel ephemeral words and meanings in French and in that way provide a tool for addressing fleeting lexical needs. The degree of native creativity and the humor that arises if the manipulation is recognized depend on the predictability of the series. When a memorized rule is applied to coining and processing such compounds, they involve less personal expression from the coiner and inspire less reaction in the reader because the formations are no longer creative but repetitive. 3.4.6 NONCE FORMATIONS BASED ON A BILINGUAL PLAY ON WORDS

English is characteristically used in French as a tool for plays on words (see Alexieva 2004 for punning on Bulgarian Anglicisms). An English word may be used to replace a French word or vice versa in an already lexicalized loan item. The replacement is often based on homophony between a native word and a donor word pronounced with a French accent. These nonce formations found in Libération include, for example, nomade’s land (nomad’s land) and no man’s hand (a synecdoche for a skillful handball player) < no man’s land; self mode man (self-made founder of a website pertaining to the fashion (mode) industry) < self-made-man; and beautiful *looser (loser) < beautiful people. The witty creations are patterned on established borrowings (no man’s land, self-made-man, and beautiful people), which allows for the manipulation to be understood. The practice of remodeling expressions based on bilingual puns is particularly frequent in newspaper headlines and article titles, as a device for catching readers’

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attention, as shown by this corpus example: Van Assche, le street nécessaire (< FR le strict nécessaire). In fashion pages, the use of English for creating plays on words is, in fact, almost a norm: C’est party pour les looks de fête! (Madame Figaro, December 27, 2012) (It’s time for holiday party looks!) modeled on the English/French homophonous pair c’est party/c’est parti (off we go) and party/ fête (party). These formations du jour embody borrowing as a playful practice. 3.4.7 ORTHOGRAPHICALLY OR PHONETICALLY ASSIMILATED ANGLICISMS

Certain loanwords have long been orthographically and/​ or phonetically adapted to French conventions to the extent that their English etyma cannot readily be recognized by modern French speakers. A classic example is the Anglicism redingote (1725) derived and reshaped from riding coat. Length of time in the lexicon does not necessarily go hand in hand with orthographic adaptation: for instance, pickpocket 1765 and waterproof 1768 have not been orthographically adapted, but boumeur (boomer) 1985 and spoule (spool) 1983 have been. The integration depends on the trend of each historic period regarding Anglicisms (Rey-​Debove 1986: VII) and probably on the orthography of the individual Anglicism in relation to French orthography. Steuckardt (2006: 16) reports on eighteenth-​century Gallicization of loanwords: “Les emprunts germaniques sont d’ailleurs soigneusement francisés, ainsi boulingrin (bowling green), paquebot (packet-​boat), ponche (punch), redingote (riding-​coat).” (Germanic borrowings are carefully Gallicized, so boulingrin (bowling green), paquebot (packet-​boat), ponche (punch), redingote (riding-​coat).) Orthographic adaptation may follow a regular process such as blogue, variant of blog 2002, though blog is overwhelmingly the most used form (see Storz 2010 for a well-​documented treatment of blog, semantically and morphologically). French characteristically does not adapt Anglicisms to native spelling, unlike other Romance languages: L’orthographe française montre une grande fidélité à l’histoire des formes, y compris à celles qui viennent d’emprunts à d’autres langues, alors que d’autres langues romanes adaptent la graphie pour rester proches de la prononciation. —​(Blanche-​Benveniste 2003: 370) (French spelling is quite faithful to the history of forms, including those that come from borrowings from other languages, while other Romance languages adapt the written form to remain close to the pronunciation.) Examples include French knock-​out, ping-​pong vs. Spanish nocaut, pimpón; and French boycott, meeting vs. Romanian boicot, miting. Vian invented the word coquetèle (cocktail) (L’Écume des jours, 1947), a perfectly French-​looking word,

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but it is a literary Anglicism whose orthographic adaptation never spread. The Canadian French Anglicism pinotte < peanut entered the 2015 edition of the Petit Robert in the name of dialectal diversity, for the form has not been adopted in European French. Phonetically spelled Anglicisms intentionally created to mimic a French pronunciation reveal borrowing to be an artful practice with different purposes. This practice was popularized in French literature by Raymond Queneau, the master of phonetically spelled Anglicisms. His classic novel Zazie dans le métro (1959) includes, among many others, coboille (cowboy), bâille-naïte (by night), ouisqui (whisky), apibeursdè touillou (happy birthday to you), and bloudjinnzes (blue jeans), shown below in its context: 11. Zazie se regardait dans la glace en salivant d’admiration. Pour aller bien ça on pouvait dire que les bloudjinnzes lui allaient bien. —​(p. 63) (Zazie was looking at herself in the mirror and drooling with admiration. Talk about suiting her yes you certainly could say the blewgenes suited her.) —​Translated by Barbara Wright (2001) An amusing Gallicized spelling may be a tool for Queneau to denounce the increased use of Anglicisms in the French language after 1945, but he also phonetically spells native words (egzemple < exemple, dacor < d’accord), which suggests a device similar to a figure of speech. In fact, if it were pure criticism the translator would not have bothered coining blewgenes, an unusual, fanciful English spelling for blue jeans, leaving the novel orthography to the exclusivity of the French readers. The exaggerated Gallicized remodeling, from which the humor and surprise spring, indicates that these literary Anglicisms were not intended for adoption in the everyday language. Rare cases of loans receiving a playful orthography include bicause, bicose, bicoze < because, bizness < business, and the recent variant forms pipeule and pipole, now competing with the original people, first attested in 1988. While the initial motivation for the phonetically spelled pipeule and pipole was playful, spelling may later become an indicator of integration. Orthographic integration consistently triggers morphological integration: for instance, des people vs. variants des pipeules, des pipoles (see ­further sections 5.3.6 and 6.2.1.3.2). If the Gallicized forms win over the original donor form in usage, the English source will eventually become opaque to future speakers and the humor or mockery inherent in the phonetically spelled orthography will no longer be apparent. Of course, the initial stage of orthographic adaptation may produce the reverse effect and instead of contributing to assimilation may instead emphasize the foreignness of the form. An exceptional transfer of English pronunciation onto French spelling is the informal form djeun, djeune, djeuns, or djeun’s, /​dʒœn(s)/​, variant of jeune, /​ʒœn/​, (young).

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Last but not least, borrowings are sometimes inaccurate representations of the source words, such as the dictionary-sanctioned Anglicisms pin’s (pin) (Bizet 1992; Picone 1996), looser (loser), peps (pep), boys band (boy band), master of ceremony (master of ceremonies), and une babies sg. (a Mary Jane [shoe]). An anecdotal sample of Anglicisms from the Libération corpus reveals flawed knowledge of English in journalistic writing: *middle life crisis (midlife crisis), *sweet à capuche/sweet-capuche (hooded sweatshirt), and *woman battle (women’s battle). The typology summarized in Table 3.3 captures the main types of French Anglicisms, though other native phenomena may subsequently be involved. Like native words, certain borrowings are Verlanized, that is, their syllables are reversed and the words are pronounced following the new back order of syllables. Through the language game of Verlanization, Anglicisms receive a third TABLE 3.3

Summary of general types of French Anglicisms. Types

1

2

Examples

English in form and denotation —​[ + ] Readily identifiable

—​e-​book, seventies

—​[ –​]‌  Readily identifiable

—​bobo, fixie

False Anglicisms —​Autonomous compounds

—​baby-​foot (foosball), flashcode (QR code)

—​Semantic extension

—​hype (hip, trendy), speed (hyper)

3

Truncated compounds

EN drag queen > FR drag, EN running shoes > FR runnings

4

Derivatives: French/​English affixation on English/​French bases —​Suffix substitution

—​FR performeur m., -euse f. < EN performer

—​Recipient suffixation

—​cheapos (EN cheap + FR informal suff. -​os)

—​Donor affixation

—​canaping (being a couch potato) < n. canapé (couch) + EN suff. -ing FR creved < FR crevé (pooped) + EN -​ed e- (electronic) > e-​déchets (e-​trash)

5

Serial bilingual compounds: ​ ative creations patterned on an English n model

s​ erial killer > serial X: serial dragueur (serial flirt), serial noceur (serial wedder)

6

One-​time formation based on a bilingual play on word

nomade’s land (nomad’s land) < no man’s land; beautiful *looser (loser) < beautiful people

7

Orthographically and/​or phonetically assimilated Anglicisms —​Regular process of integration

—redingote < riding coat, blogue < blog

—​Attribution of playful Gallicized spelling

—bicause and bicoze in addition to because, literary neologism ouisqui (whisky)

—​‘Erroneous’ spelling

—peps (pep), looser (loser), boys band (boy band)

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life: kepon < punk, nesbi < business, deuspi < speed, and gueuta < tag. Clearly, these words follow French syllabification rules, an indicator of their phonological assimilation.

3.5  Beyond words: borrowing of English phraseology Proust’s Odette was a fictional herald of a linguistic trend that would develop a century later. Odette’s a cup of tea and fishing for compliments predate the use of the English phrases golden bad boy, as we know, and happiness is a warm gun, observed in early twenty-​first-​century journalism. The current contact period with English is characterized by a non-​negligible qualitative extension, from the word to the phrase. The outright borrowing of English phraseology, as opposed to phrasal calques,26 has received little scholarly attention in French (but Humbley 2010, Desnica 2014). Phrasal borrowing, however, is not a novel phenomenon in the history of the French language, as evidenced by the collection of Latin phrases still in use (a contrario, ex nihilo, ad vitam æternam, alea jacta est, in memoriam, etc.). Contemporary use of these Latin phrases adds erudition to journalistic prose, but what is added by inserting English phrases is yet to be discovered. The term ‘code-​switching’ has been used to refer to the insertion of foreign multi-​word units in the press (cf. Onysko for German 2006, 2007), but it may be more accurate to restrict this term to bilingual situations (as touched upon in section 1.4), where it has already taken on several definitions (Clyne 2003: 72). Code-​ switching is typically an outcome of societal bilingualism, in which a community of speakers uses two or more languages in everyday life, in the knowledge that their interlocutors also speak those languages. This practice differs, then, from that of using English phraseology in journalistic writing for a French national readership, for most of whom English is a foreign language (as discussed in 3.1.6). Although a dictionary of Anglicisms is thought of as a collection of single loanwords, the Dictionary of European Anglicisms (Görlach 2001) classifies some fifty-​five items as phrases, presented in Table 3.4. The volume reveals that what constitutes a borrowed phrase in the recipient language is not straightforward: learning by doing and on speaking terms unquestionably count as phrases, but free trade is recorded as a phrase, while free jazz and free climbing are recorded as nouns. This ambivalence exemplifies the difficulty of establishing criteria for distinguishing English compounds from phrases (Bauer 1998; Giegerich 2004). This study of phrasal Anglicisms considers less

 These are documented in European languages, as in the volume The Anglicization of European Lexis (2012) for French, Danish, Spanish, German, and Polish. Examples of calqued English phrases include French faire du sens < to make sense and Polish Do tanga trzeba dwojga < It takes two to tango. 26

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Anglicisms recorded as ‘phrases’ in the Dictionary of European Anglicisms. • American way of life

• no future

• at stake

• no problem

• best of, the

• number one

• care of

• off the record

• cash and carry (c&c)

• on call

• catch-​as-​catch-​can

• on demand

• closed shop

• one size

• do-​it-​yourself

• on record

• drop-​dead

• on speaking terms

• electronic cash

• on the road

• fair play

• on the rocks

• five-​o’clock-​tea

• over there ‘in the USA’

• free trade

• park & ride

• from scratch

• piece of cake, a

• good-​bye

• pure nonsense

• good old days

• safety first

• hands free

• self-​fulfilling prophecy

• human relations

• sex and crime

• in a nutshell

• stop-​and-​go

• in no time

• sudden death

• in the picture

• thank you

• ladies first

• time-​out

• last but not least

• to the point

• law and order

• trial and error

• lean production

• ups and downs

• learning by doing

• wash and go ‘together’

• made in

• wash-​and-​wear

• no comment(s) Bolded items signal attestation in the French press in 2015.

ambiguous data, by examining only units of three or more words: greatest local band and free cash flow count, while bright smile and grassroots movement do not. Because the borrowing of phrases is much less frequent than that of single words, other online national newspapers (and magazines) were consulted to confirm or disconfirm usage of the phrases found in the Libération corpus, which serves as the primary source for this discussion. Phrasal Anglicisms characteristically occur once in the Libération corpus, the most frequent phrases being last but not least (eight tokens), business as usual (eight tokens), and is back (seven tokens). The phrases don’t worry, be happy, working class hero, and E.T., go home, for example, each occur once in the corpus, as famous phrases coming from the

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arts but whose use in the French newspaper is detached from their original context. An examination of the phrasal data indicates membership in productive types. Code-switches, in contrast, do not show this kind of patterning (though they do not appear at random places in the sentences). The set of phrasal data from European languages in Table 3.4 includes discourse markers (in a nutshell), binominals (ups and downs), and clichés (good old days). Furiassi, Pulcini, and Rodríguez González (2012: 13) list collocations, idioms, routine formulas, and proverbs as types of phrasal or phraseological patterns for European languages, but acknowledge the current lack of an agreed-upon set of categories. As the occurrence of loan phrases has emerged only in the latest period of contact, at least as a noticeable contact phenomenon for French, this section introduces the relevant types observed in journalistic writing and offers a basic (in other words, incomplete) typology to be refined in future research. It is significant to note that these phrases characteristically appear without a gloss. 3.5.1 FAMOUS PHRASES FROM THE ARTS

Scripted language from the arts is a productive source for borrowing phrases. Literary citations (12a), song lyrics (12b–c), film quotes (12d), and pop culture references (12e) are used creatively and spontaneously outside of their original context. A representative contextual sample from Libération 2010 captures the phenomenon below: 12.   (a)  L’humour et la liberté sont-​ils incompatibles? That is the question. —​(Libération, March 26, 2010) (Are humor and freedom incompatible? That is the question.)       (b) Journaux, radio et télés seront en outre obligés de s’enregistrer auprès du Conseil, pour avoir le droit d’exister. Ce qui ressemble beaucoup au Roskomnadzor, l’autorité de surveillance des médias en Russie. Bref, c’est Back to the USSR. —​(Libération, July 2, 2010) (Newspapers, radio, and TVs will also be required to register with the Council, in order to have the right to exist, which closely resembles Roskomnadzor, the media-​ monitoring authority in Russia. In short, it’s Back to the USSR.)       (c)  Et puis ça y est, people have the power et ils interpellent l’invité. —​(Libération, October 30, 2010) (And then, that’s it, people have the power and they question the guest.)

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      (d) Et puis, à peine le cocktail entamé, the lady vanishes. Ou alors, on l’a perdue de vue dans la foule qui s’agglutine autour des buffets dans la mezzanine. —​(Libération, September 2, 2010) (And then, the cocktail barely begun, the lady vanishes. Or instead, one loses sight of her in the crowd that gathers around the buffet tables in the mezzanine.)       (e) Ça y est: le nom du candidat choisi par Nicolas Sarkozy pour succéder à Patrick de Carolis devrait être connu dans les tout prochains jours. And the winner is: Alexandre Bompard. —​(Libération, June 29, 2010) (That’s it: the name of the candidate chosen by Nicolas Sarkozy to succeed Patrick de Carolis should be known in the next few days. And the winner is: Alexandre Bompard.) The Shakespearean line To be, or not to be: that is the question is so famous as to be a cliché. It is found in the corpus shortened to both To be, or not to be and That is the question in (12a). Examples (12b–c) show how song lyrics are used in non-​musical contexts. The song title by the Beatles, “Back in the USSR,” is used in (12b) as political commentary about a potential threat to Hungarian freedom of the press. It is used to close a paragraph, a common strategic location for inserting English, as a moral at the end of a tale of current events. The other example in (12c) would resemble an intrasentential code-​switch if it were not the title of a Patti Smith hit, “People have the power.” The phrase the lady vanishes in (12d) echoes the English use in (12c), but this time the phrase is a reference to the title of a Hitchcock film. Finally, example (12e) illustrates a well-​known phrase from pop culture, transferred from the Academy Awards ceremony to the French political scene. Of course, the occurrence of the phrase And the winner is followed by the name of a businessman is not without irony in a non-​Hollywood context. These phrases from the arts also provide cultivated allusions which may flatter the newspaper reader for understanding English and its hidden cultural references; as such, they contribute to an interactive reading for an educated bilingual elite. 3.5.2 IDIOMS AND PROVERBS

Business as usual, business is business, no comment, time is money, give me five, home sweet home, off the record, damned if you do, damned if you don’t, etc. have (momentarily) increased the French repertoire of proverbs and idioms. When proverbs deliver a general truth or piece of advice, they can

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usually be understood across languages, which explains the appearance of some English proverbs in both their original and calqued forms: for instance, time is money and le temps c’est de l’argent; nobody is perfect and personne n’est parfait. Because idioms may be opaque until they have been learned, the borrowing of foreign idioms appears to be a more puzzling practice. A good knowledge of the donor language and culture is a prerequisite for the borrower, because of the combination of figurative language and heavily loaded cultural content. Yet idioms are borrowed: home sweet home, bigger than life (alternation on larger than life), in the mood for, etc. The idiom home sweet home has been nominalized and semantically restricted in one example from the Libération corpus to refer to a typical American home or family. In American popular culture, the idiom conveys a sense of coziness and comfort, which is ironically shattered when it describes in French the unconventional homes and families of the TV series “Modern Family:” 13. Parmi les homes sweet homes de la série, il y a donc celui du patriarche, Jay, riche entrepreneur remarié à la bellissima Gloria, jeune maman du petit grassouillet et intello Manny, issu d’une première union. —​(Libération, September 20, 2010) (Among the home sweet homes of the series, there is that of the patriarch Jay, a wealthy entrepreneur remarried to the bellissima Gloria, young mom of chubby, brainy little Manny from her first marriage.) In terms of frequency, the ‘universal’ truth of proverbs in contrast to the non-​deducible literal reading of idioms accounts for the higher frequency of the former and the lower frequency or nonce occurrence of the latter. 3.5.3 LEXICALIZED SLOGANS

English slogans, often from the arenas of politics and advertising, are used, or rather reproduced, in French separately from their source context. The famous slogan Yes We Can used in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign provides a case of lexical reuse of a slogan. In the article title below, it is transferred to a French economic context: 14. Investir en France, «yes we can» —​(Le Monde, January 16, 2015) (To invest in France, “yes we can”) This political slogan even produced the inventive bilingual compound “le «Yes we can»-​président” to designate Obama with a reference to his famous speech. A related occurrence is the political reutilization and remodeling of the slogan

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by French leftist deputies: their witty 2008 yes weekend (which pronounced with a French accent sounds like yes we can) was coined in the context of Sarkozy’s plan to ease the Sunday shopping ban. Another compelling example is the reuse of the Nespresso advertising slogan What else? Desnica (2014) offers a detailed case study of What else? in which she establishes the regular occurrence of the phrase in the press, attested outside of its strict Nespresso context of reference. The sample below (not from Desnica) offers three different uses of What else? supporting (diachronic) stages of lexical integration: 15.  (a)  Q  ui peut se risquer à jouer les tombeuses crédibles d’un Don Clooney, au plus «Nespresso -what else ?» de son charme bullshit […] ; qui ? —​(Libération, February 10, 2010) (Who would venture to play the credible femmes fatales of a Don Clooney, at the “Nespresso -what else?” peak of his bullshit charm […]; who?)       (b) Pour les pressées sans idées, on conseille les assiettes de ceviche, de carpaccio, de tartare de poisson ou de viande qu’on adapte de mille façons et qui ont le mérite en plus de concilier silhouette et plaisir. What else ? —​(Elle, January 22, 2015) (To those who are in a hurry and looking for suggestions, we recommend the ceviche, the carpaccio, or the fish or steak tartare, adaptable to your tastes, none of which will force you to choose between healthy and happy. What else?)        (c) Kidman, elle, fait bien la (dé)traquée, mais le botox (ou collagène, ou what else) devient vraiment embarrassant. —​(Libération, September 9, 2014) (Kidman may be (able to drive ’em) crazy, but the Botox (or collagen or whatever) is getting to be embarrassing.) The slogan What else? closely identified with George Clooney, dates from 2005, and its first occurrences in the press explicitly refer to the actor, as exemplified in (15a). An extended use is found in (15b) in which the phrase becomes a rhetorical question (meaning what could be better?) in a non-​Nespresso context. It should also be pointed out that What else? closes the newspaper article in (15b), again a salient discourse slot for an English phrase (see section 4.8.1). In (15c) What else? has become an ironic commentary, here on Nicole Kidman’s plastic surgeries.

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3.5.4  EXPRESSIONS DÉTOURNÉES

These neologisms use an already borrowed expression as a semantic and morphological mold and recast it through the substitution of another donor word, as native speakers of English might do: God save the green (after God Save the Queen); «lost», but not least (after last but not least); rock around the quiz (after rock around the clock). The lexicogenic mechanism involved in producing these expressions détournées depends on an interactive game between writer and reader. The study of two examples (16–17) illustrates and explains this ingenious contact manipulation in greater detail. In a narrative excerpt from a film review, an English word (white) is used to replace an English word (black) in an already existing phrase (men in black) to coin a new expression in French (men in white). 16. Adam, 55 ans, ex-​champion de natation devenu le premier maître nageur du Tchad, surveille désormais la piscine d’un hôtel pour t­ouristes à N’Djamena, où travaille aussi son fils Abdel. Dans leur tenue de travail immaculée, ils forment une paire heureuse de men in white. —​(Libération, September 29, 2010) (Adam, 55, former champion swimmer and the first lifeguard in Chad, is now in charge of the pool of a tourist hotel in N’Djamena, where his son Abdel also works. In their immaculate work clothes, they form a happy pair of men in white.) The substitution here relies on antonyms, and understanding of the détournement is required to process the meaning of the English phrase men in white. Sablayrolles (2012) labels this a “semantico-pragmatic matrix” because morphological rules are not sufficient to construct its meaning: “Sans ce travail interprétatif qui se fonde sur des connaissances lexicales et culturelles partagées entre émetteur et récepteurs interprétants […], le mot composé ou la séquence constitue, à proprement parler, un non-sens.” (Without this work of interpretation based on lexical and cultural knowledge that is shared by the transmitter and the interpreting receivers […], the compound or the sequence is, literally, non-sense.) The loan phrase men in black circulates independently of its film origin: “Le retour des «men in black» à Athènes” titles Le Monde (March 17, 2015); men in black refers here to European technocrats on a mission to provide technical assistance to the Greeks during their debt crisis. The borrowed pair (A)(a)merican way of life and (C)(c)hinese way of life features a well-​established borrowed phrase (17a) serving as a mold for a recent neological phrase (17b) in French: 17.   (a) La seule chose qui détonnait un peu dans cet American way of life était la pointe d’accent scandinave de Cynthia. —​(Libération, July 3, 2010)

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(The only thing that was a bit incongruous in this American way of life was Cynthia’s touch of a Scandinavian accent.)       (b)  L  e pouvoir chinois mise sur cette «diplomatie publique» pour dorer son image dans le monde et faire valoir un chinese way of life aussi puissant que celui de l’Amérique, son seul rival planétaire. —​(Libération, April 29, 2010) (Chinese power counts on this “public diplomacy” to gild its image in the world and to assert a Chinese way of life as powerful as that of America, its only global rival.) The phrase American way of life has been used in French since the 1950s, and it is a member of the DEA for ten European languages either as a direct phrasal borrowing or as a calque. Patterned on American way of life, the phrase Chinese way of life is generally related to the economic rise of China as a world leader and competitor of the USA, although it may also be interpreted more negatively as connected with cheap labor and other social nightmares, as suggested in the headline of a Libération article (February 26, 2013), “Le «Chinese way of life» ne fait pas rêver” (The “Chinese way of life” is not the stuff of dreams). This device of manipulating English phrases usually concerns one-time formations, however the phrase Chinese way life has been repeated in the press, albeit with minimal usage. 3.5.5 DISCOURSE AND PRAGMATIC MARKERS

Discourse markers are elements that are commonly switched in bilingual discourse (Muysken 2000:  112–​1427), but such linguistic behavior would seem unexpected in the pages of a national daily newspaper. Functional explanations to account for the (limited) use of discourse markers from another language follow. English borrowed French au contraire and French borrowed English because, which dictionaries mark as playful when used in the opposite language. Last but not least, a frequent item in French journalistic prose, is attested for seven European languages with a note in the DEA that “t‌his item is one of the oldest and most widespread English loan phrases.” The DEA also specifies that the phrase is absent or perceived as highbrow in Eastern Europe, where previous generations had less contact with English, indicating that borrowing phraseology comes after periods of more intense contact. In functional terms,

27  Muysken also reports, in a Shaba Swahili/​French case study, that discourse markers can even occur more frequently in bilingual contexts than in monolingual contexts.

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the class of French discourse markers lacks an equivalent item for last but not least, so borrowing performs its primary function of filling a lexical gap, but here also performs a function at the pragmatic-​discourse level. 18. Last but not least, elle [la nouvelle gauche en France] a le pape François à ses côtés, en pourfendeur du capitalisme financier. —​(Le Monde, September 17, 2015) (Last but not least, it [the new left in France] has Pope Francis at its side, as a fighter against financial capitalism.) The correlation between the meaning of last but not least and its discourse slot at the end of the paragraph is further accentuated by the saliency of the foreign phrase. Since discourse markers help structure a text/​discourse, they must be conspicuous, which is typically achieved in structure by their peripheral discourse slots. The saliency of the foreignness of phrasal Anglicisms found in the corpus—​e.g. and now, and so on, as we know—​is an efficient pragmatic device for highlighting. The use of question tags represents a subcategory of borrowed discourse markers that come with pragmatic advantages. The loan tag isn’t it? is well established in the press, most frequently used in the pattern [FR (or EN) Adj, isn’t it?], as illustrated in the excerpts below: 19.   (a) Au fil des quatre saisons qui rythment équitablement le film, Tom et Gerri (so funny, isn’t it ?) mènent leur vie paisible faite de jardinage, de visites de leur grand fils […]. —​(Libération, December 22, 2010) (In the course of the four seasons that equally set the pace of the film, Tom and Gerri (so funny, isn’t it?) carry on their peaceful lives of gardening, visits from their grown-​up son […].)       (b)  [Une grosse ceinture] relooke instantanément un jean un peu basique, transforme une robe ample et droite, bouscule une longue tunique. Ludique, isn’t it ? —​(Madame Figaro, March 23, 2007) ([A big belt] instantly restyles a basic pair of jeans, transforms a straight loose-​fitting dress, vamps up a long tunic. Playful, isn’t it?) The borrowed negative tag in (19a) is used parenthetically to comment on a director’s choice of Tom and Gerri for two characters’ names, in a facetious reference to Tom and Jerry of the cartoon series. English tags supply an additional device for asking rhetorical questions in French, usually with humorous intent, thus supplementing native equivalents, such as the slightly old-fashioned n’est-​ce pas? or the more informal non? This tag is well known to the French,

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and its humor derives partly from imitation of a very English-​sounding expression. Humor also derives from the clash between the language in the statement and the language in the tag: isn’t it? is a productive tag that regularly functions as a marked question (including some commentary) to close a paragraph or an article. 3.5.6  THREE-​ELEMENT [ADJ/​N + ADJ/​N + N] PHRASEOLOGISMS

A common borrowed construction is that of three-element nominal phrases whose head is modified by either adjectival or nominal dependents—[Adj/ N + Adj/N + N]. These items are interpreted differently in French, where they instead function as lexicalized units (rather than non-lexicalized structures in English), as is evidenced by the frequency of the pattern. A sample of this type of phraseological unit from the Libération corpus includes: golden bad boy, art street fighting, boy next door, full English breakfast, and free cash flow. 3.5.7 FALSE PHRASAL ANGLICISMS

False Anglicization can also take place at the phrasal level, when the meaning of an English phrase created in the recipient language is not fully validated in the donor language. Table 3.4 includes instances of these false phrasal Anglicisms: for instance, ​Norwegian over there (in the USA)28 and German and Norwegian sex and crime as characteristics of cheap fiction and film. The recent development of the phraseologism very bad trip in French, illustrated below with a corpus example, provides an etymological case study of this phenomenon. 20. Soit 2–​0 à la demi-​heure de jeu, very bad trip pour des Marseillais, dominés physiquement, tactiquement et techniquement, incapables de mettre le pied sur le ballon. —​(Libération, September 29, 2010) (Already 2-​0 after thirty minutes of play, a total nightmare for the Marseillais, dominated physically, strategically, and technically, incapable of touching the ball.) The item bad trip, originally borrowed from drug jargon, acquired another extended meaning in informal French, referring to any troubling experience in general. Built on bad trip, the phrasal very bad trip was used as the ‘French’ title

28  The phrase possibly derives from the title of a wartime American song (1917) meaning ‘in Europe.’ It may also be connected with the humorous reference in Britain at the end of the Second World War to US soldiers as “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” Over here, over there are common location references in foreign wars.

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for the American film “The Hangover” (2009),29 to refer to a state or period of difficulty. The phrase has subsequently developed independently of its film origin, as illustrated in the excerpt in which very bad trip describes the defeat of a football team. This category of false phrasal Anglicisms may include unusual uses of English, arising, in part, from a lack of proficiency on the part of borrowers. Nonce English phrases routinely pop up in French, as in this bilingual slogan posted on a Parisian shop window during the holiday sales season: Very, very soldes (lit. Very, very sales). Examples of phrases from the corpus which have been adapted include Soirée Kitsch in the sixties! (Kitsch sixties party!) and over lol (lol again). 3.5.8 INTERPRETATION OF PHRASAL BORROWING

In terms of linguistic complexity, a borrowed phrase reflects a deeper influence of the donor language than the borrowing of a single word (see borrowing scales30). The scenario here is even more complex, for the phrasal data presented indicate that while these phrases are borrowed as chunks, they can subsequently be recycled and reinterpreted. In fact, complexification characterizes the treatment of these items: the types and data summarized in Table 3.5 show that in their creative re-use, phrases can be manipulated for neological purposes, punning, emphasis, irony, etc. These phrases provide solid evidence that English materials are revisited in original ways in French. Borrowing of phrasal English is reported in other European languages. Business as usual, last but not least, American way of life, and time is money also occur in the German- and Spanish-language press, for instance. A proper appreciation of the extent of phrasal borrowings in Europe awaits the development of a lexicon of phrasal Anglicisms. Regional or global lexicons/databases of phrases might also make it possible to gauge the role of the mass media in the spread of English. Media influence has been shown to be a significant factor in the diffusion of English catchphrases in Dutch, for instance (Zenner, Speelman, and Geeraerts 2013).

 See footnote on translation of English film titles in French in section 3.1.6.  Thomason (2001) presents a borrowing scale, based on Thomason and Kaufman (1988), which correlates intensity of contact with types of borrowed elements/​features. The scale includes four levels from casual contact, limited to lexical borrowing of content words, to intense contact, characterized by heavy lexical borrowing from all sections of the lexicon and heavy structural borrowing. The scale usefully distinguishes the borrowing of lexical features from that of structural features. It is, however, indicative rather than absolute: “Any borrowing scale is a matter of probabilities, not possibilities. The predictions it makes can be violated, in principles and sometimes in fact” (Thomason 2001: 71). 29 30

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Typology of phraseological Anglicisms in French. Types

Examples

1. Famous phrases from the arts (song lyrics, film quotes, literary citations, pop culture references)

and the winner is; the lady vanishes

2. Idioms and proverbs

home sweet home; time is money

3. Lexicalized slogans

yes we can; what else?

4. Expressions détournées

men in white < men in black; God save the green < God Save the Queen

5. NPs [Adj/​N + Adj/​N + N]

young british artist; boy next door

6. Discourse and pragmatic markers

last but not least; ludique, isn’t it? (playful, isn’t it?)

7. False phrasal Anglicisms

very bad trip (e.g. total nightmare); over lol (lol again)

3.6 Summary The chapter briefly connects histories of borrowed words with linguistic trends during historical periods of contact between French and English. Dictionarysanctioned and -unsanctioned loanwords and loan phrases, characteristic of the latest period of contact, are examined to expose the diversity hidden by the umbrella term ‘Anglicism.’ This inventory of current English influences on the French lexis indicates that manipulation and reinterpretation is a common adaptation strategy, and that the use of loan phrases, a contact phenomenon barely reported for French, plays a minor but original role. This chapter is the first part of a larger demonstration that illustrates each borrowing’s unique etymological story: its reason for being borrowed, shifts from donor language, lexicogenic processes involved in the recipient language, currency in the recipient lexicon, etc. Typologies are useful tools but they have their limitations; many separate (or at least separable) types share important (socio)linguistic characteristics that typologies cannot reveal. A strikingly recurrent feature in the data collected for this study is that borrowing from English is a playful practice, but the role of borrowing in generating linguistic humor is not addressed by typologies. Other extra-​typological features include the frequency and lifespan of Anglicisms, for instance. What cannot be captured by typologies is the subject of ­chapter 4, which examines specific dictionary-​unattested English influences.

 7

4

Dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms Qu’on se le dise : Sarko is back et, cette fois, il ne prend pas de prisonniers. ​(You have been warned: Sarko is back, and this time he takes no prisoners.) —​Libération, March 25, 2010 This chapter provides a snapshot of a period of linguistic contact between French and English via an assessment of Anglicization in Libération’s e-​edition for the year 2010. Systematic tracking of the occurrence of English in French journalistic writing yields the database of loanwords and loan phrases appended to this book and reveals the characteristics and functions of these dictionary-​unsanctioned foreign items in expanding the French lexicon, in both the short and the long term. Because of the quantity and variety of e-​data collected, the study is not an exhaustive examination of the corpus/​ database, but rather a discussion of patterns and lexical case studies representative of the use of English for neological activity in French, as attested in journalistic prose. With few exceptions, the data and patterns presented throughout the chapter also eventuate in Le Monde and Le Figaro, two other major daily newspapers in France,1 a fact which confirms a shared participation in the same contact linguistic trends. The use of secondary newspaper and dictionary data from 2015 allows for diachronic comparisons, especially in exploring the life cycles of loanwords. More generally, the findings unveil the emergence of new characteristics for lexical borrowing in a setting of virtual contact.

1  The online archives of these newspapers were used to validate the borrowing tendencies identified in Libération:  a manual search of the Anglicisms was made in the other papers to verify their appearance and context of use, but not their frequency. The datasets examined in this chapter, though, come from the corpus, unless otherwise specified.

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4.1 Dictionary-​sanctioned versus -​unsanctioned The data collected and presented in this chapter are words and phrases whose English origins can readily be recognized in spelling, morphology, and pronunciation (in contrast to the etymological definition of an Anglicism presented in section 3.2) and whose usage was unsanctioned by the French dictionary (Petit Robert 2010) at the time of collection (Libération 2010). The database chronicles these loan items that would otherwise be forgotten, and their linguistic features and raisons d’être in the recipient lexicon are the focus of this chapter. It is the nature of these items to come and go in the French language, but a small minority of them comes and stays. 4.1.1 ANGLICISMS FROM THE PETIT ROBERT 2015 FIRST ATTESTED AFTER 1990

This short account of the loanwords that officially stay2 serves as a prelude to the analysis of those that are transient. It is well known in lexicography that frequency and dates of first attestation do not correspond consistently. Selfie entered the 2015 edition of the Petit Robert after being used for only two years,3 a rapid entrenchment in the recipient lexicon which undoubtedly reflects its sudden ubiquity. Borderline, in contrast, entered the Petit Robert in its 2013 edition, even though its first attestation dates back to 1970. Its currency in the French lexicon is a development from the latest contact period—​number of occurrences in Libération in the last fifteen years: three in 2000, nine in 2010, and sixteen in 2015. An explanation for this steadily increasing use of borderline parallels the shift in French from an initially specialized psychiatric definition (the only sense provided by the PR) to a more recent generalized definition (‘almost inappropriate, off-​the-​wall’) applied to an expanded set of referents: for instance, humour borderline (borderline humor), histoires borderline4 (borderline stories). The Anglicisms5 attested after 1990 recorded as separate dictionary entries in the Petit Robert 2015 amount to around forty words (excluding acronyms and initialisms6), among which are blender, cranberry, hipster, low cost, and

2  A convenient resource was the website of the Club d’orthographe de Grenoble which posts lists of the new words that are added to the yearly editions of the Petit Robert. 3  President Obama’s joining two prime ministers in taking a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in 2013 may have launched the career of the Anglicism across European languages. 4  The lack of inflection on plural adjectival borderline is the result of the constraint discussed in section 6.2.1.3(b). 5  Again, new words such as barista (< English < Italian) and métrosexuel (< English metrosexual) are not counted because their form does not reveal an English etymon. (Nearly 25% of the new words included in the 2012 edition of the PR have an English etymon, regardless of their first date of attestation.) 6  The identification of loan acronyms and initialisms is obviously tricky, being more (XXL) or less (RSS) transparent, hence the separate count.

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Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms

streaming. This period has ushered in a series of loans that may be labeled ‘e-​ Anglicisms’ since they are outcomes of the global English transmitted through online communication; the highest number of new words in the dictionary come from the semantic fields of the computer and new technologies, including e-​learning, flashcode (QR code), hashtag, and texter (to text). The latest editions of the Petit Robert also include, of course to a lesser extent, Anglicisms whose first date of attestation precedes 1990, including borderline (1970), mentioned above, escort-​girl (1983), and street art (1982). Because English is a generous word donor, the official dictionary list can produce only a reduced, fragmentary representation of the phenomenon of lexical borrowing. Dictionary-​ unsanctioned Anglicisms constitute other pieces of the puzzle, since borrowing from English is a productive and inventive extra-​dictionary phenomenon. 4.1.2 EPHEMERAL BORROWED VOCABULARY

What are these words left out of the dictionary? The Petit Robert archives over 60,000 words, and Sulci, the text-​mining tool used to retrieve dictionary-​ unsanctioned words from Libération’s e-​edition, produces long alphabetical lists of words which confirm the sustained creativity of language users on a daily basis. A  microscopic sample from the B list (reproduced in Figure  2.1) includes: informal adj. bombesque (hot, sexy) < n. bombe + suffix -​esque, Spanish loan bonito (pretty), borgésien < writer Borges + suffix -​ien, and English loan born. These words illustrate the open-​ended nature of the lexicon in contrast with the closed, ‘selected’ representation of it in the dictionary. Anglicisms are one category of this parallel unofficial lexicon whose members fail to meet the criteria for inclusion in the dictionary because of such factors as low frequency, modish usage, technical nature, or vulgar style. Most of these loanwords will never gain currency, yet their appearance prompts questions of typology, frequency and lifespan, etc. For the few of them that will eventually acquire full-​fledged status in the recipient lexicon, their first attestation in the Libération corpus reveals characteristics of the early stages of integration, a process which can be very rapid. This chapter chronicles the status of these dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms, first addressing the frequency factor.

4.2 Nonce and very low-​frequency Anglicisms Nonce borrowings refer to Anglicisms that occur once in the corpus; very low-​ frequency Anglicisms occur fewer than three times. This frequency class (1–​3 occurrences) is the most common class in the database. The current influx of nonce and very low-​frequency items has received little explanation. It has been observed, nonetheless, that their use as an innovative lexical device in European languages is “a kind of disposable stylistic resource” (Pulcini, Furiassi, and

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Rodríguez González 2012: 12). These Anglicisms, in other words, are not borrowed with the expectation that they will last. The term ‘nonce borrowing’ is found in research on contact linguistics, which investigates bilingual practices and outcomes, often based on spoken corpora. It is at the heart of a contentious discussion about whether these lone items are borrowed or code-​switched. Poplack (2001: 2063) presents the following prerequisite for nonce borrowing: “Like code-​switching […], nonce borrowing is neither recurrent nor widespread, and necessarily requires a certain level of bilingualism competence.” An apparent problem concerns the use of a spoken bilingual practice in the context of a national French digital newspaper. It is clear that Libération’s journalists are in daily professional contact with the global, online English language. Melitz (2016: 587) identifies the international press as an area where English serves largely as a lingua franca: People in the business of diffusing international news, or the firms active in the diffusion process itself, must obtain their information quickly. As a result, they have veered heavily toward English in data transmission among themselves. In close connection, there is a heavy concentration of providers of international news in English-​speaking countries, including Reuters, the Associated Press, the BBC, NBC, and the New York Times. Borrowing is opportunistic behavior, triggered by the immediate availability of lexical material, and currently not only is English the most available language, but its availability is unprecedented because of electronic communication:  YouTube videos, (Hollywood) films on Netflix (since 2014 in France), online daily newspapers, computer games, open university courses, etc. English is a bottomless lexical well from which an eclectic lexicon can be drawn. Resort to this borrowed lexicon is an accepted practice in the language of the French press. It is also recorded in other European languages, regardless of potential lack of understanding on the part of a readership that is not conventionally bilingual (as touched on in section 3.1.6). The unfamiliarity of these low-frequency items in the French lexicon no doubt contributes to the perception that Anglicisms have invaded and defaced the French language. The well-known, primarily governmental, task of identifying native equivalents for them, however, may be unnecessary, as they are not borrowed in order to replace native words. Such items pop up in the press because they are words readily available in this global peripheral lexicon. Afterwards, usefulness, in all of the ways documented for the many Anglicisms discussed in this book, will determine whether they actually join the larger vocabulary and eventually the dictionary. For the minority that persists, motivation for borrowing usually brings about innovation (a semantic specialization, a facetious use, a negative connotation, etc.). If there is no later need for these initially opportunistic borrowings, they will disappear as rapidly as they entered the recipient language. Overall, the likelihood that

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these low-frequency borrowings will reoccur and become widespread in the recipient language is slight. That being said, frequency and life cycle or length of time in the lexicon do not necessarily correlate (see section 4.8): only future usage/corpora will reveal whether these borrowings are ephemeral or not. MacKenzie (2012) predicts that this new pattern of Anglicization will have little influence on everyday language use in Europe. As new and foreign lexical elements appear, the question of their degree of linguistic integration into the recipient language arises immediately. Since high frequency can bring deeper entrenchment (Chesley and Baayen 20107), it could be hypothesized that low-​frequency items are less entrenched. Yet this correlation is not the norm for borrowing from English: the data do not generally reveal linguistic characteristics that would distinguish very low-​frequency Anglicisms from more frequent, established ones. Flagging can foreground foreignness, but as argued in section 2.4.2, it can fulfill other functions that apply indifferently to native and borrowed words and to nonce and high-​frequency borrowings. It is sometimes impossible to tell whether italicization, the most frequent flagging device, serves to identify the foreign form of these English loans or something else such as irony, vulgarity, etc. A gloss occasionally accompanies low-​frequency loanwords, but glossing also accompanies well-​established borrowings and native words. A transparent indicator of integration is early orthographic adaptation, as revealed in this sample of nonce borrowings: salade-bar, urbancycliste, buzzomètre, hackeur, etc.; orthographic adaptation, however, seems restricted to French and English cognates. Nonce borrowings may also receive native morphology immediately upon entry in the recipient language, as evidenced with inflectional adaptation. Regardless of their frequency in the Libération corpus, English verbs consistently receive native inflection and behave as first-group verbs in traditional classification, identifiable by their -er infinitive ending (blacklister, spammer).8 This pattern is not surprising, as the -er verb class is the unmarked form, that is, the most frequent and regular class (Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 1052). The overwhelming presence of the -er group in lexical productivity arises from its regularity: the endings of the -er paradigm are attached to only one stem.9 Dictionary-unattested English verbs logically follow the treatment assigned to

7  The authors argue that an even stronger factor than frequency for predicting the entrenchment of a borrowing is its dispersion, or, “the number of text chunks a word occurs in if the text is divided into several subparts” (p. 1344). 8  An apparent exception is the loan verb go, used in both spoken and electronic languages, however, it occurs exclusively with the first and third person singular (j’y go (I’m going/​leaving) and on y go (let’s go)). Such endings are unmarked in the spoken language, facilitating the lack of inflection on go, whose use has lexicalized. 9  Regular morphophonological rules account for the graphemic or/​and phonetic alternations in the paradigm of some verbs (e.g. émincer, partager, chanceler, récupérer). Aller is then the only irregular verb of the group.

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recently created native verbs (2008 vapoter (to use an electronic cigarette)) and dictionary-sanctioned borrowed verbs (1990 kifer (to dig, to like) < Arabic kif, 2005 podcaster < English to podcast). A handful of English verbs reject inflection in the corpus, but an explanation exists for each form. Three bare forms, fuck, play, and remember, behave like interjections and remain invariable like the English-origin interjection stop in French. Remember, for instance, occurs seven times in the corpus, each time parenthetically.10 In (1), the donor form is used in a parallel structure with a native verb (remember/rappelle); remember is reinterpreted as an interjection, possibly for avoiding a structurally complex French equivalent se souvenir de. 1. Il y a des fachos de gauche et des résistants de droite (remember De Gaulle, rappelle Gamblin!). —​(Libération, November 24, 2010) (There are leftist fascists and rightist Resistance members (remember De Gaulle, recall Gamblin!).) Another case of lack of inflection involves a phrasal verb. The third-person singular present form checke occurs with native inflection, and the third-person plural form check in does not. The particle of phrasal verbs plausibly acts as an inflection inhibitor: the French lexicon does not include such loan phrasal verbs, a ubiquitous lexical category in English, demonstrating the resistance of this non-native structure to integrating the French language.11 Regardless of their frequency and dictionary attestation, nominal and adjectival Anglicisms that end with a preposition also block plural marking—n. des mash-up (some mash-ups), adj. des expositions pop-up (some pop-up exhibitions). The adoption of native pluralization is then another indicator of immediate integration of low-frequency Anglicisms. The pluralization patterns identified in ­chapters 5 and 6 for dictionary-sanctioned adjectival and nominal Anglicisms apply to dictionary-unsanctioned low-frequency ones as well. For instance, the inflectional behavior of low-frequency des glitchs vs. high-frequency des scratchs shows that both nouns use the French plural morpheme -s rather than the English -es following a sibilant (glitches, scratches). The lack of linguistic features characteristic of these very low- (vs. very high-​) frequency items is evidence that the form of borrowed words does not typically either spur or inhibit borrowing. The most salient conclusion is that Anglicisms can behave like native words even on their first uses in the recipient language.

 Also see example (2a) in chapter 5.  The technical verb lock-​outer (< borrowed noun lock-out) of very low occurrence is one exception: a peculiarity of its integration is that inflection is not attached to the verb lock but to its particle out. French treats the phrasal verb as a simplex. 10 11

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Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms

4.3 Most frequent Anglicisms It is difficult to make a quantitative assessment of the current lexical impact of English on French. The sample database items now, and so on, hard boiled, angry young man, beautiful *looser (after beautiful people), pitch (film synopsis), yes we can, French paradox, eat boy (American chef in Paris), guerilla gardening, romanoland (the land of the Roma), Sarkoboy (a protégé of Sarkozy), and hiphopeur (hip-hop artist) can be assigned to various semantic categories, various morphological, lexicogenic, and syntactic processes, etc. Because they clearly do not correspond to a single class of words, a quantitative assessment of the entire database is questionable: any estimate of the percentage of Anglicisms used in the French language will be flawed. The current lexical impact of English on French is best evaluated qualitatively, though the specific questions addressed in this chapter involve frequency counts. In the Libération corpus for the year 2010, composed of 27,670 newspaper articles, the highest-​frequency Anglicisms, which occur at least ten times in ten different newspaper articles, amount to sixty-​two items, as recorded in Table 4.1. (The items appear in order of their absolute frequency in the corpus; relative frequency based on the number of tokens per article is also provided.) Because this lexical assessment is synchronic, it necessarily has limitations when it comes to providing a representative picture of the contact lexicon of the French language as a whole. The lexicon discussed here is rooted in the current events of 2010, and the most frequent item, hedge fund, is emblematic of this period of global recession (after the financial crisis of 2007–​8). In fact, the loanword hedge fund has spread to other European languages, Spanish and Norwegian, for instance. The current high frequency does not necessarily mean that the term will last in the French lexicon, as examined in section 4.9 below. Frequency too is necessarily a subjective concept in a yearly newspaper corpus, for some of its words rarely occur because they are technical (cybersquatting), anachronistic (dime novel), or vulgar (bitchy), among other reasons. The set of words is, however, large enough to serve as a basis for lexicographic analysis. Its validity is confirmed by the fact that 20% of the dictionary-​unattested Anglicisms of this high-​frequency list for 2010 now belong to the 2015 edition of the Petit Robert. Clearly, frequency is a factor in ‘official’ acceptance of a borrowed term, and the language of the press significantly contributes to the lexical development of a language; and conversely, examples from newspapers are now cited in dictionary entries (see section 2.2.1). Most of these most frequently used English loans in 2010 fall into a few specialized semantic domains. A main umbrella category is business, that of the top items on the list, hedge fund, think tank, and low cost. Unsurprisingly, Anglicisms from the technology and web field also fuel the French lexicon (smartphone, triple play, peer to peer). Technology includes the new sub-field of video games, and video game jargon draws heavily from English (gamer, casual); game names

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TABLE 4.1

Most frequent Anglicisms in the Libération corpus not recorded in the Petit Robert 2010. Absolute frequency

Relative frequency

In the Petit Robert 2015

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

Tokens per article

1. hedge fund

98

50

1.96

no

2. smartphone

96

64

1.5

yes

3. think tank

72

63

1.14

no

4. low cost

68

46

1.48

yes

5. biopic

60

49

1.22

yes

6. seventies

54

50

1.08

no

7. gamer [video game]

51

40

1.28

no

8. arty

48

45

1.07

no

9. mix

46

39

1.18

yes

10. triple play

46

23

2

no

11. blockbuster

44

37

1.19

yes

12. new wave

37

34

1.09

yes

13. tweet

37

27

1.37

yes

14. midterms [politics]

37

23

1.61

no

15. success story

35

34

1.03

no

16. check-​point

29

25

1.16

no

17. fashion

27

22

1.23

no

18. serial killer

25

24

1.04

no

19. microblogging

25

20

1.25

yes (microblog)

20. playlist

25

20

1.25

no

21. peer to peer

24

17

1.41

no

22. mainstream

23

21

1.1

no

23. world [music]

23

21

1.1

no

24. british

22

21

1.05

no

25. streaming

22

17

1.29

yes

26. tchat (n.) (online chat)*

22

17

1.29

yes

27. queer

21

18

1.17

no

28. storytelling

21

17

1.24

no

29. hardcore

20

19

1.05

no

30. class action

20

13

1.54

no

31. old school

19

19

1

no

32. dancefloor

19

18

1.06

no

33. bluesman (blues musician)

16

16

1

no

34. himself

16

16

1

no

35. chart [music]

15

15

1

no

36. afrobeat

15

14

1.07

no

37. do-​it-​yourself

15

14

1.07

no

38. pass (n.)

15

13

1.15

no

39. songwriter

15

13

1.15

no

40. aka

14

14

1

no

41. dub

14

14

1

no

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Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms

TABLE 4.1

Continued Absolute frequency

Relative frequency Tokens per article

In the Petit Robert 2015

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

42. entertainment

14

14

1

no

43. casual [video game]

14

10

1.4

no

44. bad boy

13

13

1

no

45. gameplay

13

13

1

no

46. boyfriend

13

12

1.08

no

47. lo(w)-​fi

13

12

1.08

no

48. work in progress

13

12

1.08

no

49. online

12

11

1.09

no

50. team [sports]

12

11

1.09

no

51. play-​off

12

10

1.2

no

52. frenchie, frenchy

11

11

1

no

53. glam

11

11

1

no

54. nerd

11

11

1

yes

55. roots [music]

11

11

1

no

56. ska

11

11

1

yes

57. managing director

11

10

1.1

no

58. dream team

10

10

1

no

59. groovy

10

10

1

no

60. news

10

10

1

no

61. open space

10

10

1

no

62. tycoon

10

10

1

no

 The item chat was recorded in the PR 2010 but not its phonetically spelled variant tchat.

*

are consistently left in the English original, and even games developed in France often bear an English name. Music is another classic supplier of English words in French (dub, songwriter), as are, more generally, art and style (biopic, fashion). Borrowed words tend to occur in specialized semantic categories, and only a minority of Anglicisms qualifies for core status (Görlach 2003). It is typically asserted that there is less need to borrow core lexical items (numbers, personal pronouns, family members, etc.) since languages tend to have their own versions of these words. If foreign words were perfect equivalents of native words, this assumption would be entirely plausible, but this volume provides ample evidence of the changes such words have undergone from English to French: for instance, borrowed French yes is informal in contrast with neutral native oui (see section 3.3.3 on stylistic shift); borrowed pronoun himself differs from native luimême (see section 4.4.1); and the English numbers, one, two, three—surely core lexical terms—are used in spoken French to announce the beginning of a race or a game. Matras (2009: 166) stresses that the assumed resistance to borrowing of core vocabulary needs to be verified systematically with cross-linguistic data. Would integration into daily-life vocabulary indicate a more forceful impact of the donor language? The most frequent dictionary-unsanctioned

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Anglicisms in Libération also include items which belong to less specialized layers of the lexicon, including boyfriend and seventies. Nominal boyfriend is a member of the DEA for French and ten other languages, and Rey-Debove and Gagnon’s (1986) Dictionnaire des anglicismes dates its first attestation in French to 1947 and defines it as the friend and date of a young girl in America; it is also classified as an archaic word. The word boyfriend as used in the current period of contact was probably borrowed again after a period of disuse. The restrictive features of age and geography no longer apply, and it is now modish in terms of its usage. Since boyfriend lacks a single equivalent in French, the borrowing may contribute to solving a current lexical problem. The term petit ami has aged, and the term compagnon is slightly literary. The informal copain is well known for creating semantic confusion, because it refers to both a friend and a boyfriend, thus borrowed boyfriend (temporarily?) fills a need.12 The frequency of boyfriend has not been consistent in Libération over the last twenty years: four occurrences in 1995, none in 2000, eleven in 2005, thirteen in 2010, and seven in 2015. The revival of this loanword may well be related to the ubiquity of Hollywood gossip, which is not a main section in daily French newspapers. A search of boyfriend in Elle magazine both yielded a drastically higher frequency count and revealed adjectival uses of boyfriend. Such adjectival uses are lexicalized because they are restricted to modifying items of women’s clothing with a boyish look (jean boyfriend (boyfriend jeans), veste boyfriend (boyfriend jacket)). This specialized fashion use could potentially influence a broader integration of the nominal boyfriend. The loanwords sixties and seventies, used nominally and adjectivally, offer more economical lexical alternatives (each one word) to the equivalent French phrases années soixante and années soixante-dix. Consider the elliptical constructions le dress code sixties vs. le dress code des années soixante, and l’immense résidence seventies vs. l’immense résidence des années soixante-dix. In the corpus, the word seventies occurs nearly 70% more frequently than the word sixties, but only sixties has entered the Petit Robert, first attested in 1978. An explanation is that the sixties may be considered a more influential decade politically, culturally, and stylistically. The related terms fifties, eighties, and nineties are also borrowed but to a lesser extent.

4.4 Borrowed closed-​class words Although words from all syntactic categories may be borrowed, those of some syntactic categories are more likely to be borrowed than others. Content words,

12  The high-​frequency item bad boy echoes boyfriend:  the French counterpart mauvais garçon qualifies as archaic usage in the Petit Robert, hence the loan version supplies a modish replacement.

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Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms

particularly nouns, adjectives, and verbs, are the most frequent borrowed categories. Muysken (1981: 62) offers this often-​cited hierarchy: Nouns > verbs > adjectives > prepositions > conjunctions > complementizers > clitic pronouns > wh-​pronouns < deictic pronouns This pattern applies to both bilingual (Poplack, Sankoff, and Miller 1988: 62–5) and monolingual (Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 156) situations. The loanwords collected for this study confirm that closed-class words are less frequently borrowed than open-class words, and that nouns are overwhelmingly the most borrowed category. This raises the question: Why is word class a factor in promoting or demoting borrowing? A traditional explanation is that closed-class words have equivalents among languages and so there is no need to adopt them from one language to another. This explanation has its limitations since the borrowing of closed-class words does occur:13 donor closed-class items from the corpus are discussed in order to identify the functions they fulfill in the recipient language. In simple terms, what do English articles, pronouns, prepositions, etc. have that their French counterparts do not? A partial answer to the intriguing borrowing of closed-class items was provided in the reporting of stylistic shift in section 3.3.3. As discussed, the dictionary-attested Anglicism because, both a conjunction and a preposition, has become informal and/or facetious in the French language, thus differing from its native neutral equivalent parce que. In English, the preposition of French origin sans echoes the stylistic change undergone by because; the NOAD describes the borrowed preposition as “literary, humorous,” which is not the case of without. The borrowing of prepositions, then, occurs simultaneously with the grafting of new traits not available in the native counterparts. The concept of near vs. perfect synonymy is useful here, as detailed in section 3.3.4. Loanwords, regardless of their word class, may act as near synonyms of recipient equivalents, for absolute synonymy is blocked by cultural associations, and by grammatical, semantic, and stylistic shifts that regularly take place through the borrowing process. An emblematic example is the Gallicized loan personal pronoun elle, low on the hierarchy of borrowability: although the French and English pronouns elle and she have the same definition, the title of the Frenchborn magazine Elle remains in its international editions because Frenchness is value-added in the fashion context. Notable closed-class Anglicisms in the corpus include pronoun himself, stressed article the, and the series of prepositionlike starring/featuring/including analyzed below.

A classic example reported in Rey-Debove (1973) is from Stendhal’s Journal, August 10, 1811: “Je comptais aller au spectacle, but Florian vint le matin.” (I was planning on going to the show, but Florian came by in the morning.) 13

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4.4.1  HIMSELF

The most frequent closed-​class item is the pronoun himself, occurring sixteen times in as many different newspaper articles. Also, the feminine form herself and the neuter itself each make a single appearance in the corpus. The following dataset illustrates this puzzling borrowing of a foreign pronoun: 2.  (a) Le porte-​parole de l’UMP Frédéric Lefebvre, ami proche de Sled, puis Sarkozy himself, demandent à Duhamel de lui confier une émission politique. —​(Libération, July 6, 2010) (The UMP spokesman, Frédéric Lefebvre, a close friend of Sled, and then Sarkozy himself, ask Duhamel to entrust him with a political show.)     (b) Dès le XIXe siècle, c’est l’empereur Napoléon III, himself, qu’on imite sur les photos-​cartes de visite. —​(Libération, July 24, 2010) (As early as the 19th century, it was Emperor Napoleon III, himself, who was copied on photo-​visiting cards.)     (c)  Si, si, le Général [de Gaulle] «himself» découpait le poulet. —​(Libération, November 18, 2010) (Yes, yes, General [de Gaulle] “himself” carved the chicken.) The donor pronoun himself has acquired a specialized syntactic feature in French: its use is bound to a preceding proper name, as evidenced in all corpus examples. The form, absent from general language dictionaries, is recorded in the Dictionary of European Anglicisms for French, Dutch, and Norwegian with the following mention: “Used after proper names etc. to emphasize that this is indeed the person in question.” Most importantly, the pronoun has emphatic and facetious functions which the native equivalent lui-même does not have. The blend of a donor-emphatic function with the saliency of a donor form contributes to creating prominence. In (2b) the loan pronoun is set off by commas, an additional emphatic device. Example (2c) shows that quotation marks may also be used as a punctuation device for forcefulness. The appearance of himself also produces humor, partly for its unexpectedness in French, thus mirroring the facetious use of borrowed because. In the DEA, himself, first attested in French in the 1980s, is recorded with a restricted usage: “Modish, modern (fashionable jargon, not expected to last).” Because of its targeted, specialized function as an emphatic form, its currency is unlikely to increase significantly. A query in the online Libération archives retrieved eleven

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Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms

occurrences of himself for the year 2000, sixteen in 2010, and seventeen in 2015. After a rise, it seems to have reached a stable level of use.

4.4.2 STRESSED THE

Another borrowed closed-​class item is the stressed or emphatic definite article the. Epstein (2002: 352) defines the general purpose of emphatic the in English as “to indicate that the speaker construes a referent as an especially important member of some category.” In the spoken language, emphatic the is stressed, and the pronunciation /​ðə/​changes to /​ði/​. These phonetic traits are transferred in the written language through the use of typographic and punctuation cues. In the set of examples (3a–​c), donor the occurs italicized, quoted, and capitalized. 3. (a)  Un monde tout nu, c’est le titre d’un documentaire où Marianne James (oui, the Marianne James) s’interroge sur la nudité. —​(Libération, September 20, 2010) (“Un monde tout nu” is the title of a documentary in which Marianne James (yes, the Marianne James) ponders nudity.)     (b) Avec les nourritures de nos amis britanniques, on a entamé, voilà quinze ans, une liaison contrastée. Certes, ce ne fut pas le coup de foudre—​à l’exception du «full english breakfast»—​mais c’est une histoire qui  dure. […] On enchaîna le lendemain matin sur notre premier «full english breakfast» qui, pour le coup, fut «The» révélation. —​(Libération, May 6, 2010) (Fifteen years ago, we began an up-​and-​down love affair with the food of our British friends. Certainly, it was not love at first sight—​ with the exception of the “full English breakfast”—​but the story continues. […] We followed up the morning after with our first “full English breakfast” which, in this case, was “The” revelation.)     (c) Pour son premier spa aux États-​Unis, Sisley a choisi New York et THE adresse de l’Upper East Side : le Carlyle, bijou Art déco. —​(Les Échos, February 13, 2009) (For its first spa in the United States, Sisley chose New York and THE address on the Upper East Side: the Carlyle, an Art Deco jewel.) Example (3a) provides a classic case of emphatic the in which the article serves to identify a unique referent, here the artist Marianne James. The name is

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previously introduced without a determiner, and it appears again preceded by the English definite article. This occurrence takes place in a parenthesized comment introduced by the affirmative oui, both of which contribute to the force of emphatic the, which identifies Marianne James as a unique artistic phenomenon. This combination parallels the allied emphatic si, si and “himself” in example (2c). The French definite article, as la Marianne James, would not work to fulfill this function because of the pejorative implication of the French article before the name of a person. The borrowing of the definite article in (3b) fits its context, a review of le manger british (British food). Since the reason for the piece is to confirm the myth of bad British cuisine, which only the breakfast may reverse («The» révélation), the use of English emphatic the is a well-​chosen device for providing contrast. Finally, the capitalized definite article THE in (3c) serves ‘to nominate’ the Carlyle as the best spa in New York’s Upper East Side. Emphatic use of the French definite article, le (m.)/la (f.), also surfaces in the language of the press, though it is not (yet) reported in the Petit Robert dictionary or the Grevisse grammar (whereas emphatic the is recorded in the New Oxford American Dictionary). It may be a relatively recent syntactic usage calqued from English, as the definite article in French is characteristically cliticized to its noun, with accompanying reduction of the vowel. In French, as in English, the emphatic function is cued typographically, by capitalization. 4.  (a) Alors comme ça dimanche, vous allez faire un poulet. LE poulet du dimanche. Que vous découperez cérémonieusement à table devant les convives. Un vrai rite gaullien, que l’on vous dit. —​(Libération, November 18, 2010) (So just like that on Sunday, you are going to cook a chicken. THE Sunday chicken. That you will ceremoniously carve at the table in front of the guests. A true Gaullist rite, as you have been told.) (b) Il [Lagerfeld] a sa propre marque, au périmètre limité en regard de Chanel et du reste, mais il possède une assurance incroyable. Celle d’être LA première star, et peut-​être la dernière, qui assume autant sa «marionnettisation», qui sait que tout cela, la télévision et la peoplisation, est aussi vrai qu’irréel. —​(Libération, June 22, 2010) (He [Lagerfeld] has his own brand, limited in scope, in relation to Chanel and the rest, but he possesses incredible self-assurance. That of being THE first star, and perhaps the last, who so assumes his “puppetization,” who knows that all of this, the television and the overexposure of celebrities’ lives, is as authentic as it is unreal.) The stressed French definite article LE in (4a) establishes a contrast between the chicken prepared on Sundays and that prepared on weekdays, which

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presents the former as superior. In (4b), the idea of prominence and excellence as applying to fashion designer Lagerfeld is an extended figure throughout the portrait article, to which the use of the capitalized definite article contributes. (In the spoken language, phonological stressing of the article takes place, which bolsters the hypothesis that it is a borrowed feature from English). French and English in fact trade definite articles, for the borrowing of the French article le/la, a closed-class item, commonly occurs in English place names (Le Nail Salon, La Mirage). The loan article, perhaps stereotypically, brings out French cultural associations: it suggests style and savoir faire and can appear to denote luxury in the names of restaurants and social destinations (Le Restaurant in Manhattan) or irony in the names of not-so-fancy places (La Bagel Delight in Brooklyn). 4.4.3 PREPOSITION-​LIKE INCLUDING, STARRING, AND FEATURING

The corpus includes three semantically and syntactically related loanwords, including, starring, and featuring. Semantically, these three forms pattern like the preposition with. While including is a broad term, marginal in French, starring and featuring are specialized terms used (almost) exclusively in the contexts of films and other shows, and as such are followed by names of artists. 5.  (a)  E  t pour cause : ce sont les tubes immarcescibles d’Abba qui servent de combustible, en version française assumable, including Voulez-​ vous (fastoche) et Money Money Money. Sans blague? —​(Libération, December 20, 2010) (And for good reason: they are Abba’s enduring hits that serve as fuel, in supposedly French versions, including “Voulez-​vous” (easy-​ peasy) and “Money Money Money.” No kidding?) (b) Christophe Honoré fait de jolis films, avec de jolis titres. Ainsi ce Non ma fille, tu n’iras pas danser, starring Chiara Mastroianni. —​(Libération, September 10, 2010) (Christophe Honoré makes pretty films, with pretty titles. Like “Making Plans for Lena,” starring Chiara Mastroianni.)

(c)  P  uis, samedi après-​midi, c’est Toulon qui a abdiqué 35-​29 après prolongations, […] dans un stade Geoffroy-​Guichard de Saint-​Étienne featuring Patrick Revelli, dans les gradins -plus habitué depuis des lustres à de telles sensations. —​(Libération, May 17, 2010) (Then, Saturday afternoon, it was Toulon that gave up 35-​29 after extra time, […] in the Geoffroy-​Guichard stadium in Saint-​Étienne

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(featuring Patrick Revelli in the bleachers), which hadn’t seen such excitement in years.) Syntactically, the form including is defined as a preposition in the NOAD, but the forms starring and featuring, in contrast, are not (yet) dictionary entries. Because both could be replaced by with or including, these gerunds function as prepositions. These are prepositions new to both the donor and the recipient languages, though prepositions as closed classes very rarely admit new members. For the time being, these Anglicisms may be analyzed as preposition-​like particles. The potentiality of disappearance from the language is much higher for featuring and starring than for with/​avec because their use depends on the existence of films, revealing a more limited window of use. Example (5c) illustrates featuring with the name of a former soccer player attending a rugby match, which represents a slight extension from the original cinematographic use. This suggests the possibility of semantic broadening which could contribute to the item’s longevity, a hypothesis, however, that frequency does not support. The frequency of including, starring, and featuring in Libération over the years 1995–​2015, recorded in Table 4.2, shows overall very low frequency for these items, despite a peak in 2010 for featuring and starring. These forms are nonetheless worth chronicling, for they epitomize a feature of the current period of contact: immediate availability of lexical materials whose use is transient (which does not mean they will not recur in the future).

4.5  So French: serial so + X The slogan of the French lingerie brand Simone Pérèle, Simone. So French, epitomizes the faddishness of this phrasal Anglicism. As legally mandated, the translation Simone. Si française is added in the company’s advertisements (1994 Toubon Law, see footnote 2 in section 1.1.1). Evidently, it is both somewhat ridiculous and ironic to have an English slogan for a declaration of Frenchness. The loan phrases so french(y), so british, and so chic have lexicalized and spread in the national daily press. The model [so + EN (FR) Adj] also serves

TABLE 4.2

Emergence in Libération of three preposition-​ like particles including/​starring/​featuring. Year

including

starring

featuring

1995

0

0

0

2000

1

1

1

2010

2

8

6

2015

0

2

3

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Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms TABLE 4.3

Lexical patterns of phrasal [so + Adj/​year] in the corpus. Lexicalized So + Adj

Non-​lexicalized So + EN (FR) Adj

So + year

so chic so british so french so frenchy

so easy So Goude/​So true/ So stupid14 so toc (so fake)

so 2009 so 2011 so 80’s

for the production of other non-​lexicalized phrases (so fashion (so trendy)), also possible with a French adjective (so toc (so fake)), though much rarer. The discussion of the borrowed phrase relies on two sample datasets (6–​7) from the Libération corpus used to identify its behavior and functions. Its occurrences in the corpus take the form of three patterns, summarized in Table 4.3. The first dataset (6a–​b, d–​e) features lexicalized uses of [so + Adj] and also includes instances of the Gallicized equivalent si (6a–​c) for comparative purposes. 6.  (a) Ce respect et cette affection que les films de Rohmer ont recueillis depuis trente ans dans les salles de la côte Est ou au sein des campus américains suffisent à plaider pour l’universalité profonde de son cinéma, à la fois so french et si unanimement humain, piquant et si profondément juste dans la définition des caractères. —​(Libération, January 12, 2010) (The respect and affection that Rohmer’s films have garnered for the last thirty years in the movie theaters of the East Coast or on American campuses are sufficient proof of the profound universality of his cinema, at once so French and so unanimously human, biting and so profoundly fair in its delineation of characters.)     (b) Après ce romantisme so british, John Galliano raccourcit la longueur des jupes, et s’offre un bain de soie rose et de tulle vert pâle. —​(Libération, January 26, 2010) (After this so British romanticism, John Galliano shortens the length of skirts, and offers a froth of pink silk and pale green tulle.)     (c)  [ …] deux fois Premier ministre, chancelier de l’Échiquier – où, de son aveu même, il ne comprit rien aux finances –​, ministre de

14  One article, a review of three television programs, also includes so with other English adjectives in a series of catchy subheadings, referring to each program: So Goude/​So true/​So stupid. The phrase So Goude describes a documentary about the artist Jean-​Paul Goude and is based on the English phrase so good, which, when pronounced with a French accent, produces a homophonous pun.

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l’Intérieur, Premier lord de l’Amirauté et même ce poste si british de chancelier du duché de Lancastre … —​(Libération, January 26, 2010) ([…] twice Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer–where, by his own confession, he understood nothing of finances–​, Minister of the Interior, First Lord of the Admiralty and even the so British post of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster …)     (d) Ce soir, on convie les péchés mignons de Kate Moss (so chic la vodka-​champagne-​citron-​mandarine), Churchill (un Churchill Martini), […]. —​(Libération, December 30, 2010) (This evening, we call for the guilty pleasures of Kate Moss (the vodka-​champagne-​lemon-​mandarin is so chic), Churchill (a Churchill Martini), […].)     (e) Sur les tartines du petit-​déjeuner, on étale de la gelée de violette au champagne, so chic. —​(Libération, October 18, 2010) (On the slices of bread for breakfast, we spread violet-​champagne jelly, so chic.) In example (6a) the loan phrase so french describes the cinema of French director Rohmer. The parallel native phrases si unanimement humain and si profondément juste reinforce the lexicalized status of so french, in addition to its currency in journalistic writing. Examples (6b–​c) suggest a possible difference between so british and si british. British (and even britiche) has long been borrowed into the French lexicon, first attested in the 1970s. Si british occurs in the more formal context of a list of all the prestigious positions occupied by Churchill, whereas so british occurs in the less formal context of fashion; the English phrase contributes to a stylistic effect, probably for the phonetic reasons that follow. As intensifying adverbs, so and si are used for emphasis, but while so can be pronounced with exaggerated stress, si cannot receive stress. The native suffix -​o produces informal derivatives with or without apocope, including apéritif > apéro and rapide > rapido. In such cases, the phoneme /​o/​in final position acts as a sort of phonestheme that suggests colloquial language; it is possible that this native feature was grafted onto borrowed so, which would distinguish it from si. The use of so chic in (6d) precedes the noun phrase la vodka-​champagne-​ citron-​mandarine: this syntactic construction [intensifying Adv + Adj + NP] belongs to informal French. With deletion of the verb être, the construction is also elliptical. Online examples illustrate this slangy usage: Tellement chic les bijoux uniques! (lit. So chic, the unique pieces of jewelry!); Trop cool cette

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tenue (lit. So cool, this outfit). French tellement chic and English so chic function as variants: the borrowed phrase has the straightforward advantage of being shorter, trendier, and catchier. In (6e) so chic appears after a comma and in sentence-final position to qualify all that precedes it. In French, the elliptical direct translation si chic would not be allowed, unless embedded in a (larger) sentence, c’est si chic. The phrase so chic is here used as a cliché, as confirmed by other similar uses in the national press. This case reveals that borrowed materials may license violations of rules that govern ‘ordinary’ usage. The second dataset (7a–​c) illustrates the adjectival phrase [so + year] with three distinct patterns of use. None of these patterns has a readily available native correspondence. 7.  (a) Et là, voyez, le karaoké géant de Nagui, le merveilleux, l’immense, le créatif N’oubliez pas les paroles … ! C’est so 2011. —​(Libération, December 31, 2010) (And there, you see, Nagui’s giant karaoke show, the amazing, the huge, the creative [TV show] “Don’t forget the lyrics” … ! That’s so 2011.)     (b)  Fabienne raconte ses vacances (le Lot, et pas le Luberon, so 2009). —​(Libération, September 2, 2010) (Fabienne talks about her vacation (the Lot, and not the Luberon, which is so 2009).)     (c) Inquiétude : que devient le so 80’s Jean-​Paul Goude ? On ne sait pas. Alors on se souvient de lui dans ce numéro d’Empreintes. —​(Libération, April 23, 2010) (We’re worried:  what has become of Jean-​Paul Goude, who was so 80’s? We don’t know. So we remember him in this episode of “Empreintes.”) Excerpt (7a) illustrates the common appearance of the lexicalized phrase c’est so + year. The stress that the form so may receive as an intensifying adverb in the spoken language can be orthographically represented in the written language by a reduplicated letter o (sooo), not without humor.15 The phrase [so + year] also appears elliptically in (7b) (< qui est so 2009 (which is so 2009)), reflecting the usage exemplified in (6d–​e). Again, native si would not permit this economical construction. The last item of the series, so 80’s, functions as

Women’s press (compare to national daily press) chronicles this colloquial orthographic-prosodic form: “Ses macarons viennent de chez Pierre Hermé (Ladurée est « sooo last year »)” (Madame Figaro, October 28, 2008). (Her macaroons come from Pierre Hermé (Ladurée is “sooo last year”).) 15

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a prenominal adjective to describe the artist Jean-​Paul Goude. This innovative usage likely derives from truncated borrowing of the catch phrase that’s so + year. Other patterns unattested in the corpus include the use of so with a noun used adjectivally, as represented by the titles of two recently founded French magazines, So Foot (2003) and So Film (2012). The phrase [so + name of fashion designer] commonly appears in fashion magazines, where it means either ‘typical of the style of’ or ‘imitating the style of’—for instance, une jupe so Chanel (a Chanel-like skirt); un show brillant, léger, spirituel, so Gaultier (a brilliant, light-hearted, and spiritual show, so typical of Gaultier).

4.6 Donor-​culture restricted: postcarding and global American pop culture Foreign context is a classic transmitter of local terms even when native equivalents are available. For example, the use of steamboat, rather than bateau à vapeur in the Libération corpus instantly conjures up the image of the Mississippi river. This postcard effect of conveying local flavor parallels the ordinary occurrence of dictionary-unsanctioned borrowings in travel literature, which can even become a stylistic feature. Simone de Beauvoir’s ([1948] 1997) account of her four-month American tour, L’Amérique au jour le jour 1947, exemplifies the phenomenon, see excerpts (3a–b) in c­ hapter 5. In early twenty-first-century journalistic writing, this postcard motif is very present, but its source differs. These Anglicisms regularly appear in donor-​ culture contexts. Section 3.3.2.3 distinguishes donor-​culture restricted from unrestricted Anglicisms (for example, bad boy is a frequently occurring item, with thirteen instances, but only twice does it refer to a French man). It is beyond the scope of this study to classify each token in the corpus as donor-​culture restricted or unrestricted, but it can be hypothesized that there will be more of the former, especially in the art sections of Libération (for which the newspaper is well known). A brief, simplified reason for the frequency of Anglicisms in the art pages is the Americanization of the arts, or rather of pop culture. In France, fear of globalization is above all cultural,16 as explained by Gordon and Meunier (2001: 48): “Some of the greatest debates about the cultural effects of globalization concern the entertainment sector, primarily cinema and television. The extent of the domination of those American industries in France, and in Europe more

16  It is impossible not to mention the exception culturelle: “Since the mid-​1990s the French have started talking a lot less about the ‘cultural exception’ and more about ‘cultural diversity,’ a more positive way of looking at the need to defend French culture in an age of globalization” (Gordon and Meunier 2001: 53).

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widely, is striking.” More generally, Melitz (2016: 611) confirms the dominance of English in cultural areas, particularly pop music, motion pictures, and best-​ sellers: “The cultural areas of English supremacy provide, in my opinion, the only promising ground for the thesis of too much English.” In the contexts of the cultural domination of the United States and of English as a global lexical supplier through the mass media, news and reviews of American arts in Libération are fertile sites for the employment of Anglicisms, as exemplified by a review of the American film “White Lightnin’” (8a), and a portrait of the American comedian Tina Fey (8b): 8.  (a) Dans un torrent de décibels, deux légendes du rock trash de Virginie-​ Occidentale, Jesco White et Hasil Adkins, ne font plus qu’un dans une fiction complètement barrée. […] Bienvenue dans ce comté de rednecks, pauvre, alcoolisé et bagarreur niché au fin fond des Appalaches, avec ses trailer parks qui tombent en ruine, ses cabanons décatis, ses pick-​up rouillés et ses rodéos dans la boue. —​(Libération, February 17, 2010) (In a deluge of decibels, two legends of trash rock from West Virginia, Jesco White and Hasil Adkins, become one in a totally absurd fiction. Welcome to this county of rednecks, poor, alcoholic, and feisty, nested deep in the deep heart of Appalachia, with its trailer parks that are falling apart, its decrepit shacks, its rusty pickups, and its muddy rodeos.) (b) La mère est au foyer, pas desperate pour autant : grecque (quand dad a des ascendances allemandes), flamboyante, elle a la répartie redoutable, joue au poker avec les copines. —​(Libération, May 10, 2010) (The mother is a housewife, nonetheless, not desperate:  Greek (where dad is of German ancestry), flamboyant, she has an impressive repartee, plays poker with her girlfriends.) The purposely heavy use of English in the film review contributes to a ‘live’ account of the striking poverty and folkways of Appalachia. The portrait piece of Tina Fey includes the adjectival loan desperate for a bilingual pun and clever reference to the pop culture television series “Desperate Housewives,” the most-watched TV comedy in the world when the article was written in 2010 (Eurodata TV Worldwide).

4.7 Jargonistic ‘overuse’ of Anglicisms English fuels various kinds of jargon in French. In the daily press, business jargon and fashion jargon illustrate this neological function of English, which

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routinely manifests a serial effect in which the use of one English word triggers the use of others. Liberal use of English in specialized domains also communicates humor and irony. In the dataset presented in (9a–c), all the items of English origin were taken into consideration without the restrictive selection criteria established for the study (e.g. dictionary-attested or -unattested). English has different performative functions in each context. 9.  (a) 16 h 30, à Londres. Eric Halet, managing partner du hedge fund britannique Algebris sort d’une conference call. —​(Libération, May 12, 2010) (4:30 p.m., in London. Eric Halet, managing partner of the British hedge fund Algebris comes out of a conference call.)

(b) Le show Givenchy n’était pas très cool. Ah ce succès, ces acheteurs/​ bloggueurs/​curieux/​semi-​people de plus en plus nombreux, qu’il faut caser quitte à surbooker ici et là. —​(Libération, October 5, 2010) (The Givenchy show was not very cool. Ah this success, these buyers/​bloggers/​curious/​half-celebrities who are more and more numerous, for whom one must find room even if it means overbooking here and there.) (c) La presse féminine a des airs de champ de bataille. Rien de guerrier et de sanglant. Les combats se livrent ici à coups de fringues et de people. On est trendy ou on ne l’est pas. Ainsi de ces «battles» que propose l’application iPhone du dernier-​né du Groupe Marie Claire. Envy (à prononcer à l’anglaise pour ne pas faire tarte) arrive en kiosque ce matin. —(Libération, February 11, 2010). (Women’s magazines look like battlefields. Nothing warlike or bloody. Here the battles are dedicated to blows over clothes and celebrities. You’re trendy or you’re not. And so are these “battles” that the iPhone application for the latest from the Marie Claire Group offer. Envy (pronounced English style so as not to be ridiculous) arrives in the newsstands this morning.)

The three nouns of the excerpt in (9a)—​managing partner, conference call, and hedge fund—​illustrate the finding that the Anglicisms that occur most frequently in the corpus (as recorded in Table 4.1) are from the business field. This type of serial effect is an accepted norm in business jargon. Anglicized jargon is also found in the domains of fashion and style. In (9b) no fewer than five borrowings appear in the two opening sentences of a short article from Libération’s fashion pages in which extended Anglicization is employed to

 9



Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms

exaggerated effect. The article from which excerpt (9c) was taken is a mocking commentary on the release of a new French women’s magazine, Envy. The ridiculously intensive use of English conveys an overall sense of superficiality both semantically and stylistically (people, trendy, battles), which is the journalist’s tool for conveying to the reader her negative evaluation of the publication. The English-speaking fashion world has a staple French-based terminology, for instance, bouclé, ombré, barrette, rouge, crochet, haute couture, décolleté/décolletage, etc. These established loans contrast with the short-lived nature of the loans that English currently supplies to the fashion industry (global brands, products, slogans, etc.). Many fashion Anglicisms are shared across European languages, such as fashion week, fashionista, it girl, front row, backstage, etc. Fashion, like technology, is a field that relies on trends/innovations and thus reinvents itself regularly. English becomes a rhetorical tool for creating a characteristic style, and its use is often tinged with humor, though many words and plays on words of English origin are difficult or impossible to decipher for monolingual readers of French, e.g. it pièce (< it girl), beauty trucks, fish & green, green-beauty, jean flare, jean boyfriend, nail bar, contre fashion (< contrefaçon (counterfeit)), etc. These ‘feminine Anglicisms’ carry with them positive extralinguistic values associated with American and British pop culture (see loaded Anglicisms in section 3.3.4). Long-term integration into the general French language is unlikely to be the fate of most of them, but they answer spur-of-the-moment lexical needs.

4.8 Brief report of selected functions A year of data cannot produce an exhaustive survey of the loan materials collected. In the present section, additional data and functions have been sketched to open up other research questions. Beyond fulfilling lexical functions, English may also perform pragmatic functions in the French language, a sure sign of deeper integration that may also distinguish this period of linguistic contact from previous periods. 4.8.1 DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS OF PHRASES: IS BACK

A common use of English phrases is to open or close an article or a paragraph, as already noted in section 3.5 in the discussion of famous phrases from the arts and discourse/pragmatic markers. These foreign phrases simultaneously grab attention and frame discourse, which is a strategy reported for other European languages; Fiedler (2012: 246) notes that English proverbs and catch phrases in German may serve to “provide a core reference to textual expansion” when used in an initial position, for example. A demonstration of this discursive use

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of English in French is the location of the borrowed phrase is back within a newspaper article, exemplified in the epigraph of this chapter: “Qu’on se le dise: Sarko is back et, cette fois, il ne prend pas de prisonniers.”17 The phrase occurs seven times in the Libération corpus and regularly in strategic locations: four times in the first paragraph of an article, including three occurrences in the opening sentence of the article, and once in the last paragraph; it also appears in a one-sentence TV review as a slogan; and finally, in a sports-related article entitled “Le Mondial en 10 shoots” where liberal use of Anglicisms is the norm (see serial effect, in section 4.6).18 The resort to English to frame discourse is also embodied in its habitual presence in article titles. 4.8.2 CODE-​SWITCHING

A marginal set of English influences in the corpus may be considered code-​ switches. (See introduction of both sections 1.4 and 3.5 for a discussion of code-switched vs. borrowed phrases in a national newspaper context.) Unlike the other occurrences of English phrases and sentences, these were creatively produced, not reproduced, and thus do not correspond to the recurrent types of loan phrases identified in section 3.5. A short discussion of two switches helps identify motivations and sources of triggering for written code-​switching in a weak language contact setting. 10.   (a)  France 2, 20 h 35 Avec Au cœur de la gendarmerie (coproduit par les képis), Drucker poursuit sa célébration des forces armées. We prefer not to. —​(Libération, May 4, 2010) France 2, 8:35 p.m. With “Au cœur de la gendarmerie” (coproduced by the kepis), Drucker continues his celebration of the armed forces. We prefer not to.)           (b)  E  t pourtant, on n’a rien oublié sinon deux télé-​réalités matrimoniales (Qui veut épouser mon fils ? et Trois Princes à Paris) et quelques nouveaux héros de fiction appelés à devenir récurrents (Thierry Lhermitte en Doc Martin – no relation to the shoes). —​(Libération, September 16, 2010)

17  Borrowed phraseologisms can be divided into two generic types: the former is a direct borrowing (is back) and the latter is an indirect borrowing in the guise of a calque (ne pas prendre de prisonniers < take no prisoners). Again, the tracking of English influences in Libération covers only the former type—​in other words, phrases readily recognized as foreign. 18  I have heard “Papa is back” in a spoken exchange, which was a light-​hearted means of starting the conversation, a phatic expression.

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Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms

(And yet, we didn’t forget anything except the two marriage reality TV shows (“Qui veut épouser mon fils? ” and “Trois Princes à Paris”) and some new fictional heroes whom we are going to see again (Thierry Lhermitte in Doc Martin–no relation to the shoes).) In a laconic review of a TV show in (10a), the intersentential switch to English occurs to provide the critique of the show. English serves here as a rhetorical device to soften a bad review by using a foreign language to impart a certain detachment, while simultaneously attracting the readers’ attention by the unexpected appearance of a whole sentence in English. The switch in (10b) puns on the nearly ​homophonous Doc Martin, the name of a TV character played by Lhermitte, and Doc Martens, the British shoes, though the humor sounds rather far-​fetched. This British reference is likely the trigger for switching to English. These observed functions for code-​switching in the corpus, i.e. rhetorical device to soften communication and carrier of humor, are well attested in the literature on language contact (Loveday 1996; Matras 2009). 4.8.3 ENGLISH IS SHORTER

The practice of using very low-​frequency English forms may result in the borrowing of unexpected words, such as the adverb now in (11a). Borrowed now has been noted as common in texting because it is shorter than French counterpart maintenant. The corpus 88milSMS: A corpus of authentic text messages in French (Panckhurst et al. 2014) includes more than 88,000 authentic French text messages collected in 2011 in Montpellier, France. The corpus yields twenty-five occurrences of now (11b). 11.   (a) L’économie sociale c’est now … En deux docus, Les Défricheurs et Changer le monde sur les entrepreneurs solidaires. —​(Libération, November 10, 2010) (Social economy is now … In two documentaries about entrepreneurs united in solidarity, “Les Défricheurs” and “Changer le monde.”)           (b) Oui mais tkt jen ai pas besoin now!! Jpars vendredi :)) i miss u!! Jai envie qu on se voit pr ktu me raconte tt :)))) —​(88milSMS corpus) (Yes but DW I don’t need it now!! I leave Friday :)) i miss u!! I want to meet so u can tell me everything:)))) (Accidental) transfer from SMS language may well account for the single occurrence of now in the corpus. In an essay dedicated to Anglicisms used

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daily in Québec French, Forest (2006: 69–​73) observes that short English words are particularly good candidates for integration into the French language (for instance, lift, fun, binne (bean)), a possibility that requires quantitative validation. English elliptical forms presented in this study may also buttress this argument for borrowing (for instance, la série sixties vs. la série des années soixante, THE poulet vs. le meilleur poulet). On the topic of economy, Vinay and Darbelnet (1995: 193) report that “in general, it appears that English is shorter than French. This, at least, emerges when English texts are contrasted with their English translations.” The linguists note that this feature tends to apply to all translations, but they provide examples at both the lexical and syntactic levels (pp. 193–8) that English (vs. French) achieves a remarkable economy.

4.9 Life cycle of Anglicisms Many of the numerous words borrowed into French during this period of intense contact with global English die out as rapidly as they arose. These dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms from a parallel unofficial lexicon have a characteristically short life cycle in the French lexicon, with only a small minority of them gaining currency and possibly inclusion in the dictionary (see Table 4.1). Case studies of six lexical items—​hedge fund, X bashing, nerd(e), girlfriend, artwork (in the sense of illustrations), and sleeping ​partner (British term for silent partner in American English)—​examine usage at four five-​year intervals, so 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015, as recorded in Table 4.4. The items were chosen to illustrate lifespan differences that might help identify what determines their short- or long-​term use. The most frequently occurring term in the corpus, hedge fund, provides an exemplary case. Its frequency counts over fifteen years show its introduction, climax, and decline. Starting in 2000, the Libération archives retrieve one marginal occurrence of hedge fund in the form of a parenthesized use following the French gloss for the English term: “ce fond hyperspéculatif (hedge fund) américain.” In 2010, hedge fund peaks at nearly one hundred occurrences. A drastic

TABLE 4.4

Life cycle and frequency of six borrowed items in Libération over a fifteen-​year period. Year

hedge fund

X bashing

nerd(e)

girlfriend

artwork

sleeping partner

2000

1

0

14

1

0

0

2005

9

6

22

9

0

0

2010

98

4

22

4

4

3

2015

8

38

16

2

5

0

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Dictionary-unsanctioned Anglicisms

drop takes place in 2015, when the English term appears only eight times. The lifespan of borrowed hedge fund correlates with the global economy: the form gained ephemeral currency in a peak linked to particular circumstances—the global financial crisis of 2007–8. Borrowing is a diachronic process, and any Anglicism, even the one most frequently used at a given time, may turn out to be an ephemeral Anglicism, if in the end it rapidly stops being used. The opposite is also true. The Libération corpus may attest to the emergence of an Anglicism whose life then continues in the French lexicon. The loan bashing provides a case of gradual entrenchment. There is no occurrence of bashing in 2000; the form then occurs six times in 2005 and four times in 2010 (1 bashing, 2 French bashing, and 1 Sarko-​bashing) before reaching a spectacular peak with thirty-eight tokens in 2015. An explanation for the emergence of the loan at all is a revival of French bashing in the American press in the context of the 2003 Iraq conflict. The term French bashing serves as a model for other X bashing compounds in French, notably Hollande bashing, the result of President Hollande’s post-​election unpopularity (see section 3.4.5 for a presentation of such serial bilingual compounds). Other examples of the series include rosbif bashing, eurocrats bashing, and Kremlin bashing. This X bashing model tends to produce formations that refer to the political sphere, and has continued to exist post-​2003 in discussions of the DSK affair, the debate over the thirty-five-​hour work week, etc. The form occurred thirty-eight times in Libération in 2015 (6 bashing, 18 French bashing, and 14 X bashing). This serial compound echoes Xgate < Watergate, whose productivity has not ended (Woerthgate in the corpus, for instance). The item nerd, both a noun and an adjective in French, presents a case of dictionarization. It entered the 2012 edition of the Petit Robert after being first attested in 1995. Frequency counts over a period of fifteen years confirm the form as a well-​established loan, which supplements the copious dictionary series of e-​Anglicisms (netiquette, smartphone, SMS, etc.). Of course, nerd may always drop out of a future edition of the dictionary, as was the case with botoxé (Botoxed) and know-​how, if it becomes archaic, old-​fashioned, obsolescent, etc. It is impossible to gauge the significance of the single occurrence of feminine nerde in the corpus. The loans girlfriend, artwork, and sleeping partner have enjoyed a life of low currency with fewer than ten yearly occurrences for the period 2000–​ 2015, which does not point to deeper entrenchment. These loans exemplify current borrowing from English as an opportunistic behavior facilitated by the availability of English lexical material in the mass media (as discussed in section 4.2). Measuring the lifespan of dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms shows that their typically short life provides them little opportunity to replace or permeate the lexicon of French (as is often believed). Their brief presence is belied by the lexical vitality they generate in the recipient language: they are participants in

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the self-​renewing process of French, which prevents the language from becoming stagnant, out of touch with the ever-​changing world. Interestingly, these words do not need to have lived long in the French language to be ‘remade’ via all the native processes and changes presented in both this chapter and ­chapter 3.

4.10 Summary and conclusions These French Anglicisms from 2010 are a reminder that borrowing seems to have no limits. As Thomason (2001:  63)  famously puts it:  “What can be adopted by one language from another? The short answer is, anything.” This fact about borrowing is particularly true of the current situation of English as a global donor language of core vocabulary and closed-​class items, for instance, which can be ephemerally, occasionally, or lastingly borrowed. The common claim that core vocabulary and closed-​class items (which are, in any case, few in number) tend not to be borrowed is not entirely accurate. It is commonly argued that they are not borrowed because they have straightforward counterparts in the recipient language. (Related to this opposition is Myers-​Scotton’s distinction between core and cultural borrowings.) However, any borrowed word recognized as such is a bearer of donor culture, which calls into question the notion of one-​to-​one correspondence between borrowed forms and native words. Even more importantly, this chapter shows that donor forms may have traits or be grafted traits not available in the recipient language. This phenomenon is exemplified by the borrowing of the pronoun himself, the stressed definite article the, and the prepositions including/​featuring/​starring, and more generally, by dictionary-​unsanctioned items of all sorts which include core, daily words (now, boyfriend, etc.). Anglicisms ordinarily bring together (1) an innovative use of language, (2) charged connotations of foreignness, and (3) humorous effects. English so, himself, and the in French all share a common emphatic function, which their French counterparts do not perform, while simultaneously engaging in playful linguistic creativity. Therefore, the forms introduce novel semantic and stylistic innovations to the French language, although they might be only faddish or ephemeral. Dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms have a characteristically short life cycle in the French lexicon. Global English is a robust supplier of transient words: this fleeting lexicon parallels and complements the more durable lexicon. Many words borrowed from English after 1990 respond to synchronic lexical and communication needs. The meeting of these immediate lexical needs is a distinctive contribution of early twenty-first-century Anglicisms.

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5

Nominal Anglicisms in the Plural Blini is the Russian word for pancake (though sometimes called bliny), and it’s one blin, two blini, in case you were wondering about the plural form. But it is always referred to as blini, because how could you have only one? —​New York Times, December 21, 2012 French nouns borrowed from other languages usually receive the standard silent suffix -​s when used in the plural; that is, they are treated as native nouns. The loanword blinis /​blinis/​is thus marked twice for plural:  with Russian -​i and French -​s. This general rule is sensible—​it would be implausible for native speakers to integrate the morphologies of other languages into French. For this reason, the borrowed Italian and Arabic nouns cappuccino and méhari, for example, regularly follow French inflectional conventions with the adapted forms cappuccinos and méharis rather than the original plurals cappuccini and méhara.1 It can be expected, then, that nominal Anglicisms would receive the plural marker -​s, especially since French and English share the same pluralization morpheme on nouns. However, although overt inflection is the norm, it is not systematic. A subset of English borrowings rejects inflection, as illustrated by the contrastive compounds des black-​jacks vs. des black-out, and the nominalized onomatopoeia des flops vs. des bang. This chapter addresses the absence of inflection on nominal Anglicisms in French, especially compounds, which defies the morphological rules of both donor and recipient languages, by identifying the constraints that govern the exceptional subset of bare nominal Anglicisms. The chapter also provides etymological stories of these non-pluralized English loanwords along with various additional characteristics. 1 The plural form méhara is attested, but its usage, and that of most borrowed original plurals, is often perceived as a marker of pedantry (Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 694). The now-suppressed Conseil supérieur de la langue française (Journal Officiel, December 6, 1990) prescribes a regular French plural for loanwords (un jazzman, des jazzmans) and permits the use of a plural form in the donor language as a singular (un graffiti, des graffitis). In the 1993 edition of the Petit Robert, the recorded plural of mafioso is mafiosi, whereas the 2010 edition supplies both original and native forms (des mafiosi, des mafiosos). In press usage, mafiosi remains the most frequent.

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5.1 Bare plurals in French The set of uninflected nominal Anglicisms in French is intriguing for its failure to follow the usual pluralization pattern of borrowings in French, for instance, plural of Norwegian des fjords vs. English des pop-​up. The section on nominal inflection in Grevisse’s Le bon usage, the most authoritative French grammar, reports that the absence of overt plural marking is an attested though atypical feature in French morphology. The coexistence of inflected and uninflected native nouns invites the prediction that the lack of pluralization on English borrowed nouns may well parallel French morphological phenomena, a sure sign of integration into the recipient language. Resistance to overt plural marking for French nouns in general has scarcely been analyzed. Le bon usage (Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 680–​700) lists categories of nouns that do not systematically pluralize: these categories are briefly described below as evidence that the omission of inflection is permissible.

1. “Noms accidentels:” Invariable parts of speech occasionally used as nouns, such as personal pronouns (les moi (lit. the me)) and adverbs (les comment (lit. the how)), rarely receive a plural. Other “accidental” words include words of onomatopoeic origin or appearance for which plural marking is characterized by variation (des blabla or des blablas (prattles)); if these are monosyllabic, inflection tends to be blocked (des han et des ha (oohs and aahs)). 2. Abbreviated nouns: Nouns derived from a reduction process may not inflect for number, especially when they are perceived as new forms (des psy or d​ es psys2 < des psychologues). Initialisms and acronyms also remain invariable in plural contexts (les OGM (GMOs)< les organismes génétiquement modifiés). 3. Proper nouns: With some exceptions, proper nouns do not bear inflection in French (les Cicéron, les Peugeot). 4. Compounds: Pluralization of compounds is an unresolved issue in French morphology, clearly demonstrated by variation in usage—​e.g. des abat-​jour or des abat-​jours (lampshades); des sang-​mêlé or des sangs-​mêlés (mixed-race people). Inflection may be blocked in these cases because of the semantic and syntactic relationships between the constituents. 5. Loanwords: Although adoption of native pluralization is standard for loans, uninflected plurals co-occur with original foreign plurals, a pattern that the grammar prescribes as exceptional: “Ce n’est que dans la mesure où les mots étrangers ne sont pas du tout intégrés

2  In press usage, the inflected form psys has reached morphological stability no doubt related to its currency, popular usage.

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au vocabulaire français, où ils constituent des sortes de citations, que l’on peut accepter leur invariabilité, ou, à la rigueur, leur pluriel exotique” (p. 694). (It is only to the extent that foreign words are not at all integrated into French vocabulary, where they constitute a sort of quotation, that one can accept their invariability, or possibly, their exotic plural.) The grammar’s section on the plurals of English nouns overlooks the case of bare Anglicisms and presents only plurals that show variable and/or atypical forms for the French language, for example, words ending in -y: donor plural des baggies vs. recipient plural des baggys.3 Omission of inflection has been sporadically noted for a handful of English forms (Bidermann-Pasques and Humbley 1995: 59; Humbley 2002b: 116), but no research has produced any corpus-based morphological analysis or generalization for a comprehensive set of uninflected nouns. Étiemble’s (1991) commentary4 epitomizes the poorly understood sub-phenomenon of the inflectional patterns of borrowings in French. Étiemble offers a random series of eight bare English forms: welter, starting-block, hold-up, knock-down, dancing, hully-gully, pocket book, and brik. He attributes the absence of number marking in French Anglicisms with the paucity of morphology in the English language: “Le sabir atlantic favorise et encourage l’indifférence absolue à l’égard de la vieille notion de pluriel” (p. 173). (The Atlantic pidgin favors and encourages absolute indifference to the old notion of the plural.) This chapter demonstrates that resistance to pluralization on these loanwords is neither arbitrarily motivated nor due to English influence.

5.2 Methodological detail Using a reference corpus composed of nouns recognized as English in the Petit Robert 2010, the inflectional behavior of nominal and adjectival Anglicisms (the latter are addressed in c­ hapter 6) is investigated according to the pluralization status—​inflected, uninflected, or variable—​given in the dictionary.5 Although the Petit Robert is one of the least conservative dictionaries, claiming that its word list captures real usage, a dictionary inevitably always imposes a norm in the guise of a framework for the coherent and consistent organization

3  It is not just integration into French that is relevant here—​it is also the borrowing community’s knowledge of the source language. The difference between baggys and baggies in writing would be whether or not the social group who originally borrowed the word from English had access to that level of the grammar. 4  See section 3.1.5 for a brief introduction to Étiemble’s pamphlet Parlez-​vous franglais? 5  The dictionary is at times inconsistent in identifying the parts of speech of Anglicisms. The word fun, for instance, is recorded only as a noun, yet the text in the entry states that it is also used as an invariable adjective, exemplified by des vacances fun.

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of data. The dictionary is to a certain degree prescriptive, and cannot be a true reflection of how English loanwords behave morphologically in actual usage. This necessarily results in some discrepancies between contemporary usage and what is recorded in the dictionary: “L’accès aux formes les plus récentes permet notamment de mieux déterminer les contraintes actuellement à l’œuvre et de faire le départ entre les régularités figées du lexique attesté dans les dictionnaires et la morphologie vivante” (Hathout et al. 2009: 268). (Access to the most recent forms allows in particular for a better identification of the constraints presently at work and for a separation of the fixed regularities of the attested lexicon in dictionaries and the living morphology.) Because integration may be a diachronic process, it is important to observe current usage when reporting on the inflectional integration of borrowings. To address this issue, the three groups of dictionary-attested nominal Anglicisms were tested against the plural occurrences of each in journalistic language, a well-known port of entry for Anglicisms (see section 2.2.2). This comparison permitted testing of the Petit Robert’s inflectional classification against contemporary usage, and any gap resulted in readjustment of the groups. For example, the nominalized preposition after, truncated from English compound after-hours or after party (see etymological footnote 11 in section 3.3.1), is recorded as an invariable noun in the PR, but it systematically carries number in press usage (1) and was consequently moved to the group of inflected nouns. 1. Anecdote : pendant les quelques jours qu’il reste de couvre-​feu raccourci, les boîtes de nuit se sont calées dessus pour les afters : de minuit à 4 heures du matin ! —​(Libération, December 13, 2011) (Anecdote: during the few days that remain of the shortened curfew, the nightclubs observe those hours for the after-​parties: from midnight to 4 in the morning!) Though the form after has undergone a change of word class in the borrowing process, lexicographers may still treat it as a preposition, an invariable part of speech in French, and label it invariable accordingly (see the analysis in section 5.3.1.1 of [X + Prep] compounds). Although the plural is generally the marked form of adjectives and nouns, that is, the less frequent and less regular form,6 the online archives of Libération (1994–​2015) permitted the generation of a significant sample of plural forms. The occurrences that came up for each form had to be manually examined, as revealed by investigation of the adjectival Anglicism black, recorded as inflected

6  For some nouns, such as mountains, the plural form is the dominant form, whereas for others, such as bride, the singular is. See Baayen et al. (1997) on singulars and plurals in Dutch.

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in the dictionary. A search for the word black yielded results that included the rock band name Black Eyed Peas, the nominal compound black-​out, and the nominal black, among others. The search function in Libération does not recognize capitalized words and singular as distinct from plural forms. Manual control permitted identification and extraction of adjectives only—for example, nominal black (2a) vs. adjectival black (2b). It also allowed for determining the context in which the bare English forms occur and so distinguishing between singular (2a) and plural (2b) occurrences. 2.  (a) Mais le goût de ce dernier pour le cinéma potache, (remember le grand black de Fausses blondes infiltrées) n’y est certainement pas pour rien. —​(Libération, August 20, 2010) (But the latter’s taste for teen films, (remember the tall black guy in “White Chicks”) certainly has something to do with it.)

(b) Quatre fillettes black d’une rue voisine regardaient bouche bée la vidéo de Fionna Banner … —​(Libération, October 12, 2009) (Four little black girls in a neighboring street were watching Fionna Banner’s video, open-​mouthed …)

The context in which the English forms appear was initially hypothesized to be a possible factor for promoting or blocking inflection. Close examination, however, revealed that few collocation-​ derived constraints or serial effects could be identified. While the Petit Robert classifies adjectival black as morphologically integrated, it still appears uninflected in press usage, although rarely (as reported in section 6.2.1.3.1). This morphological control produced a few adjustments to the three groups of both nominal and adjectival Anglicisms, based originally on their inflectional status in the dictionary.

5.3 Factors disfavoring inflection in French This section presents the constraints on the pluralization behavior of nominal Anglicisms that reject inflection in French. A summary of the constraints identified with the set of nouns governed by them is found in Table 5.1. 5.3.1 COMPOUND ANGLICISMS WITH A NON-​NOMINAL SECOND CONSTITUENT

The morphological description of compound nouns is a notoriously complex linguistic puzzle (Bauer 2006; Scalise and Fábregas 2010). In French, the

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Summary of inflection-​inhibiting constraints on French nominal Anglicisms. Constraints

1. Compound structures a. X + Preposition

English-​origin forms

best of, black-​out, check-​up, coming-​out, crossing-​over, drive-​in, hold-​up, knock-​down, knock-​out, lock-​out, making of, pick-​up, pin-​up, pop-​up, sit-​in, stand-​by, start-​up, stop-​over, take-​off, turn-​over, walk-​over

b. X + Adverb

come-​back, feed-​back, flash-​back (var.), play-​back

c. X + Verb

after-​shave, has been, push-​pull, ready-​made

2. Proper nouns

amish, bloody mary, granny smith, tom-pouce,

3. Nouns ending in

Sample:

-​s

boss, battle-​dress

-​x

juke-​box, remix

-​z

quiz, gin-​fizz

4. Initialisms and acronyms

Sample: FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service)

5. Nouns without a plural

Sample: baby-​blues, fair-​play, far west, hip-​hop, modern-​ style, show-​business, wifi

6. Irregular plural in English

people (var.), boat people, happy few

7. Nominalized onomatopoeia

bang, bling-​bling, wah-​wah

8. Flagging devices

bed and breakfast, chris-​craft, post-​it (var.)

9. Monosyllabic/​short words

See constraints and items 1.a, 4, and 7

(var.) Variant pluralization behavior in press usage.

number agreement of compounds depends on the word class of each constituent, and, much more intricately, on the semantic and syntactic relationship between them (Brousseau and Nikiema 2001; Grevisse and Goosse 2008). In compliance with French morphological features, a general and simplified rule is that nouns and adjectives may inflect for plural in compound structures (des oiseaux-​mouches (hummingbirds); des blés noirs (buckwheat plants)), whereas other word classes, such as prepositions and adverbs, remain invariable (des arrière-​boutiques (back shops); des en-​avant (forwards)). Although nominalized verbs can take inflection (n. des mangers (foods) < v. manger (to eat)), they remain bare in compound constructions (des ouvre-​boîtes (can openers); des laissez-​passer (laissez-​passers)). A consequence of this complex system is the co-​occurrence of two plural forms for certain compounds, as recorded in the Petit Robert: des gratte-​ciels or des gratte-ciel (*grattes-​ciels) (skyscrapers), des petits-​beurres or des petits-beurre (butter cookies). When both constituents are pluralized, petit is considered an adjective qualifying the noun beurre; when beurre is left uninflected, it is considered an ellipsis—​sg. beurre < (faits) au beurre ((made) with butter). The personal email message (April 2010) that follows from a French-​English bilingual includes a metalinguistic

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Nominal Anglicisms in the Plural

comment about a strategy used to avoid pluralizing a French compound: “On va aller voir les skyscrapers (je le mets en anglais parce que je ne sais plus le pluriel de gratte ciel).” (We’re going to see the skyscrapers [loanword] (I put it in English because I don’t remember the plural of gratte ciel [native term].) This bilingual device hints at native speakers’ hesitation about which constituent(s), if any, to mark as plural. Since compounds represent a productive word-​formation type in English, a synthetic language, it is not surprising that numerous (uninflected) nominal Anglicisms are compounds. In the larger context of neology in French, Picone (1996) qualitatively demonstrated, for both dictionary-​attested and -​unattested words, the influence of English “juxtapositional neology,” especially on the production of false ​Anglicisms (taximan (taxi driver)), hybrids (Beauté Club (Beauty Club)), and calques (FR tour-​opérateur < EN tour operator). In general, however, the behavior of borrowed compounds is not well studied in the extensive literature on compounding. A primary morphological feature of compound Anglicisms in French (in contrast to native compounds) is their reinterpretation as simplex words in the borrowing process. This interpretation is evidenced by the fact that the second element is almost always the exclusive bearer of inflection in the plural: des bay-​windows vs. des portes-fenêtres. In the compounds des baby-sitters and des black-jacks, the noun baby and the adjective black are left unmarked as first constituents. Yet both baby and black are attested in French as inflected simplexes, so these forms could, in principle, accept plural marking in a compound structure (but *des babys-​sitters and *des blacks-​jacks). Their bareness confirms the analysis of English compounds as simplexes. An etymological search in the Petit Robert suggests that this morphological treatment may be exclusive to English (as opposed to non-​English) compound borrowings. Two compound nouns of the structure [N + Adj] borrowed from Spanish receive inflection on both constituents: sg. une olla-​podrida vs. pl. des ollas-​podridas and sg. un vomito negro vs. pl. des vomitos negros. As already touched upon in section 1.2, Chesley (2010) demonstrated that Anglicisms behave differently from borrowings from other languages within the indices of sense pattern and cultural context, exclusively. Differences in the inflectional treatment of borrowings from one donor language to another may be another indicator that borrowing is not a homogenous phenomenon in French. This question lies beyond the scope of this study, but the inflectional behavior of Anglicisms chronicled here may be useful for comparative work with non-​English borrowings. Only compound Anglicisms whose second constituent is a noun receive inflection, that is, the word class of the second constituent determines whether inflection is allowed or disallowed: [pl. X + Ns] des fast-​foods, des teddy-​bears vs. [pl. X + PrepØ] des start-​up, des stop-​over. Table 5.2 classifies the twenty-​nine uninflected English compounds according to the word class of their second element. None of the compound structures [X + Prep], [X + Adv], and [X + V] is attested

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Structure of uninflected compound Anglicisms in French. [X + Preposition]

[X + Adverb]

[X + Verb]

best of black-​out check-​up coming out crossing-​over drive-​in hold-​up knock-​down knock-​out lock-​out making of pick-​up pin-​up pop-​up sit-​in stand-​by start-​up stop-​over take-​off turn-​over walk-​over

come-​back feed-​back flash-​back play-​back

after-​shave has been push-​pull ready-​made

in French because of word order differences between French and English, a fundamental difference being the position of the head in compounding: English to the right, French to the left. Scalise and Fábregas (2010: 117) report that 87% of compounds are right-​headed in Germanic languages, whereas 40% are in Romance languages, which accounts for the right (second) element being the inflection bearer on nominal Anglicisms. The analysis that follows examines uninflected compound Anglicisms in closer detail, especially those exceptional forms whose pluralization patterns vary in press usage.7 5.3.1.1  [X + Preposition]

Inflection is consistently blocked on the twenty-​one compound Anglicisms that end with a preposition (des check-​up, des drive-in) except for the form pull-​over (des pull-overs), whose regularization can be explained. The noun pull-over is one of the least technical nouns of the [X + Prep] series; at the level of register, pull-​over is not marked in the lexicon, which plausibly contributes to a higher

A required orthographic note follows: when compounds are written without a hyphen or a space, they consistently take plural inflection regardless of the part of speech of their components. The noun turn-over, for instance, is uninflected when hyphenated and inflected when written as a simplex word, and the Petit Robert provides both variants (des turn-over and des turnovers). This investigation focuses on bare compounds composed of two words separated by a hyphen or a space. The Conseil supérieur de la langue française (Journal officiel, December 6, 1990) recommended that foreign compounds be written as single nouns and therefore regularly pluralized, but most usage patterns fail to comply. 7

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Nominal Anglicisms in the Plural

degree of integration. The clipped form pull, attested in French as early as 1930, which consistently pluralizes, as des pulls, may constitute an analogical facilitating factor. Dictionary-unsanctioned loan compounds occur uninflected in the plural as well. In her travelogue L’Amérique au jour le jour 1947 (1997), Simone de Beauvoir’s pervasive use of English is worthy of morphological observation: the writer inflects compounds ending with a noun, such as curios-shops, drugstores, and dollar-shops (3a), but not those ending with a verb or a preposition, as exemplified with hang-over in (3b). 3. (a) Les curios-​shops brisent la monotonie des drug-​stores et des dollar-​shops. —​(p. 287) (The curio shops break the monotony of the drugstores and the dollar shops.)     (b) Elle est légendaire au studio parce que souvent le matin elle a de terribles hang-​over. —​(p. 171) (She is a legend in the studio because she often has terrible hangovers in the morning.) These data from the written production of a bilingual further verify that compound words of the structure [X + Prep] conform to French morphology. Prepositions at the end of borrowed compounds, which are inflection-​receivers in English (some knock-​outs, some pop-​ups), are treated as native prepositions and so reject plural marking. 5.3.1.2  [X + Adverb]

Four uninflected loan compounds end with the adverb back: come-back, feedback, flash-back, and play-back. In press usage, nonetheless, the compound flash-back accepts inflection, with three plural forms in competition: the plural can be left unexpressed (des flash-back) or can be expressed with a variable recipient of inflection (des flash-backs, des flashes-back). This compound is treated as a simplex noun when inflection is carried by the adverb (des flashbacks). Exceptionally, inflection is realized on the noun (des flashes-back): the noun flash occurs in French with its donor plural flashes, although the Frenchadapted flashs is more common. The plural form flashes-back conforms to native morphology with an invariable adverb (des places arrière (back seats)). On a sample of sixty-six contextually plural tokens in Libération, the inflection rate for flash-back is 65%. Three integration-facilitators are involved in the unexpected inflection on flash-back: longevity, frequency, and native derivation. The form, first attested in 1923, is the oldest item of the series X-back; it has by far the

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highest occurrence in the daily press; and it has produced a series of derivatives, listed in section 3.4.2 (e.g. flash-ball, flashcode). 5.3.1.3  [X + Verb]

When the second element of a compound Anglicism is a verb, this element tends to remain uninflected in the plural: des after-​shave,8 des push-​pull, des ready-​ made, and des has been. However, two items receive a plural, des milk-​shakes and des strip-teases. Other borrowings etymologically related to milk-shake and strip-​tease regularly inflect for plural. The form strip-​tease (1949) produced the [V + N] compound strip-​teaseuse (1950). The form milk-​shake was borrowed immediately after the Second World War with the associated compound [N + N] milk-​bar, and the noun shaker has circulated in French since 1895. Analogy with the pluralization of etymologically affiliated forms seems to be a promoter of integration for milk-​shake and strip-​tease, as in the above case of pulls/​pull-​overs. The examination of these uninflected compound Anglicisms permits more general observations about the morphology of borrowing in French. The behavior of these foreign compounds reveals that they follow rules simpler than the ones that apply to native compounds. A pattern of simplification emerging from the borrowing process is a well-​attested language contact phenomenon. Trudgill (2010: 306–​9) argues that contact produces simplification in three related ways: regularization of irregularities, increase in lexical and morphological transparency, and loss of redundancy. The integration of English compounds in French collapses native rules for the pluralization of compounds to one single rule: inflection takes place on the second constituent only if this is a noun. Interestingly, grammarian Vaugelas had proposed simplifying the pluralization of compounds in his 1647 Remarques sur la langue françoise (2000: 471), with the plural arc-​en-​ciels (rainbows) rather than arc-​en-​cieux, arcs-​en-​ciels, or arcs-​en-​cieux. In essence, this seventeenth-​century remarque suggested treating compounds as simplexes, inflecting only the second constituent. The validation of this morphological analysis for borrowed compounds implies recognition of English word classes. (L1 speakers seem to recognize L2 prepositions, adverbs, and verbs.) Because French speakers are not characteristically bilingual, as discussed in section 3.1.6, the question regarding their identification of parts of speech is addressed. How can French speakers decide that in is an English preposition and so not inflect drive-in and sitin to agree with French morphology? English has been taught to the overwhelming majority of the French population today: fully proficiency is not required to know that in is a preposition. In nearly all languages, function/

 This borrowing has been widely adopted by nearly all the European languages with a peculiarity: “No calques have been formed, except when prompted by restrictive policies, as in French [après-​ rasage]” (Görlach 2001: 3). 8

 15



Nominal Anglicisms in the Plural

grammatical words such as prepositions “tend to be quite short (rarely longer than a syllable), and their text frequency is high” (Haspelmath 2001: 16539). It can be proposed that French speakers, even monolingual speakers, have the ability to identify English word classes and, more generically, function as distinct from content words, on account of their form. The shorter the second word in the compound, the more likely it will be uninflected. A plausible constraint that correlates resistance to inflection and monosyllabic, short words may be posited with three loan cases in this study: [X + Prep (short word)] compounds (des start-up (some start-ups)), initialisms/acronyms (des MOOC (some MOOCs)), and onomatopoeias (des bang (some bangs)). (The last two categories are treated below.) Inflectional variation is also recorded for native abbreviated forms, as mentioned in section 5.1, which reveals that monosyllabic and onomatopoeic words tend not to inflect. The only adverb in loan compound structures is the monosyllabic back, and it ‘resembles’ a preposition. Identification of the verbal form in the bare [X + V] compounds is not as obvious (des ready-made, des has been). The Anglicism ready-​made (existing object(s) reinterpreted as a work of art) first used by Marcel Duchamp (1913) was coined when the adjectival made in (1906), borrowed into sixteen European languages (Görlach 2001), had already entered the recipient lexicon. The compound has been9 is composed of morphemes of the most common verbs in the English language, so has and been may very well be recognized as verbal elements, hence their non-pluralization like other verbs in French compounds. 5.3.2 PROPER NOUNS

There is a subset of uninflected nominal Anglicisms that derive from proper nouns—des amish, des bloody mary, des granny smith, and the loanblend des tom-pouce (< EN Tom Thumb).10 The proper noun element seems to disallow inflection in compliance with French inflectional conventions, since this noun type usually does not receive a plural marking (e.g. les Capulet et les Montaigu (the Capulets and the Montagues)). The case of amish is worth of further detail. The consonant cluster -​c/​sh, found in the ending of borrowed adjectives, rejects plural suffixation in French (see section 6.2.1.2). This constraint, however, does not apply to borrowed nouns: French pluralizes sandwich (sandwichs, sandwiches) and crash (crashs,

In their dictionary, Rey-Debove and Gagnon (1986) challenge the longevity of has been as a French Anglicism because of its unassimilated spelling, yet it is still current in press usage (e.g. twentyone nominal and adjectival occurrences in Libération for the year 2013). The compound served as the model for the form never been in the Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine song “Confessions d’un never been” (2005). 10 Tom-(P)(p)ouce has taken on a more generic dictionary-sanctioned meaning in French as referring to a very short man. It is still perceived as a proper name, as used by Le Monde (November 12, 2011) to mock the then president Nicolas Sarkozy: “Comme beaucoup, je voudrais bien que Tom Pouce et les siens dégagent en 2012.” (As many, I would like Tom Thumb and his clan to get out in 2012.) 9

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crashes), for instance. Nominal amish seems to be treated as a proper noun, because it refers to a religious group (variation reported in Grevisse’s grammar: les jésuites, les Jésuites), as further indicated by its attested capitalized uses in the Libération database (les amish, les Amish). 5.3.3 NOUNS ENDING IN -​S, -​X, OR -​Z

No -s is added to native nouns ending in -s, -x, or -z (des bus, des ex, des raz). Accordingly, English nouns ending with these consonants do not add an overt plural suffix when borrowed into French (FR des boss vs. EN some bosses, FR des juke-box vs. EN some juke-boxes, FR des quiz vs. EN some quizzes). The borrowing of bound morphemes rarely takes place, though there is attestation of borrowed English plural suffixes, which co-occur with native ones: English-like des sandwiches, des baggies, des barmen vs. French-like des sandwichs, des baggys, des barmans. Other (exceptional) cases of loan bound morphemes include -ing, e- (electronic), and -ed—see detail and examples of each in section 3.4.4. 5.3.4 INITIALISMS AND ACRONYMS

In compliance with a general rule of French, initialisms (pronunciation of the initial letters of the constituent words) and acronyms (pronounced as single words) borrowed from English never inflect for plural, in contrast to donor English morphology—​FR des VIP vs. EN some VIPs (Very Important Persons). A sample of these minimal words of English origin includes FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), and Wasp/​WASP/​wasp (White Anglo-​Saxon Protestant). The absence of inflection on these words echoes that of the monosyllabic onomatopoeic words and borrowed [X + Prep] (short word) compounds discussed in section 5.3.1, which buttresses the correlation between short words and absence of morphology. Not only has English supplied French with a large set of borrowed initialisms and acronyms, but it is also a factor in the increased use of this word-formation device (Mortureux 2001). It has extended to the names of celebrities, especially political figures, patterned on English initialisms such as FDR and JFK: illustrious DSK (Dominique Strauss-​Kahn) and NKM (Nathalie Kosciusko-​Morizet). The phonology of these minimal words has been extensively studied (e.g. Plénat 1998). A loan example is the substantive cibiste (CB user), which derives from the transferred spelled English pronunciation of initialism C.B. (Citizens’ Band), to which the French suffix -​iste was attached (cibiste < EN C.B. /​sibi/​+ FR -​iste). The English initialism LED (light-​emitting diode) /​ˌɛl ˌi ˈdi/​has been borrowed as an acronym in French, pronounced /​lɛd/​.

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5.3.5 NOUNS WITHOUT A PLURAL

Certain nominal Anglicisms are by definition devoid of a plural because they refer to unique referents (le far west) or are non-​count nouns (le fair-​play). A sample of these nouns includes baby-​blues, fox-​trot, free-​jazz, horse-​power, modern-​style, new-​look, no man’s land, ping-​pong, show-​business, and wifi. They may also carry a metaphorical dimension, as in the following example illustrating a plural use of far west while invoking places that would resemble, or share primary features with, the American Far West. 4. On aurait joué ensemble, dans tous les squares du monde, tous les far wests, et sur les océans. —​(Libération, July 17, 1998) (We would have played together, in all of the parks of the world, all of the far wests, and on the oceans.) This figurative sense, defined in the Petit Robert as a “territoire vierge, inorganisé; milieu sans lois ni règles morales” (virgin, unorganized territory; region without laws or moral rules), is an additional lexicalized sense in French, unknown in English. Semasiological changes are well-​observed lexical traits of borrowing in general, as detailed in section 3.3.2. 5.3.6 IRREGULAR PLURAL IN ENGLISH

A handful of borrowed nouns maintain their original plural form. The Italian loanwords paparazzi and fontanili, for instance, circulate with two plurals in French—​the forms des paparazzi and des fontanili with their Italian plural morpheme -​i, and the regularized and prescribed forms, des paparazzis and des fontanilis. The former illustrate the borrowing of lexical items along with bound morphemes; the latter illustrate a morphological reinterpretation. Thus, donor paparazzi can function in the singular in the recipient language un paparazzi (vs. Italian singular paparazzo). Four English borrowings happy few, people, beautiful people, and boat people also fit into this category of irregular plural in English. The inflectional behavior of the well-established loan people is also related to the retention of the donor plural, while recipient traits have been grafted onto it which are not available in the donor language. In French, the term people has been reinterpreted semantically and, as a result, reinterpreted morphologically. Borrowed people means ‘celebrities,’11 and the rise of people derives

People may be a truncated form of English compounds people journalism (according to the Petit Robert), beautiful people, or famous people. If this is the case, reinterpretation still occurs, as beautiful people is a subset of celebrities, and celebrities is one subset of famous people. The compounds beautiful people and famous people were borrowed into French, but their use has not spread—e.g. the Libération corpus (2010) includes one occurrence of famous people and five of beautiful people. 11

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from the inflated status of celebrities promoted daily by the mass media.12 The French counterparts personne célèbre and célébrité are more generic; les célébrités du monde scientifique (big names in the scientific world) are not des people, as their fame is related only to their field. In contrast, borrowed people refers to those whose lives nurture gossip: in this sense, it supplies a novel semantic specialization to French. French-​adapted people has developed its own morphology as a noun and an adjective (see further section 6.2.1.3.2 on adjectival people). The datasets below reveal its native use as both a plural (5a–​c) and a singular form (6a–​c). Plural usage 5.  (a)  L  e site Internet américain The Daily Beast a répertorié les couvertures de magazines avec des people photographiées juste avant leur accouchement. —​(Libération, April 7, 2011) (The American Internet site The Daily Beast listed the magazine covers featuring celebrities photographed just before they gave birth.)     (b)  Les restos préférés des peoples à Paris. —​(Le Figaro, August 16, 2010) (Celebrities’ favorite restaurants in Paris.)     (c) Pour le reste, l’émission Paris Croisière et ses pipeules en bateau-​ mouche est jetée à la baille. —​(Libération, September 16, 2008) (As for the rest, the program “Paris Cruise” and its celebrities on tour boats was thrown overboard.) Singular interpretation 6. (a) Charles Garnier, un people d’empire —​(Libération, October 28, 2010) (Charles Garnier, a celebrity of the empire) 12 Lexicographer Alain Rey criticizes the French sense of people: “Trop d’anglicismes taraudent la fabrication de la pensée. Regardez le mot «people». Normalement ça veut dire le peuple, les gens. Mais on a fait d’une catégorie médiatique une catégorie sociale” (Libération, September 26, 2006). (Too many Anglicisms are barriers to the formation of thought. Look at the word “people.” Usually it means the people, persons. But a media-based category has been made into a social category.)

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Nominal Anglicisms in the Plural

    (b) Et pour le people, enfin des nouvelles fraîches d’Enrico Macias, qui n’avait pas sorti d’album depuis 2003 (comme le temps passe, dites !). —​(Libération, March 17, 2011) (And for celebrities, updated news at last of Enrico Macias, who had not released an album since 2003 (how time flies, eh?).)     (c)  C’est, semble-​t-​il, réussi : il y a du monde, du people et du bruit. —​(Libération, October 29, 2010) (It has, it seems, succeeded: there are people, celebrities, and noise.) The nominal people can take plural marking, though absence of inflection is the norm, as reported in the Petit Robert. As for press usage, Libération and Le Monde use people uninflected (5a), while Le Figaro uses it both uninflected and inflected, that is, adapted to native morphology (5b). It can be hypothesized that the loanword people will eventually regularize because of a series of correlated factors, each characteristic of the borrowing process: frequency of use, the existence of inflected orthographically adapted forms, and derivational productivity. Frequency is an obvious facilitator of morphological integration and leveling. The form people is a recent borrowing, first attested circa 1988, but its usage has continuously spread in the language of the press: for example, about two hundred nominal and adjectival hits in Libération in 2010 compared with about one hundred in 2000. Another relevant trigger of morphological integration is orthographic Gallicization. The phonetically spelled variants pipeule and pipole à la Queneau (see section 3.4.7) consistently appear inflected for number in online press usage. These variants have produced an array of playfully derived forms, such as pipolisation and pipeulerie, attested and glossed in the database. Finally, the use of French people in the singular brings out a lexical innovation. In fact, it refers to both a single individual (6a) and a social group, with two subtle uses (6b–c), one with a definite article (le people) and the other with a partitive article (du people). Comparably to people, the Anglicisms happy few, beautiful people, and boat people, all plural in English, can be singularized in French. The compound happy few is typically used in the plural in French (les happy few), as a lexicalized, frozen expression, but a collective sense (le happy few) is also recorded in Rey-Debove and Gagnon’s (1986) Dictionnaire des anglicismes. The dictionary-unsanctioned form beautiful people also occurs uninflected in the plural, with occasional singular uses (7a). In contrast, an ingenious form patterned on beautiful people occurs pluralized in the Libération corpus, beautiful *loosers (losers). Another borrowed compound, boat people, can also be employed as defining one referent alone (7b). Because the form appears

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much less frequently than the simplex people and has not yielded any derived or orthographically adapted forms, it has remained invariable in the plural, in compliance with English. 7.  (a)  Q  uand on est un «beautiful people», on se doit d’avoir une plastique irréprochable en permanence. —​(Libération, January 8, 2010) (When one is one of the “beautiful people,” one is duty-​bound to maintain an impeccable physique.)           (b)  C  omment éviter d’être un boat people sur le fleuve maudit du temps ? —​(Libération, September 16, 2010) (How to avoid being one of those boat people on the cursed river of time?) In summary, three levels of morphological integration can be posited for the nominal French Anglicism people. The form is initially borrowed as a collective noun. Then, because of semantic shift and restriction, it is reinterpreted as a count noun. In the borrowing process, innovative semantic and morphological features are grafted onto the loanword so that the plural form occasionally appeared inflected, an additional sign that full integration may eventually take place. 5.3.7 NOMINALIZED ONOMATOPOEIA

The nominal loanwords bang, bling-​bling, and wah-​wah share an onomatopoeic origin, which could plausibly account for their uninflected status in French. The Grevisse grammar observes that no rule regulates the pluralization of onomatopoeia, resulting in variant morphological patterns: Les composés formés d’éléments onomatopéiques ou expressifs, notamment par redoublement, ne suivent pas de règle dans les dict. ou dans l’usage ni pour le singulier (trait d’union et agglutination) ni pour le pluriel (ensemble invariable, s au second élément ou aux deux). —​(Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 532, c) (Compounds composed of onomatopoeic or expressive elements, in particular by reduplication, do not follow the rules in the dictionaries or in usage, either for the singular (hyphen and agglutination) or for the plural (invariable compound, s attached to the second element, or both).) The inflectional contrast present in the English-origin pair des flops vs. des bang evidences the reported absence of standard pluralization for onomatopoeia.

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Nominal Anglicisms in the Plural

Yet nuance can distinguish the two forms: the onomatopoeic degree or perception between the two words differs, thus reflecting their different degree of morphological integration. The referent of bang really denotes a sound, whereas the referent of flop does not, or less so, as the sound of flopping is used metonymically to convey failure. The nature of bling-bling and wah-wah, both reduplicated forms, likely accounts for the inhibition of inflection: the grammatical category of the constituents is difficult to determine. Saussure (1959) even argues that “onomatopoeic formulations are never organic elements of a linguistic system.” It is then very plausible that French speakers cannot identify the constituents’ word class and consequently the recipients of inflection, and, via a simplification process, do not mark them for plural, as attested by a titled section on a leftist website: “Sarko[zy] chez les Bling Bling.” To a broader extent, these reduplicative compounds almost resemble frozen expressions, quotes of a sound. 5.3.8 FLAGGING DEVICES

Despite their inclusion in the dictionary, three nouns of English origin, bed and breakfast, chris-​craft, and post-​it, appear in the language of the press frequently flagged by orthographic cues, which would justify their uninflected status in the plural, simply for not being perceived as accepted members of the French lexicon. The nominal bed and breakfast, first attested in 1966, is a borrowing originally pertaining to a (donor-restricted) British practice but now referring to (donor-unrestricted) recipient contexts as well. It occurs capitalized, in italics, with quotation marks, or followed by a French gloss (for instance, tourisme chez l’habitant). These common flagging devices (or levels of codification of the borrowing process, Rey-Debove 1973) indicate that bed and breakfast has a salient status as a foreign word, regardless of its fifty-year presence in the French language and its recording in the Petit Robert (but not the Petit Larousse). As evidence of marked presence in the lexicon, the item does not receive inflection in the plural (*des bed and breakfasts). The nominal loan chris-craft and post-it both derive from trademarks and may still elicit notions of the proper names, hence their combined occurrences capitalized and uninflected. The form chris-craft entered the French lexicon circa 1952, but its parsimonious usage explains its flagged (mainly capitalized) occurrence in the press. The noun post-it (1985), in contrast, has gained the status of an established loanword, which accounts for its inflected plural occurrences; it also appears in the press capitalized and, occasionally, italicized or in quotation marks. Borrowing can be a gradual process, and post-it may eventually inflect consistently when it is no longer felt to be a trademark, just like other integrated trademarks, for example, des scotchs (rolls of Scotch tape), des tupperwares (Tupperware containers).

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5.4 Some conclusions: so French This chapter interprets patterns of inflectional variation and identifies inflection-inhibiting factors, summarized in Table 5.1, that reveal that the small set of uninflected nominal Anglicisms constitute a regular subsystem of the lexicon and morphology of French. This native behavior is a counter-argument to the concerns of language pundits and to the legislation that vigorously shuns Anglicisms in the name of linguistic protectionism, as detailed in the opening pages of this book. These findings provide linguistic evidence that English nouns borrowed into French overwhelmingly follow French morphological conventions.13 Although this study stems from a desire to understand the (non-) pluralization of nominal Anglicisms, the analysis simultaneously provides further etymological stories and insights into mechanisms of borrowing and processes of integration, complementing the findings of c­ hapters 3 and 4, such as language contact and simplification, semantic reanalysis of donor forms, and creative use of lexicogenic processes on donor materials. The following piece of the puzzle is an investigation of the inflectional behavior of adjectival Anglicisms.

13  When Étiemble (1991) laments the lack of inflection on English borrowings in French, he is, in fact, deploring a systematic and predictable morphological system, as described in this corpus-​based study. The uninflected hold-​up and knock-​down that he deplores, for example, do not inflect for number because the second constituent of each, the sole inflection-​bearer of English borrowings, is a preposition, an invariable part of speech in French.

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Adjectival Anglicisms in the Plural Tout le monde sait aujourd’hui que certaines des plus grandes fortunes au monde sont des nerds. Facebook fait autant partie de nos vies que le cinéma, et cela a donné aux nerds, en tant que groupe, un fantastique coup de projecteur. Les enfants qui se sentent nerd sont aujourd’hui comme les adolescents qui veulent devenir des rock stars. (Everyone today knows that some of the world’s biggest fortunes are made by nerds. Facebook is as much part of our lives as the cinema, and that has given nerds, insamuch as they are a group, a fantastic spotlight. Children who feel nerdish are today’s version of adolescents who want to be rock stars.) —​Le Monde, October 13, 2010 While absence of inflection characterizes only an exceptional subset of nominal Anglicisms, it is the usual pattern for adjectival Anglicisms. Although it is the norm for French adjectives to inflect for plural (des musiciens profession­ nels), English-looking borrowed adjectives almost never receive plural marking when they are integrated into French (des polars trash (trashy detective novels), des tournois open (open tournaments)). A small set, nevertheless, accepts both inflected and uninflected forms (des musiciens punk or des musiciens punks). In this chapter, these apparent violations of native morphology are interpreted and constraints that may inhibit and, occasionally, facilitate inflection identified. A second salient, and puzzling, morphological feature is that when a form is borrowed as both a noun and an adjective, the behavior of the two differs, as illustrated with the pairs des baggys (n.) vs. des jeans baggy (adj.) and des nerds (n.) vs. des enfants nerd (adj.) (nerdish children). Why are the constraints that block inflection on adjectives not also imposed on nouns?

6.1 A morphological hypothesis for adjectival Anglicisms It is well known that the integration of borrowings can be a gradient phenomenon (Rey-Debove 1986: VII–VIII; Winford 2010: 173–5). The age of the

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borrowing and its degree of integration do not systematically correlate, however. For instance, while the date of attestation of the adjective smart in the French lexicon is 1898, the form has never adopted native inflection, as shown by this example from Madame Figaro (April 28, 2009): “12 petits habits très smart” (12 little, simply smart outfits). In contrast, the recently borrowed slim (2005) variably receives the suffix -s in the plural in press usage (des jean slim or des jeans slims (slim-fit jeans)). There exist entrenched adjectival Anglicisms which have retained their original English spelling and yet conform to French morphological conventions. This is the case of yankee, a borrowed form which entered the French language in 1776, and almost always appears with inflection (des accents yankees). The present research focuses on the justification for nonnative inflectional behavior beyond the factor of length of time in the recipient lexicon. The failure of adjectival Anglicisms to adapt to the morphology of French contributes partially to the national perception that these foreign words debase the language. Judge (1993: 16) grasps the misunderstanding attached to borrowing: “English has certainly been seen of recent years as representing a danger for the French language; the worry is mainly the wholesale adoption of words and expressions, without any effort to adapt them to the morphology of the language. This, it is feared, could lead to French becoming an ‘incoherent’ language, one in which internal harmony is no longer respected.” This chapter demonstrates that impressions of how Anglicisms behave are very different from the actual processes of integration. One piece of the investigation is the existence of rules that govern borrowed (as opposed to native) words. Rey-Debove (1973: 111) claims that native speakers apply rules to borrowed forms that are conditioned by their borrowed vs. native status: “Il existe des lois de l’emprunt (et de néologie) qui sont inscrites dans la compétence linguistique d’un décodeur monolingue.” (There are rules particular to borrowed words (and neologisms) that are part of the linguistic competence of any monolingual decoder.) The goal of this chapter is to understand the inflectional behavior of borrowed English adjectives based on the testing of the following hypothesis: the pluralization behavior of adjectival Anglicisms is governed by morphological rules internal to the French language that differ from those applying to native words. The existence of uninflected adjectival Anglicisms can be legitimized by the phonological behavior of certain borrowings, and by the non-inflection of certain native adjectives. First, the phonology of Anglicisms is not always adapted to that of native French words: it is recognized that English words in French may have their own rules (Picard 1983). In Québec French, phonological rules that are assumed to apply categorically may fail to apply to words of English origin. For example, the absence of affrication before /i/ in words such as t-shirt and the absence of high-vowel laxing in words such as jean deviate from Québec French patterns. In standard French, the productive English-origin suffix -ing

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(presented in section 3.4.4) has been closely studied as an example of the integration of a non-native phoneme; in her comprehensive review of the phonology of borrowed -ing, Lewis (2007: 42) concludes that “the velar nasal [ŋ] in French has clearly received phone­mic status despite its restricted distribution.” A second correlated observation is that variable and invariable native adjectives coexist in French. While number agreement is a salient feature of the morphology of French adjectives, there are sets of adjectives that, like nouns, reject plural suffixation. Le bon usage grammar reference provides a classification of invariable adjectives (Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 715–30). Among these adjectives are: nouns used as color adjectives (e.g. invariable noisette (hazelnut), grenat (garnet) vs. inflected rouge (red), bleu (blue));1 adverbs used adjectivally (e.g. des places debout (standing seats), des femmes bien (good women)); colloquial adjectival creations, especially those derived via a reduplication process (e.g. cracra (dirty), raplapla (pooped)); foreign adjectives (e.g. German kit(s)ch, Hebrew casher or kasher). These uninflected adjectives show that divergence from standard patterns of French morphology is permissible. And the last category, specifically, shows foreign borrowings to be a subset of uninflected adjectives.

6.2 Inflection-​inhibiting constraints Lack of inflection on borrowed adjectives has been investigated only cursorily. Pergnier (1989) claims that the morphological integration of Anglicisms is an issue of “minimal interest” and does not treat pluralization in his morphosyntactic account of Anglicisms. Battye, Hintze, and Rowlett (2000: 129) point out the small set of invariant adjectives in French including borrowed adjectives: “Some, for example standard, chic and snob, are borrowings from other languages which have not been regularised.” No explanation, however, is supplied for why these adjectives fail to adopt native morphology in the borrowing process. Bidermann-​ Pasques and Humbley (1995: 59) offer a brief restatement of the inflectional status of English adjectives provided in dictionaries: “Selon les dictionnaires, les adjectifs de forme anglo-​saxonne seraient invariables. Or, nous avons relevé dans le corpus de Libération quelques cas d’accord du pluriel pour les adjectifs black, gay, smart et cool.” (According to the dictionaries, adjectives of Anglo-​Saxon form would be invariable. But, we have noted in the Libération corpus several cases of plural agreement for the adjectives black, gay, smart, and cool.) In a database from Libération (starting in 1987), Bidermann-​Pasques and Humbley observe that black and gay occur both inflected and uninflected, although overt

1 Noun-based color adjectives may occasionally occur inflected and, conversely, regular color adjectives uninflected. An explanation for this fluctuation in usage is that speakers may not know that these adjectives derive from nouns or may overgeneralize the noun-based rule; thus, a feature of a set of French adjectives is their variable inflectional behavior (e.g. eaux turquoise and eaux turquoises (turquoise waters)).

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inflection is a rare pattern. Online press data from Libération published after 2005 indicate reverse patterns in the direction of stabilization: these two adjectives now mostly take a French plural morpheme, as documented below in this chapter. Finally, the Grevisse grammar lists examples of numerous adjectives borrowed “tels quels” (as such) that tend to remain invariable, including Japanese zen, German mastoc, and English open (Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 721). Although of English origin, the adjectives bobo and toasté, for example, both regularly pluralize in French (des quartiers bobos (bobo neighborhoods), des brioches toastées (toasted brioches)), because the former looks like a French morpheme and the latter bears a native suffix, a sure sign of inflectional integration. Orthographic adaptation, too, tends to trigger inflection. The correlation is even more evident with the case of adjectives that accept two orthographic forms. The English select and gay, for instance, occur both inflected and uninflected in their original shape, but they systematically take inflection when Gallicized via the simple addition of an accent for sélect or a reformed spelling for gai. Adjectives whose spelling, pronunciation, and morphology are recognized as English (see section 3.2) overwhelmingly reject French inflection, as is the case with jazzy, cheap, and trash. After verifying their inflectional status in press usage, English-​looking adjectives recorded in the Petit Robert included eighty uninflected adjectives and eleven variable adjectives. Examination of this group resulted in two main explanations to account for their resistance to inflection: one relates to identification of a non-​native linguistic trait (section 6.2.1), and the other involves inflection-​inhibiting constraints that also apply to native adjectives (section 6.2.2). Table 6.1 summarizes the constraints reported for each explanation and lists the corresponding set of French adjectival Anglicisms; Table 6.2 summarizes the inflection-​facilitating factors for variable adjectives. 6.2.1 INCORPORATION OF NON-​NATIVE TRAITS

The English-​origin adjectives of this set have introduced non-​native traits into French, either orthographic, or phonological, or both, into French. 6.2.1.1 Adjectives ending in -​y

Adjectives ending in -y do not occur in French, except for a group of fifteen dictionary-attested adjectival Anglicisms: baby, baggy, cockney, cosy, country, destroy,2 dry, flashy, funky, gay, groggy, hippy,3 jazzy, sexy, and tory. With the exception of tory, cockney, and gay, which are frequently inflected, these Anglicisms are characterized by non-adaptation to French inflectional paradigms. The forms

2  Destroy has taken an adjectival status in French with two meanings: it can specifically denote intoxication (des dandys un peu destroy (slightly intoxicated dandys)) or metaphorically denote a neglected appearance (les coupes destroy des robes longues (the slovenly cuts of the long dresses)). 3  This form rarely appears, the variant hippie being the common form.

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TABLE 6.1

Summary of inflection inhibitors. Constraints or conditions

Items

Constraint Family 1: Recognition of non-​native traits 1. Adjectives ending in -​y

baby, baggy, cockney (var.), cosy, country, destroy, dry, flashy, funky, gay (var.), groggy, hippy, jazzy, sexy, tory (var.)

2. Realization of usually silent final consonants

antitrust, hot, let, light (var.), net, smart, soft, spot cheap, top, wasp compound, hard, speed, underground amish, cash, scratch, trash, yiddish clean, fun (var.), open revolving, sterling, shocking

3. N  ative-​like ending combined with a non-​native phonemic-​graphemic correspondence a. Adjectives ending with the usually pronounced final consonants -​l, -​f, and -​k b. Adjectives ending in -​e

cool, waterproof, punk (var.), black (var.) hype, people/​pipeule (var.)/​pipole (var.)

Constraint Family 2: Compliance to French morphology 1. Prepositions 2. Adjectival compounds a. Simplification/​regularization b. Compounding from reduplication 3. Ellipsis a. music styles b. novel/​film genre and fashion styles c. with metonymic uses 4. Color adjectives

in, off, out, knock-​out, made in, stand-​by after-​shave, free-​lance, extra-​dry, fair-​play, in-​bord, has been, hi-​fi, new-​look, non-​stop, offshore, tip-​top, top secret wah-​wah, bling-​bling disco, folk, funk, grunge, hip-​hop, pop, punk (var.), reggae, rock, soul, techno, yé-​yé gore glamour, slim (var.), sportswear/​sportwear, vintage autoreverse, live, cantilever auburn, kaki

cockney and tory are the oldest of the group: they entered the French language in 1750 and 1704, respectively. Their longstanding presence in the French lexicon certainly facilitated their adoption of a native plural marking (des accents cockneys; des élus torys/tories (elected Tory representatives)). The adjectival plural form tories, patterned on the nominal English tories, eases plural integration. The adjective gay in the sense of homosexual is listed as invariable in the Petit Robert but not in the Petit Larousse. The Libération data reflect the gap between the two dictionaries by showing variable behavior, though overt agreement marking is the norm: on a sample of eighty-six contextually plural adjectival forms, the inflection rate for gay is over 85%. The adjective gay is the most frequently used of the series in the newspaper, and currency clearly contributes to a higher degree of integration. Also, adjectival gai (merry) already exists in the French

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Inflection-​facilitating factors for variable adjectives. Variable items

Factors that facilitate inflection

addict

• realization of /​t/​in the cluster -​ct in final position of French words

black

• • • •

cockney

• age of borrowing (1750)

fun

• frequency of use

gay

• frequency of use • inflectional analogy with native gai

light

• recent item (1988) but increased frequency; • modifies a wide range of nouns (cigarettes, food, day, etc.)

punk

• final /​k/​usually pronounced • semantic extension: music → social movement

select

• realization of /​t/​in the cluster -​ct in final position of French words

slim

• • • • •

tory

• age of borrowing (1704)

yankee

• age of borrowing (1776)

frequency of use acceptance in the lexicon final /​k/​usually pronounced in French age of borrowing (1790)

influence of nominal form (des slims n. = des pantalons slims adj.) frequency of use modifies a wide range of nouns (clothes, modern objects, day, etc.) final /​m/​pronounced in French (album, miam) English etymon less readily identifiable

lexicon; orthographic adaptation of the English loan gay (homosexual) is rarely used. No contextual constraint accounts for inhibiting inflection; both inflected and uninflected forms occur in similar environments with pairs like mariages gays/mariages gay and bars gays/bars gay. These adjectives, regardless of their dictionary attestation, regularly adopt French noun-adjective order, which further testify to rapid integration: “Une recette de pancakes healthy” (Elle, January 28, 2016) (A healthy pancake recipe). 6.2.1.2 Realization of usually-​silent final consonants

A consonant not followed by schwa at the end of French words is not usually pronounced (e.g. trouillard /​trujaʀ/​(chicken-​hearted)). In contrast, realization of the final consonant is the norm in English (e.g. hard /​hɑrd/​). Preservation of the original pronunciation of the final consonant is a shared trait of a group of twenty-​five uninflected adjectival Anglicisms. The analysis that follows demonstrates that transfer of this English phonological feature tends to hinder the affixation of a native plural marking (e.g. des films hard (porn films)). The loan adjectives investigated here end in the consonants -​t, -​p, -​d, -​c/​sh, -​n, and -​(in) g (based on Battye, Hintze, and Rowlett’s (2000: 74–​7) list of final consonant-​ letters that are generally silent in French). Final -​t is silent in French except for a few words, notably foreign words and words ending in -​ct. For the adjectival Anglicisms whose final -​t is pronounced

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(antitrust, hot, let, net, smart, soft, and spot), inflection is blocked; the only exceptions are the words light and scout. Although lack of inflection on light is the most common behavior and the only one recorded in the Petit Robert, the form has begun to appear inflected. An explanation may be found in its increased currency and semantic extension, as chronicled in 3.3.2.2. A sample that shows the increased number of submeanings and referents of light includes cigarette light (1a), produit light (low-​calorie product and/​or including artificial sweeteners) (1b), journée light (low-​activity day), and injection light (minimal injection). 1. (a)  Mais il y a aussi cette voix. Claire, légèrement voilée, éraillée sur la fin des phrases par les cigarettes lights qu’elle enchaîne. —​(Libération, July 17, 2013) (But there’s also that voice. Clear, lightly veiled, rasping at the end of sentences because of the light cigarettes that she chain-​smokes.)    (b)  L’aspartame est utilisé dans la fabrication des sodas dits “lights”. —​(Libération, December 10, 2013) (Aspartame is used in the production of the sodas called “diet.”) Unlike the other adjectives in the series, scout may receive a feminine ending (although gender marking is not conventional) and has produced the derived forms scoutisme and scoutesse, which are transparent indicators that the English form is treated like any other adjective by the morphology of French. The adjectival Anglicisms addict (2) (which is never adjectival in English) and select may receive inflection, because /​t/​is realized in the cluster -​ct in final position of French words (strict /​stʀrikt/​, correct /​kɔʀɛkt/​). 2. Actuellement, ce restaurant-​traiteur marocain est fermé, ce qui désole les riverains addicts à ses couscous et tajines de bonne tenue. —​(Le Figaro, October 8, 2013) (This Moroccan restaurant-​caterer is currently closed, which saddens the local residents who are addicted to its high-​quality couscous and tagines.) This phonological convergence between the two languages in contact eases morphological integration and provides evidence for analogy-​based morphology. Other final consonants also exhibit inflection-blocking behavior. Borrowings and interjections are the only words whose final -p can be pronounced in French. Adjectival Anglicisms ending with a realized p reject native inflection: cheap,4 top, and wasp. Likewise, d is silent in final position except

In French, cheap is only an informal and derogatory term, as illustrated by this plural occurrence: “On retrouve les bons vieux plastiques durs, cheap et brillants chers à Suzuki” (Le Monde, November 27, 2014). (You can find the good old plastic parts, hard, cheap, and sparkly, which are dear to Suzuki.) 4

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in borrowings, hence the lack of a plural marking for the English forms compound, hard, speed, and underground. Adjectives ending in -ch/sh in French are all borrowed forms, including the German kit(s)ch and the English amish, cash (blunt),5 scratch [sports], trash (trashy), and yiddish. Words ending in this orthographic consonant cluster block plural suffixation. In French, the combination of a vowel followed by a tautosyllabic n characteristically produces a nasal vowel (bigouden, opportun, paysan). Three borrowed English adjectives of this shape, clean, fun, and open, preserve their original pronunciation, which results in the dispreference for plural suffixation. Adjectives ending in -​ean (/​in/​) and -​en (/​ɛn/​) do not occur in French except for these Anglicisms (des instantanés fun6) and the Japanese zen, which is also invariable (des idées zen). Three adjectives share final -​ing, revolving, sterling, and shocking; the final consonant is pronounced /​ŋ/​, a non-​native ending that constitutes another inflection inhibitor (des livres sterling (pounds sterling)). 6.2.1.3 Native-​like ending combined with a non-​native phonemic-​orthographic correspondence

Six adjectival Anglicisms have final consonants that are usually pronounced in French, so these endings might be expected to receive a plural morpheme. Nevertheless, these words also share phonemic-​orthographic correspondences that fail to conform to those of French and, as a result, may obstruct morphological integration. 6.2.1.3.1 Adjectives ending with the usually pronounced final consonants -​l, -​f, and -​k The final consonants -l and -f are commonly realized in French and accept a plural marking (des bouchers rebels et inventifs). The invariable English forms cool and waterproof possess a phonological and orthographical correspondence that does not adhere to French conventions. This non-native correspondence seems to block native plural suffixation. Adjectives ending in -k in French are exclusively foreign borrowings. They all accept inflection (des pianistes kanaks < Polynesian; des pianistes bolcheviks < Russian), with the exception of the English black and punk, which are more complex variable cases: des pianistes blacks or des pianistes black and des pianistes punks or des pianistes punk. In their Libération corpus, Bidermann-Pasques and Humbley (1995: 59) report that the adjective black is rarely found inflected. In a later sample from Libération (2006–10), I recorded the adjective black as occurring predominantly inflected in the plural (thirty inflected forms compared with three

 See grammatical and semantic case study of cash in section 3.3.1 and 3.3.2, respectively.  Parsimonious inflection of fun however takes place (e.g. des séminaires funs), no doubt corresponding to the popular usage of this informal term, even in the language of the press. 5 6

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Adjectival Anglicisms in the Plural

uninflected forms). The ubiquitous expression black-blanc-beur (black-whiteArab), patterned on bleu-blanc-rouge (blue-white-red) to describe a multi-ethnic France, which was popularized in the 1990s, may have contributed to the increased acceptance and currency of black, followed by increased morphological integration. Punk is the other adjective ending in -​k whose inflectional behavior varies. In a Libération sample composed of sixty-​five contextually plural occurrences of adjectival punk, the form is used bare in over 75% of cases. Two constraints associated with compounding and ellipsis may inhibit inflection on this word. In seventeen of the sixty-​five occurrences, punk is part of an adjectival compound (for example, pré-​punk, punk rock), and inflection is consistently blocked for these compound constructions. A category of uninflected adjectives in the dictionary corpus refers to musical styles (des airs rock, des airs funk). These adjectives can be analyzed as elliptical forms, and ellipsis justifies the absence of plural marking (des airs (de musique/​de style) rock, des airs (de musique/​de style) funk). By analogy, the adjective punk may be treated as elliptical since the term implies a musical style, which would explain its large number of bare occurrences in the press. Unlike the other English elliptical forms that refer to musical genres, however, the adjective punk is derived from a noun defined as a social movement and so is not restricted to music. This broader definition may favor morphological integration because punk is used in more semantic categories, as these two contrastive examples from Libération illustrate: 3.  (a) Avec Matthew, nous avons le même ingénieur du son et les sonorités punk, folk ou rock ne sont pas pour me déplaire. —​(Libération, June 30, 2008) (With Matthew, we have the same sound engineer, and the sound of punk, folk, or rock is really fine with me.)    (b)  N  ous sommes plus «hérétiques» qu’eux par rapport à la modernité occidentale, plus «punks», plus pirates, plus «queer», plus radicalement pragmatiques puisque nous contrôlons les moyens de production grâce aux ordinateurs et à Internet. —​(Libération, June 10, 2008) (We are more “heretical” than they are in relation to Western modernity, more “punk,” more pirate, more “queer,” more radically pragmatic because we control the means of production thanks to computers and the Internet.) In the first instance of punk (3a), the form refers only to music, and the ellipsis hypothesis is emphasized by the analogously uninflected folk and rock. They can all be treated as elliptical forms: les sonorités punk, folk ou rock derives

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from les sonorités DE MUSIQUE punk/​folk/​rock or les sonorités de STYLE MUSICAL punk/​folk/​rock. In the second example (3b), the inflected adjectival punk has a broader, social meaning; this semantic extension tends to facilitate integration. As a noun, punk is polysemous when referring to animate beings; the feminine punkette was also borrowed. The derivation of English forms with native affixes is a solid indicator of integration, as discussed for the forms scout, pipole, and pipeule. 6.2.1.3.2 Adjectives ending in -​e Although the vowel -​e constitutes a proper receiver of the plural morpheme in French, the two adjectival Anglicisms people (lurid, celebrity-​focused) and hype (hip) do not accept it because of the non-​native relationship of their spelling and pronunciation. Just like nominal people (discussed in section 5.3.6), adjectival people can also appear playfully written pipeule or pipole. Each of these phonetically spelled forms displays variable inflectional status in journalistic prose: des magazines pipeule/​pipole and des magazines pipeules/​pipoles. The uninflected form is likely patterned on the original English people (4a), whereas the inflected form is based on a Gallicized orthography (4b), which further signals that a foreign orthography-phonology correspondence blocks inflection. 4.  (a) Ce jeune homme au visage de Cherokee a longtemps vécu hors de portée des radars people, ce qui lui confère une fraîcheur rare. —​(Libération, February 5, 2011) (This young man with a Cherokee face was off the celebrity radar for a long time, which gives him an unusual freshness.)    (b) En 1891, Jules Huret avait inventé le journalisme spécial «C’est quoi la littérature ?» en demandant aux auteurs pipoles de son temps ce qu’ils pensaient de la mort du naturalisme. —​(Libération, February 10, 2011) (In 1891, Jules Huret had invented a kind of “What is literature?” journalism by asking celebrity authors of the time what they thought of the death of naturalism.) Therefore, adjectival people and its variants pipole and pipeule show different pluralization patterns in usage. Pipole and pipeule may be playfully spelled, but the coining of new derived forms, such as demi-pipole (halfcelebrity), pipeulaire (related to celebrities < pun on populaire), and pipeulerie (gossip about celebrities), indicate a solid entrenchment into the lexicon, also blurring its etymological source. The donor form, people, has yielded only the derived form, spelled three ways, peoplisation, peopleisation, and peopolisation, the last of which entered the 2012 edition of the Petit Robert. These variants show the difficulty of attaching native suffixes to the donor base people.

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6.2.2 UNINFLECTED ENGLISH ADJECTIVES COMPLYING WITH FRENCH MORPHOLOGY

Section 6.1 showed that resistance to inflection is permissible in French. In fact, the inflection-​inhibiting constraints that apply to native adjectives may also apply to English-​origin adjectives, as the following section demonstrates. 6.2.2.1 Prepositions

The Petit Robert records three adjectival English prepositions (in (trendy), off, and out (outdated)) and three [Verb + Preposi­tion] compounds (knock-out, made in, and stand-by). They do not receive inflection even when used adjectivally in compliance with the rule for French prepositions, an invariable word class (les sièges avant (front seats)). The absence of morphology on Englishorigin prepositions is also reflected in the inflectional pattern of compound nouns whose second constituent is a preposition (see section 5.3.1.1). Whether adjectival or nominal, English-origin prepositions follow French morphological rules and accordingly remain invariable. 6.2.2.2 Adjectival compounds

As already discussed in section 5.3.1, the morphological description of compound words in French is notoriously complex: number agreement depends on the word class of each constituent, and, more intricately, on the relation between these constituents. Variable forms (casse-​pied or casse-​pieds (pains in the neck)) circulate as a result of native speakers’ hesitation regarding their plural marking. The English-​origin compound adjectives are all used bare in French: after-​shave, free-​ lance, extra-​dry, fair-​play, in-​bord (inboard), has been, hi-​fi, new-​look, non-​stop, offshore, tip-​top, and top secret. It is plausible that French speakers achieve simplification by treating adjectival compounds systematically as invariable forms, thus avoiding dealing with identifying the word class of the English constituents. As with nominal compounds, the treatment of adjectival Anglicisms reduces the morphological complexity of the native adjectival compounding system. This morphological simplification can apply to the reduplicated adjectives of English etymon wah-​wah and bling-​bling,7 which are onomatopoeic in origin. Compounding and reduplication may combine to hinder inflection (des guitares wah-wah, des vacances bling-bling). Native forms derived from onomatopoeic (bof (soso)) and reduplicative (olé olé (kinky), gnangnan (cheesy)) processes also typically reject inflection (Grevisse and Goosse 2008: 726). In addition, the grammatical category of the constituents is difficult to determine. To a great extent, these compound adjectives resemble fixed expressions. (Both adjectival and nominal reduplicative forms reject inflection.)

7  Pejorative bling-bling gained popularity in French after 2007 when the then president, Nicolas Sarkozy, was dubbed Président bling-bling.

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6.2.2.3 Ellipsis

A series of uninflected adjectives derive from non-​count nouns that refer to music genres—​disco, folk, funk, grunge, hip-​hop, pop, reggae, rock, soul, techno, and yé-​yé. These non-​count nouns are used, by definition, in the singular. Their adjectival forms can be interpreted as resulting from ellipsis: des notes funk, for example, is a construction derived from des notes DE MUSIQUE funk or DE STYLE funk. Used elliptically, the adjectival funk does not receive inflection. In the press, all of the following constructions are used, from the most frequent to the least frequent: des notes funk < des notes de funk < des notes de musique funk. Other invariable adjectives derived from mass nouns, gore (referring to a novel/​film genre), glamour, slim (slim-​ fit), sportwear/​sportswear, and vintage (referring to fashion), can receive the same ellipsis-​based analysis (for example, des robes glamour < des robes DE STYLE glamour). The case for ellipsis as a plausible candidate for inhibiting inflection is strengthened by two other arguments. First, the abbreviated French techno (< technologique) and the abbreviated English loan techno (< technological) display contrastive pluralization behavior: les lycées généraux et technos (general and technical high schools) vs. des soirées techno (techno parties), with contextual example in (5b) . In the first example, techno receives inflection as a regular native adjective, whereas in the second example, techno is used elliptically to refer to de musique techno(logique), hence its bare adjectival status. Second, certain of these English adjectival forms referring to musical styles take French suffixes (adj. folkeux (folkish), v. rapper (to rap)), and the process of deriving foreign forms is a solid indicator of integration. Therefore, all these adjectival forms could potentially receive a plural marker, if not blocked by the ellipsis constraint. Three other bare items—​autoreverse, live, and cantilever—​may also be interpreted as elliptical forms in French: autoreverse (un magnétophone autore­ verse < un magnétophone À SYSTÈME autoreverse); live (des concerts live < des concerts EN live); and cantilever (des ponts cantilever < des ponts À POUTRES cantilever). At the semantic level, these forms can be read as metonymic with change of grammatical category (n. → adj.) through ellipsis, which is a reported French lexical practice (Picoche 1986: 85–​7). 6.2.2.4 Color adjectives

The Anglicisms auburn and kaki both pattern like other invariable color adjectives in French, especially noun-​based adjectives (des teintes acajou, fuchsia et noisette (mahogany, fuchsia, and hazelnut shades)), and thus remain bare in the plural (des reflets auburn, des uniformes kaki). This constraint too emerges from native morphological conventions (as touched upon in section 6.1).

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Adjectival Anglicisms in the Plural

6.3 Adjectives versus nouns Some of these invariable English adjectives are also nouns, but such nouns, puzzlingly, do receive plural inflection (Table 6.3). The dictionary-​attested baggy and the dictionary-​unattested redneck, each used as an uninflected adjective (5a, 6a) as well as an inflected noun (5b, 6b) illustrate this word-​ class contrast: 5.  (a) Wang a décliné toutes les nuances de l’ivoire, dans un vestiaire à la fois très féminin (dentelle, volants, rubans) à la limite de la lingerie, et en même temps doté de la touche streetwear (pantalons baggy, filles à plat, nombril à l’air). —​(Libération, October 7, 2015) (Wang rang the changes on ivory in a collection that was both very feminine (lace, frills, ribbons) and almost lingerie-​like, and at the same time a touch streetwear (baggy pants, girls in flats, bare midriffs).)    (b) Lucas Ossendrijver est devenu spécialiste des silhouettes élégantes et rafraîchissantes, oscillant entre tailoring et inspirations techno (baggys, débardeurs, couleurs fluos). —​(Libération, June 28, 2015) (Lucas Ossendrijver has become a specialist in elegant and refreshing silhouettes, oscillating between tailoring and techno inspiration (baggies, tank tops, neon colors).) 6.   (a) On n’a sans doute guère fait plus déphasé depuis Boy George, […] en tournée des joints redneck. —​(Libération, July 1, 2010) (It’s likely that no one has done anything more out of touch since Boy George, […] on tour in redneck joints.)    (b) Six immenses tentes sont dressées sur un terrain où déambulent des rednecks au teint crayeux. —​(Libération, January 27, 2010) (Six huge tents were put up on a site where pasty-​faced rednecks sauntered around.) The contrast between inflected nouns and uninflected adjectives suggests that a difference in word class is responsible for different morphological behavior in the

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borrowing process. A general explanation can be found in in the semantic characterization of nouns and verbs. Langacker (1991) proposes that these word classes can be defined in language-universal terms and that this “accounts in unified fashion for an extremely broad array of data, and affords a natural explanation for many puzzling phenomena” (p. 100). There are languages without adjectives, such as the Siouan languages of North America, which may indicate that, unlike nouns, adjectives do not constitute a fundamental class. Since adjectives (a secondary class) modify nouns (a primary class), morphological information, including grammatical gender and inflection, is already conveyed by the noun. French adjectives carry this information as well, in redundant fashion. The analysis that follows proposes further explanation for this contrastive treatment based on the grammatical feature of gender and, more specifically, on a constraint on affix ordering. While both adjectives and nouns are marked for plural in French, the gender of a noun is an inherent property, whereas the gender of an adjective is assigned via the gender of the noun it modifies. It is well documented that loan nouns tend to take the unmarked gender of the host language, which is the masculine for Romance languages (Clyne 2003: 147). Accordingly, English borrowed nouns are (mostly) masculine, for instance, un coming-out, un smoothie, and un think tank.8 Adjectives, in contrast, require both a masculine and a feminine form, and this added morphological complexity may prevent native gender-marking affixes from attaching to non-native adjectival stems. In section 6.2.1, the blocking of number agreement is attributed to recognition of a non-native trait. In fact, before blocking number, it blocks gender agreement, which is the first inflectional suffix attached to the adjectival root, as illustrated by the phrase les chansons folkeuses (folk(ish) songs): folk + -euse (1 feminine) + -s (2 plural). Subsequently, the incorporation of a non-native feature in French triggers the incorporation of a non-native morphological pattern, that is, adjectives remain unmarked in both gender and number, as exemplified with the -y donor ending and adjective baggy: f. sg. une veste *baggye (a baggy jacket); f. pl. des vestes *baggyes (baggy jackets); f. pl. des vestes baggyØ adj. (baggy jackets) vs. m. pl. des baggys n. (baggies). The gist of this proposal is a constraint on affix ordering on non-native bases, a phenomenon which may extend to all borrowed adjectives, not just those of English origin. For example, the form vaudou (voodoo), borrowed from a Beninese language, receives consistent pluralization as a noun (des vaudous), but occurs variably with and without native feminine and plural marking as an adjective in usage (the dictionary

8  Nymansson (1995) identifies factors for the attribution of the feminine gender of French Anglicisms: natural gender, semantic analogy, and phonological shape. For English compounds, syntactic rules may also play a part. The influence of suffixal analogy, however, seems minor, according to Nymansson.

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Adjectival Anglicisms in the Plural

classifies it as invariable). Press samples illustrate the variant forms: f. sg. une sorcière vaudou vs. une poupée vaudoue (a voodoo witch vs. a voodoo doll); f. pl. des poupées vaudou vs. des fins vaudoues (voodoo dolls vs. voodoo finalities). It is then expected that no categorical feature blocks inflection; an empirical study would be useful in testing these provisional findings. The contrastive morphological pattern of borrowed English nouns and adjectives also suggests that because French adjectives carry both number and gender morphemes, they are morphologically more difficult to integrate than nouns. As a consequence, the non-​marking of adjectival bare forms can be analyzed as an avoidance strategy for dealing with complex, marked features. This simplification strategy echoes the loss of redundancy reported in linguistic contact situations (Trudgill 2010). TABLE 6.3

Inflected plural nouns and their uninflected adjective counterparts. Inflected nouns

Uninflected (or variable) adjectives

des babies

des oursons baby ‘miniature chocolate bears’

des baggys or des baggies

des jeans baggy

des blacks

des femmes black or blacks

des cockneys

des influences cockney or cockneys

des compounds

des machines compound

des cosys

des appartements cosy

des drys

des champagnes dry

des gays

des artistes gay or gays

des hippys or des hippies

des mères hippy (vs. hippies) ‘hippie moms’

des leggings, des brushings, etc.

-​ing a des crédits revolving des teintes shocking des livres sterling

des opens

des tournois open

des punks

des musiciens punk or punks

des slims

des jean slim or slims

des spots

des marchés spot ‘spot markets’

des tories, des torys

des élus tory or torys or tories

des undergrounds

des podiums underground

des waterproofs

des montres waterproof ‘waterproof watches’

des Yankees

des accents yankee or yankees

The three adjectives with an -ing suffix that are listed above do not have a nominal counterpart, but the French lexicon contains many English-​origin nouns ending in -​ing (Spence 1991; Picone 1996), which all take a plural marking (des piercings, des strappings). a

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6.4 Summary The constraints discussed in this chapter partially verify the hypothesis that the inflectional behavior of adjectival Anglicisms is governed by rules that differ from those characterizing native French words. The group of uninflected and variable adjectives does violate the standard rule of adjective agreement in French, yet the conditions that block inflection are French-​derived (summarized in Table 6.1). Whether it is due to the recognition of non-​native traits or to direct compliance with French morphological constraints, the ‘deviant’ behavior of these borrowed adjectives is dictated by internal, not external, rules and conditions. Because the corpus of dictionary-​sanctioned adjectival Anglicisms is relatively small, it does not justify categorical validation of certain constraints, especially those that govern only a handful of cases. These constraints, however, provide valuable insights into the history of the French lexicon, and serve as a foundation for further investigation.

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7

Conclusion WHAT IS AN ANGLICISM?

A Big Mac’s a Big Mac, but they call it “le Big ​Mac.” —​Vincent Vega, Pulp Fiction, 1994 Le Big Mac has attained the status of a classic French Anglicism. Along with its forerunner le cheeseburger, it epitomizes culturally motivated borrowing. The items gif, MOOC, selfie, hashtag, and cyberattaque, inaugural members of the 2015 edition of the Petit Robert, exemplify English as transmitted through electronic mass media. Despite their notoriety, however, this book demonstrates that cultural loans and loans from the computer and newer information technologies are but a small part of the current phenomenon of lexical borrowing from English. In this period of sustained contact with English, French Anglicisms can be defined less homogenously than ever before. Among the numerous loan items presented in this book are the following words and phrases from the language of the press: and the winner is, bicoze (because), bling-bling, Chinese way of life (after American way of life), cranberry, disneylanderie, far west, flashcode (QR code), hedge fund, home sweet home, it coiffure (it hairstyle) (< it girl), itself, lo(o)se, men in white (patterned on men in black), now, redneck, remember, runnings (running shoes), Sénat bashing, serialkilleuse, so french, starring, street art, stressed the, very bad trip, and «Yes we can»-président. Because of the eclectic nature of these borrowings, the entire database of single and phrasal Anglicisms, rather than just selected excerpts, is made available in the Appendix. This database clearly demonstrates that current contact outcomes go far beyond the cultural and linguistic appropriation found in a borrowing like le Big Mac. These English loan items do not constitute a single phenomenon, process, or outcome. They are single words or phrases; used frequently or (very) infrequently; used with or without flagging devices; sanctioned or unsanctioned in English and/​or French dictionaries; closed- or open-​class words; members of

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varied semantic classes; etc. Based on the lexicogenic devices used to produce them, the forms can be organized into general typologies of single words and phrases; they are borrowed in their original form or commonly reinterpreted at the level of morphology, syntax, semantics, style, and discourse. When reinterpreted or manipuated, they depart from their donor source in many ways: they change meaning, shift word class, undergo shortening, acquire native affixes, undergo (playful) respelling, etc. Beyond these lexical matters, they also perform various less-​studied functions, promising avenues for future research. For instance, they tend to shift to the informal style to fuel native slang, routinely serve as tools for producing humor (see examples below), create interactive (bilingual) games, frame discourse, grab attention, and supply emphasis. These general elements prompt all sorts of complex questions. What makes an Anglicism slangy? Humor and creativity are employed in such broad terms. May recurrent devices and functions be identified for humorous formations? How do loan materials fit into linguistic theories of humor? The ubiquitous Anglicism people has been ‘remade in France’ and exemplifies the shifts from the donor language discussed throughout the monograph. The term means ‘celebrities’ in French and circulates as both a noun and an adjective. It can be used in the singular (un/​e people (a celebrity)), while it receives variable inflection in the plural (des people or des peoples (celebrities)). When spelled pipeule or pipole to mimic a Gallicized pronunciation, it always receives native inflection (des pipeules, des pipoles). These variants have yielded derived forms such as pipeulerie, pipolisé, pipeulaire, and pipolisation. If the Gallicized forms win out, the original form will disappear behind its new French phonology, morphology, semantics, and orthography. The database is a snapshot of a synchronic period of linguistic contact, a moment in the first phase of the period of global contact (1990–​2015). Only substantial corpus data, such as the one year’s worth of dictionary-​unattested Anglicisms from the national daily newspaper Libération (27,670 articles), can reveal the complex nature of the borrowing process, which is most accurately explored and evaluated as a qualitative phenomenon. Counting the number of Anglicisms in the dictionary or in a newspaper corpus would result in a misleading representation of the borrowing behavior, by over- or underrepresentation, and would invite the misunderstanding that this process is a uniform phenomenon. A typology is a classic tool for describing lexical borrowing: updating the types (and their members) is a worthwhile contribution, but individual case studies of words and phrases are also necessary to understand the multiple causes at work in the borrowing process. This study provides systematic linguistic evidence that the evolution of Anglicisms is governed by linguistic rules internal to the French language. It also demonstrates that Anglicisms follow varied and often rapid paths of integration into the lexicon. This book is a counterargument to the well-​known criticism that Anglicisms reflect a French inability, often labeled paresse d’esprit (laziness of mind), to

 14



Conclusion: What is an Anglicism?

coin new words: on the contrary, the use of Anglicisms requires the inventive application of complex linguistic rules. Trudgill (2010: 309) raises a conundrum regarding the relative linguistic complexity that contact influence may bring about: “It would […], it seems, be a mistake to suggest that language contact causes either simplification or complexification; it clearly produces both.” Trudgill’s claim is verified by this account of French Anglicisms. Some patterns of simplification have been identified, such as truncation of English compounds (FR slim < EN slim-fit) and assignment of unmarked masculine gender (un selfie, un work in progress), but the story of French Anglicisms is overall one of complexification. The case of cash exemplifies lexical innovation: the donor nominal cash has become adjectival and adverbial in French, but it has above all acquired the meaning of ‘upfront’ via metaphoric transfer. Borrowing also produces features previously unavailable in the recipient language, as illustrated by the use of emphatic the (“oui, the Marianne James”), a recent usage calqued from English, as the French article does not receive stress. The contact period between 1945 and 1990 was marked by a quantitative increase of American English loanwords. In the current contact scenario, global English has brought in a greater volume of loanwords, which largely accounts for the perception of Anglicisms as lexical ‘occupiers.’ In fact, though, the frequency counts in the database indicate that these Anglicisms correspond to numerous types but very few tokens, which will not have longterm effects on the French lexicon. Many borrowings belong to a peripheral and disposable lexicon which is tailored to certain functions, as detailed in this book. For instance, linguistic humor is a leitmotiv for borrowing from English. Witty neologisms include bilingual punning (no man’s hand > no man’s land to describe a skillful handball player), expressions détournées (FR God save the green < EN God save the Queen), and unexpected use of English (craquant, isn’t it? (cute, isn’t it?)). These creative, innovative loanwords and loan phrases, which often require interpretation, are transient because repeated use will attenuate their jocular raison d’être. The borrowing of English words and phrases into the French lexicon constitutes systematic proof of the rule-​based nature of the process. The database shows the open-​ended nature of the lexicon, and the dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms are testament to both the ephemeral nature of individual words and the replicable nature of the linguistic process of borrowing. If this study were to be duplicated in ten years’ time, many of the entries would surely have disappeared and new entries and motivations for borrowing would have emerged. English influence, far from debasing French, as is often claimed, in fact contributes to its vitality. The Académie française’s “Dire, ne pas dire” approach to Anglicisms does not allow a linguistic case to be appreciated objectively; it treats borrowings not as linguistic data but as targets for eradication. In fact, Anglicisms evolve in a rule-​based subsystem of the lexicon and morphology of French that is constantly changing and renewing itself in linguistic time.

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Appendix

DATABASE: List of dictionary-​unsanctioned words and phrases of English origin used in Libération’s e-​edition in 2010 This database chronicles all the English-​origin items used in the 27,670 online articles of the daily newspaper Libération for the year of 2010, and not recorded in the Petit Robert 2010, a French general language dictionary. Selection criteria for what English lexical item qualifies for this study/​database are found in section 2.4.2 and the introduction of sections 3.4 and 3.5.

Guidelines For each unique form of a word, the database provides its total number of occurrences in the 27,670 articles of the Libération corpus and the number of newspaper articles in which it appears. Forms that occur more than ten times in at least ten different articles count as high-​frequency items and are bolded. Items of more than one word are classified in alphabetical order by first word. The database also provides the part(s) of speech of each English lexical item as used in the Libération corpus. The generic term ‘phrase’ is used in its broadest sense to cover all sorts of phrasal/​phraseological units (proverbs, question tags, expressions détournées, etc.). A gloss is provided for words whose form or meaning is not straightforward. If known, grammatical gender is provided for nominal Anglicisms. For borrowed verbs, the English base form is the headword followed by the native inflected forms in the entry. If two or more spellings exist for a form, they appear in order of frequency. Finally, the asterisk (*) indicates flawed spelling of an English word.

Dictionary recording after 2010: new Anglicisms in the Petit Robert 2015 Anglicisms catalogued in this database which are now recorded in the Petit Robert 2015 are followed by [PR 2015]. With very few exceptions, the Anglicisms added to the subsequent editions of the Petit Robert (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015) appear in the Libération corpus (for the year 2010). 143

14

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Appendix

Scope The present loanword database is a snapshot of a synchronic period of linguistic contact and a useful lexicographic resource for other studies on (global) Anglicisms in French. The alphabetical format conveniently reveals the heterogeneity of the phenomena that are classified as Anglicisms. Types

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.m. n.m. adj. adj., n. adj. n. n. n. n.m. n. n.m. n., adj. n. n., adj. n. adj. n. n. n. n. prep. conj. adj. phrase n. phrase phrase

1 3 1 6 4 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 15 12 3 1 1 1 1 1 14 1 1 3 1 1

1 3 1 5 4 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 14 11 3 1 1 1 1 1 14 1 1 3 1 1

n. adj. n. n. adj. n. phrase n. phrase phrase phrase phrase

1 2 1 1 1 3 4 3 1 1 1 1

1 2 1 1 1 3 4 3 1 1 1 1

phrase adj. n. n. adj. phrase adj. phrase

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

A abstract [PR 2015] abstract hip-​hop acid house acid jazz, acid-​jazz acid music acting action-​hero action painting action tank actor’s studio advisory abbr. ‘advisory service’ afrobeat, afro-​beat after-​party after-​school after show afterwork against aka all all aprèm long ‘all afternoon long’ all stars all time, all networks all you need is love (after a song by the Beatles) alternate take amazing ambient music ambush marketing americana american dream (A)(a)merican way of life anchorman and my ass? and now and so on and the winner is (after the phrase from the Oscars) angry young man antikingiste (anti- + EN king + FR suff. -​iste) appetizer arabish ARM abbr. ‘adjustable-​rate mortgage’ around the clock art school art street fighting

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Appendix Types artwork arty artysme (EN arty + FR suff. -​isme) assignment assistant professor astrobiology as we know attrape-​gamer (lit. ‘gamer-​trap’) (refers to a video game that attracts players)

Word class

Tokens in corpus

n.m. adj. n.m. n.m. n. n. phrase n.

4 48 1 1 1 1 1 1

Number of articles 4 45 1 1 1 1 1 1

n.f. n.m.

1 1

1 1

n. n.f. n.m. n. adv., n., adj. phrase phrase

1 1 1 2 4 1 1

1 1 1 1 4 1 1

1 4 13 1 4 1

1 3 13 1 4 1

1 1 1 1 2 1 3 9 3 4 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 1 1 1 2 2 2

1 1 1 1 1 1 2 7 2 3 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 2 1 2

B baby doll baby-​krach (lit. ‘baby-​crash’) ‘drop in birth rate in Europe starting in the mid-​1960s’ (patterned on baby-​boom, in opposition) baby shower bachelorette back catalogue back office backstage back to business back to the USSR (after the song by the Beatles “Back in the USSR”) back to Yorkshire bad bank bad boy bad girl bad guy bad owl (refers to one of the owl characters in an animated film) bad vibes bag garden baked beans ballot screen banana gin band aid bang-​bang bankable bank run bankster bareback barefoot barrister base jump bash bashe bashing baskets de running ‘running shoes’ bass hero bassline batfan batfilm battle battle system Video game *b. boy ‘b-​boy’ beach boy beach soccer bean bear

phrase n.f. n.m. adj. n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m., adj. adj. n.m. n. adj. n.m. n. n. v. pres. n.m. n. n.m. n. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. adj. n. n. n., adj.

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Appendix Types beatbox beatboxer beatboxing beat’em all Video game beat generation beautiful *looser ‘beautiful loser’ (patterned on beautiful people) beautiful people bedbug bed-​in beep beeper before ‘an opening act’ benchmark benchmarking bending benefit betting exchange big bisou ‘big kiss’ (after a French song title) big boss big brother big business big chef ‘big boss’ big coal big-​crunch Astronomy (patterned on Big Bang, in opposition) bigger than life (alternation on larger than life) big government big money big pharma big up slang ‘congratulations’ biker [PR 2015] billboard binaural brainwave ‘binaural beat’ binge drinking biopic [PR 2015] bitch bitch boy bitchshield slang ‘protective rudeness adopted by a woman against come-​ons’ bitchy bit-​generation (patterned on Beat Generation) black block ‘the wearing of black, incl. sunglasses, scarves, masks, by a crowd to conceal identity (in protest marches, etc.)’ black empowerment blackface blacklist blacklister blackliste blacklisté black metal black panther black world blade

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.f. n.

2 1 2 1 2 1

2 1 2 1 1 1

n. n. adj. v. infin. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n. n.m. adj.

5 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 1 1 3 1

4 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1

n. n.m. n.m. n. n. n.m.

4 6 2 2 1 2

4 5 2 2 1 2

phrase

1

1

n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n. n.m. n. n.m. n.m. n.f. n. n.m.

8 1 2 2 5 1 1 6 60 5 1 1

8 1 2 2 5 1 1 3 49 1 1 1

adj. n.f.

1 1

1 1

n.

2

2

n. n.m. v. infin. pres. p.p. n., adj. adj. n.m. n.

1 1 8 1 1 6 2 1 1 2

1 1 8 1 1 6 2 1 1 1

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Appendix Types blast blaste blender (sense of) ‘electric appliance’ [PR 2015] blind-​test bling abbr. ‘bling-​bling’ bling-​blinguant ‘bling-​blinging’ blip blip blockbuster [PR 2015] blockeuse Roller derby ‘blocker’ block party blogger, bloggeur, bloggueur blogging blue beat blue bond Economics blue eyed soul blue film bluegrass blue lady blue note bluesman, bluesmen (pl.) ‘blues musician’ bluesy Blu-​ray (trademark) [PR 2015] board (sense of) ‘committee’ bobby boboland ‘realm of the Bobos’ body art [PR 2015] body count body hackeur ‘body hacker’ body scanner bogey Bollywood time bomber abbr. ‘bomber jacket’ booké ‘booked’ bookmaking booming booties *booz ‘booze’ borderline [PR 2015] born again born again Christian born free borough botoxé ‘Botoxed’ botoxique (EN Botox (trademark) + FR suff. -​ique) bottle-​neck, bottleneck Music bottom kill boxing business boyfriend, boy-​friend, boy friend boy next door *boys band, boys-​band ‘boy band’ boy wonder brand director brander, brandeur abbr. ‘personal brander’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

1 1 1

1 1 1

n.m. n.m., adj. adj. n. n.m. n.f. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n.f. n. n.m. n. n.f. n.m. adj. adj., n. adj. n. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n. n. adj. n.m. adj. n. n. adj. n. phrase adj. n.m. adj. adj.

2 4 1 3 44 1 1 5 4 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 16 2 10 8 2 3 2 3 8 1 1 3 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 1 9 2 1 1 5 3 1

2 3 1 3 37 1 1 5 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 16 2 5 5 2 3 2 3 7 1 1 2 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 1 9 2 1 1 3 3 1

n.m. adj. n.m. n.m. phrase n.m. n. n.m. n.m.

2 2 1 13 1 5 1 2 2

2 2 1 12 1 5 1 1 2

v. pres. n.

147

148

148

Appendix Types break breake Tennis breakcore ‘a style of electronic dance music’ breakdancer breaker ‘a break dancer’ bright smile brit abbr. ‘British’ british (never capitalized) british blues boom british invasion britpop bro abbr. ‘brother’ broadcast bromance brother brown sauce browse browse bubble-​gum buddy movie bug bugge building complex bullet time bullshit bullying burger [PR 2015] burné ‘burned out’ burn-​out, burn out business angels business as usual business is business business model business oriented business school busing (sense of) ‘desegregation busing’ busy buzz buzze buzzent buzzer [PR 2015] buzz movie ‘a movie whose release causes a buzz (often generated by media coverage)’ buzzomètre ‘a tool used to measure buzz’ (EN buzz + o + FR mètre)

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

v. pres. n., adj.

1 1 2

1 1 2

n. n. n.m. adj. adj. phrase n.f. n.f. n. n.m. adj. n.m. n. v. pres. adj. n.m. v. pres. n. n.m. adj., n. adj. n. n.m. n.m. adj. n.m. n. phrase phrase n.m. adj. n.f. n.m. adj. v. pres. pres. infin. n.m.

1 1 1 2 22 2 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 8 5 3 9 11 2 4 1 8 3 2 1 2 5 1 5 3 1 1 1

1 1 1 2 21 2 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 8 5 3 1 7 2 4 1 8 3 2 1 1 2 1 5 3 1 1 1

n.m.

1

1

adj. n. n. adj., n. adj. n. n.f. phrase

1 3 1 5 4 1 1 1

1 1 1 5 4 1 1 1

C californicool call abbr. ‘call option’ call center camel (sense of) ‘color’ camerawoman cap and trade Economics ‘an approach for reducing greenhouse gas emissions’

 149

Appendix Types captain captcha car-​jacking, carjacking carrot cake cartoonesque ‘cartoon-​style’ cashback cash-​machine casual (of clothing) casual Video game casual fun casual gaming catch-​business catch-​up TV, catch up TV, catch-​up abbr. caterpillar caturday facetious ‘a Saturday designated for posting Internet images of cats’ caveman CDS abbr. ‘credit default swap’ center court Tennis chairman chap charity dinner charity shop charity’s youth café chart Music charter school cheapos (EN cheap + FR informal suff. -​os) check checke check in check-​in (se) check-​in check in, check out check-​point, check point, checkpoint check-​post chicagoan chief economist chill out chillwave Music ‘a genre with heavy use of synthesizers and techno effects with simple melodic lines’ chinese way of life (patterned on American way of life) chinglish chipmusic (see chiptune) chippy Brit. ‘a fish and chip shop’ (usu. ‘chip shop’) chiptune Music ‘a genre of synthesized music made by sound chips’ chopped salad circuit bending Music ‘a genre using randomly customized electronic devices’ city region civil disobedience clash clasher [PR 2015] class action, class-​action classic rock

Word class

Tokens in corpus

n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. adj. n. n.f. adj. adj., n. adj. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.f. n.m. n.

1 2 6 1 1 1 4 1 14 12 2 3 3 1 6 1 1

Number of articles 1 1 6 1 1 1 3 1 10 10 2 3 3 1 5 1 1

n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.f. adj. v. pres. v. pres. n. phrase n.m. n. adj. n. n. adj.

1 7 1 2 1 1 2 1 15 3 1 1 1 1 1 11 1 29 1 1 2 1 1

1 7 1 1 1 1 1 1 15 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 25 1 1 2 1 1

phrase

1

1

n.m. n.f. n.

1 5 1

1 4 1

n., adj.

2

2

n.f. n.m.

1 5

1 4

n.f. n.f. v. infin. n.f. n.

1 1 1 1 20 2

1 1 1 1 13 2

149

150

150

Appendix Types *clean, hold and build ‘clear, hold, and build’ Mil. ‘a counter-​insurgency approach’ cliffhanger climategate clogging closing cloud computing clown-​doctor clubber, clubbeur clubbing club house club-​kid clue cockring coffee-​shop cold band ‘carbon and stainless steel lines’ cold money cold wave college coloured, colored coloured township come-​back come-​backant comic(s) [PR 2015] comic book coming next ‘a TV newscast’ community board community center community manager compliant computer, computeur concept-​store conference call connected TV construction-​travelling (lit. ‘tracking shot-​ construction’) (opaque bilingual term) consulting controller conversation piece cool guy copycat copyleft corporate corporation task cost-​cutting cost disease Economics (Baumol’s cost disease) ‘a phenomenon where salaries in one sector rise only as a knock-​on effect of increases in other sectors’ cost killer, cost-​killer cost killing cosy-​corner cottaging couch gag ‘a running visual joke in the series “The Simpsons” ’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

phrase

1

1

n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n. n.m. n.m. n. n. n.m. n.m. n.m.

3 4 2 1 1 1 5 6 3 2 1 1 3 1

2 2 1 1 1 1 5 6 3 2 1 1 3 1

1 2 1 5 4 1 1 1 1 18 3 1 1 1 3 1 3 3 2 7 1

1 2 1 5 4 1 1 1 1 8 3 1 1 1 2 1 3 3 2 4 1

n. n.m. n.f. n. n.f. n.m. adj., n. adj. n.m. n.f. n.m. n.m.

4 1 1 1 1 2 8 7 1 4 1 1

3 1 1 1 1 1 8 7 1 1 1 1

n.m. n. n.m. n.m. n.m.

3 1 1 1 2

3 1 1 1 1

n.m. n.f., adj. adj. adj., n. adj. n. n.m. v. pres. part. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. adj. n. n.m. n.f. n.f. n.f.

 15

Appendix Types couch surfing, couch-​surfing cougar informal ‘an older woman seeking sexual activity with a younger man’ [PR 2015] cover cow-​girl, cowgirl crack-​house craftsman cranberry [PR 2015] crashgate crate digger ‘a hunter and collector of (rare) LPs’ crazy crazy coffin creative thinking credit crunch cree creeper crew croon crooner croone crooner + -​iser ‘-​ize’ croonerisant croonerise crooneuse ‘crooner’ cross-​gender, cross gender crossman ‘motocross racer’ cross-​media, crossmedia, cross-​média crossover, cross-​over crowdfunding crowdsourcing crunch crunch crunch ‘the sound of eating crisp foodstuff’ crunchy bad boy (informal crunchy ‘green, neo-​hippie’) crush film crystal meth CSB abbr. ‘corn soy blend’ cultural studies (pas notre) cup of coffee (patterned on not our cup of tea) curator custom cut cut up cybersquatting cyborg [PR 2015]

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.m. n.f.

2 4

2 4

n.f. n.f. n. n. n. n.m. n.

1 3 1 1 2 3 1

1 3 1 1 2 3 1

adj. n. n.m. adj. adj., n. adj. n.m. n.m. n.m. v. infin. pres. v. pres. part. pres. n.f. n.m., adj. n.m. adj., n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.

1 2 1 1 4 3 1 2 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 3 7 2 5 1 1

1 1 1 1 3 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 3 5 2 4 1 1

phrase

1

1

n.m. n.m., n.f. n. n. phrase

1 3 1 4 1

1 2 1 3 1

n.m. adj. n., adj. n.m. adj. n.m., adj. n.m. n., adj. n.m. adj.

1 1 5 3 2 3 2 10 9 1

1 1 5 3 2 3 2 6 5 1

2 1 2 1

2 1 1 1

D dad daddy daddy cool *damned ‘damn’

n.m. n. n. interj.

151

152

152

Appendix Types damned if you do, damned if you don’t dancefloor, dance-​floor, dance floor dancehall dance music dark dark pool dark wave darling darts data center datajournalism, datajournalisme datajournaliste ‘datajournalist’ datalyse datamining DDay deadline death deep Web defender déjetlag[u]‌er (se) ‘to recover from jetlag’ (FR dé- + EN jetlag + FR inf. suff. -​er) delicatessen deluxe design designez designent desk ‘a trading desk’ desktop documentary desperate devil dézoning die and retry Video game digger abbr. ‘crate digger’ digital drug digital journalism dime novel diner direct-​download director’s cut dirty Martini disaster tour diskmag disneylanderie ‘a Disneyland-​like structure’ (EN Disney + slightly pejorative FR suff. -​erie) disneylandisation disneyserie ‘a rubbish film à la Disney’ (EN Disney + FR niaiserie ‘rubbish’) dispatch box dixieland docklands doctor doctor shopping doggy bag dog-​sitter do-​it-​yourself do it yourself or die doller ‘cosplayer’

Word class phrase n.m. n.m. n.f. adj. n.f. adj. n. n. n.m. n. n.m. n.f. n.m. n. n.f. n. n.m. n.m. pron. v. infin. n.m. adj. v. pres. pres. n.m. n. adj. n.m. n.m. phrase n.m. n.f. n.m. n. n.m. n. n.m., n.f. n. n.m. n.m. n. n.f. n.f. n.f. n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n.m. n. adj., n. adj. n.m. phrase n.

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

1 19 7 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 13 1 1 1 1 2 5 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 2 2 1

1 18 7 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1

2 1

1 1

1 1 1 1 2 1 1 15 9 6 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 14 8 6 1 1

 153

Appendix Types don’t worry, be happy (after a song by McFerrin) donut [PR 2015] doo-​wop dorm dotcom double bind double-​decker double dip double-​play douchebag downgrade downsize downsizer downsizing downtempo downtown draft drafté ‘drafted’ drag artist drag (kings et queens) ‘drag (kings and queens)’ drama dream dreamcatcher, dream catcher dream machine dream team dress code, dress-​code dripping drop-​out dropper du name ‘to name-​drop’ drum drum and bass, drum’n bass, drum’n’bass dual-​play dualscreen dub Music dubplates dubstep duck face duck face mania duckfaciste dunk dutch print duty free

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

phrase

1

1

n. adj. n.m. adj. n.m. n. n. n.m. n. n.m. v. infin. n.m. adj. n. n.m. adj. n. n.

2 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1

2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1

n. n.m. n. n.f. n.f. n.m. n. n. phrasal v. n., adj. adj.

1 1 2 1 10 4 1 1 1 3 3

1 1 2 1 10 4 1 1 1 3 3

adj. n.m. n., adj. n.m. adj. n. n., adj. n.m. adj. n., adj. n.f. adj. phrase n.f. n. n.m. n.m.

1 1 14 9 5 1 6 5 1 4 2 2 1 1 1 1 2

1 1 14 9 5 1 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

adj. adj. n.f.

1 1 1

1 1 1

n. n.

1 1

1 1

E early nineties early 70’s early tape (referring to an early Hendrix recording) easy-​listening eat boy (referring to an American chef in Paris)

153

154

154

Appendix Types e-​bullying eco-​city eco-​friendly écolo-​friendly ‘eco-​friendly’ e-​commerce editing effect car eggs benedict ego trip eighties e-​learning [PR 2015] elephant fish embedded embedding emoticon empowerment enduring freedom enlarge your penis en real life ‘in real life’ entertainer entertainment e-​paper equity swap escaper escort escort-​boy escort girl, escort-​girl [PR 2015] E.T., go home (alternation on the film exhortation E.T., phone home) eurobond eurotrash evergreen executive woman, exécutive woman exit strategy expanded cinema extended remix e-​007

Word class

Tokens in corpus

n. n.f. adj. adj. n.m. n. n. n. n. adj., n. adj. n. n. n. adj. n. n. n. n. phrase phrase n. n.m. n.m. adj. n. n. n.m. n.f. phrase

1 1 1 1 11 1 1 1 1 7 4 3 1 1 9 2 1 4 1 1 1 3 14 1 2 1 1 1 10 1

Number of articles 1 1 1 1 9 1 1 1 1 6 4 3 1 1 9 1 1 4 1 1 1 3 14 1 1 1 1 1 9 1

n. adj. adj. n. n. n. n.m. n.

5 1 1 2 1 1 1 1

4 1 1 2 1 1 1 1

n.m.

4

1

n.m. n.f. n.m. adj., n. adj. n. n.m. adj.

1 3 1 6 3 3 1 1

1 2 1 2 1 2 1 1

n.f. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m.

1 2 2 2 2 1

1 2 2 2 1 1

F fab lab abbr. ‘fabrication laboratory’ ‘a place where personal digital fabrication is supplied’ fact-​checking factory fair use fake famous people famousse ‘famous’ (Gallicized phonetic spelling) fanbase fanboy fandom fan-​fest, fan fest fan park far east

 15

Appendix Types fashion fashion artist fashion designer fashion industry fashionista fashion time fashion victim, fashion-​victim, fashion victime fashion week fast-​fashion fast foutre (EN fast + FR foutre ‘fuck’) (patterned on fast food) fast news fast-​start fat cat featuring feed lot feel good femtocell field recording field report fifties fight fight fighter film fest final cut first class all included first lady first party Video game ‘developer of a video game concept in the company manufacturing it’ *first to pass the post ‘first past the post’ fish and chips, fish & chips *fish & chips shop Brit. ‘fish and chip shop’ fish cake fishing party fixie flagship flanker flash-​ballé (after n. flash-​ball (French registered trademark) ‘non-​lethal weapon’) flash-​forward, flashforward flashmob, flash-​mob, flash mob *flash-​sideway ‘flash sideways’ Film ‘a narrative technique (developed in TV show “Lost”), which shows what would have happened if a particular event had not’ flat tax ‘a system that applies the same tax rate, regardless of income’ fleshmob (patterned on flashmob) flicker

Word class

Tokens in corpus

adj., n. adj. n.f. n. n. n.f. n. n. n., adj. n. adj. n.f. n.f. n.

27 19 8 1 1 1 5 1 5 4 1 5 5 1

Number of articles 22 17 7 1 1 1 5 1 5 4 1 4 3 1

n. n.m. n. prep. n. n.m. n. n. n. n., adj. n.f. adj. n.f. v. infin. n.m. n.m. phrase n.f. n.

1 1 1 6 1 1 1 1 1 6 3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1

1 1 1 6 1 1 1 1 1 6 3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1

phrase n.m. n.

1 16 1

1 7 1

n. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. adj.

1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1

n. n.m. n.

2 7 1

2 7 1

n.f.

3

2

n. n.m.

1 1

1 1

155

156

156

Appendix Types flip flippe flipbook floppy disk flower power flunch (blend of f(uck) + lunch) fluo kid, fluokid ‘a young adept of electro music, typically wearing neon clothing’ fog folding folk music follower (Twitter) fooding ‘a culinary movement’ (blend of food + (feel)ing) foodingue ‘a food enthusiast’ (EN food + FR dingue ‘crazy, nuts’) forever forward forwarder forwarde fotofest frappuccino (trademark) fratboy free free abbr. ‘free jazz’ free cash flow freedom fighter freemium freemover ‘an international student who is not part of an exchange program’ free music free party free press free ride free style free-​to-​play freeze (F)(f)rench french artist (F)(f)rench bashing french connection french flair frenchie, frenchy (never capitalized) frenchie frenchie frenchy frenchy French kiss French paradox ‘the low rate of coronary heart disease in France, despite a diet rich in saturated fat’ French pianist french theory ‘French philosophical, literary, and social theory (incl. authors such as Derrida, de Beauvoir, and Bourdieu) with considerable influence in US universities since the 1970s’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

v. pres. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.

1 1 1 1 1 1 2

1 1 1 1 1 1 2

n.m. adj. n.f. n. n., adj.

2 1 1 9 3

2 1 1 9 3

adj., n.

3

2

adv. v. infin. pres. n.m. n.m. adj. adj. adj., n. adj. n.m. phrase n.m. adj. n.

3 5 3 2 1 1 1 1 7 5 2 3 1 5 1

3 5 3 2 1 1 1 1 7 5 2 2 1 5 1

n.f. n.f. n.f. n.m. adj. n.m. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.f. n.m. n., adj. n. adj. n. adj. n.m. n.m.

1 2 1 3 3 6 1 6 1 2 1 1 11 5 1 2 3 1 3

1 2 1 1 3 3 1 5 1 2 1 1 11 5 1 2 3 1 2

2 1

1 1

n.m. adj.

 157

Appendix Types (F)(f)rench touch ‘style of house music originated in France in the 1990s (incl. the band Daft Punk)’ friend (Facebook) friend-​2-​friend frog froggy from fronting S. African ‘any practices in circumvention of the B-​BBEE Act (incl. companies claiming that their (black) secretaries, gardeners, etc. are directors in order to secure contracts fraudulently)’ front office frontwoman FTM abbr. ‘female to male’ fuck fuck and refuck fuck closer full English breakfast full-​time business fumeurs-​land ‘smokers’ land’ (perh. patterned on Anglicism no man’s land) furry fuzz

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.f.

9

9

n. n. n. n. prep. n.m.

2 1 1 1 1 1

2 1 1 1 1 1

n.m. n. n.m. interj. phrase n.m. phrase phrase n.

1 1 1 5 1 1 2 1 1

1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1

n. adj.

1 1

1 1

n.m. n. n.m. n. n. phrase n.m. n.m. n., adj. n. adj. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. adj. n.m. n.f. n. n.f. adj. n. n. n.f. adj.

1 1 3 7 1 1 2 13 51 43 8 1 1 2 1 4 2 1 2 1 3 3 1 1 1

1 1 3 7 1 1 2 13 40 32 8 1 1 1 1 4 2 1 1 1 3 3 1 1 1

n. adj. n.f. n.m., n.f. n.m. n.

2 1 1 10 1 1

2 1 1 8 1 1

G gagging gameboy (trademark) Video game game design Video game game designer Video game game developer Video game the game is over game over Video game gameplay Video game gamer Video game game-​show Video game gaming Video game gaming companion Video game gang-​bang gangsta gangsta rap garbage culture gasp gated community gay-​friendly, gay friendly gay pride gay rights geekettte geekisante (EN geek + FR fem. suff. -​isante ‘izing’) geekitude geeko-​centré ‘geek-​centered’ gender history gender studies gender trouble general manager

157

158

158

Appendix Types general meeting geogame ghetto blaster, ghettoblaster ghost estate gif gig Music girl band girlfriend girlitude girl next door girl power girls wanna have fun (after a song by Cyndi Lauper) girly give me five glam glamrock glitch glitch art glitch horror glitter global small (referring to a car concept) globish glory hole glossé ‘glossed’ glossy go-​between God save the green (patterned on God Save the Queen) go fast abbr. ‘go-​fast boat’ gogo dancer, go-​go danseur ‘go-​go dancer’ goji [PR 2015] gold golden bad boy golden-​boy good cop, bad cop good guy goth gothic touch graffiti artist graffiti markup language gran’ma grassroots movement greatest local band great firewall green banking green card green drink green peas green-​tech greenwashing grindcore ‘an extreme genre of music that fuses crust punk with thrash metal and hardcore’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n. n.m. n.f. n.f. phrase n. phrase

1 1 3 2 2 1 1 4 1 2 1 1

1 1 3 2 2 1 1 4 1 2 1 1

adj. phrase adj., n. adj. n.m. adj. n. n.m. n.m. n., adj. n.m. adj. adj. n. n.m. adj. adj. n.m. phrase

3 1 11 7 4 1 7 2 1 5 3 2 1 2 1 1 4 1 1

3 1 11 7 4 1 3 1 1 4 2 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 1

n. n.m. n. adj. phrase n.m. phrase n.m. adj. n.f. n. phrase n. n. phrase n.m. n.m. n.f. n. n.m. n., adj. n.f. adj. n.m. adj.

6 2 1 1 1 1 2 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 4 3 1 5 1

2 2 1 1 1 1 2 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 5 1

 159

Appendix Types grip grooming groove groovent groover [PR 2015] groovy guerilla gardening guest guest-​house, guest house guest room guest star, guest-​star guitar hero gumboots gun gunmen gunship gypsie, gypsy gypsy music H hack hack hacker hackent aurait hacké hackathon hacké ‘hacked’ hackerspace hackeur (m.), hackeuse (f.) ‘hacker’ hacking hacklab hacktiviste (< bilingual pun based on activiste) haircut (sense of) ‘reduction’ half hall of fame halloweenesque handmade happeneur ‘an artist who performs happenings’ (Anglicism happen(ing) + FR suff. -​eur) happiness is a warm gun (after a song by the Beatles) happy ending hard boiled ‘a style of detective fiction’ hardcore hardcore gamer Video game hard news hardos Music ‘a fan of hard rock’ (abbr. EN hard (rock) + FR informal suff. -​os) hard power harsh noise hashtag [PR 2015] hat trick, hat-​trick headbanger headbanging

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.m. n. v. pres. infin. adj. n.f., n.m. n. n. n.f. n.f. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n., adj. n. adj. n.

4 1 3 1 2 10 4 5 2 1 11 8 3 2 1 1 4 2 2 1

2 1 3 1 2 10 2 5 2 1 9 8 2 2 1 1 4 2 2 1

n.m. v. infin. pres. past cond. n. adj. n. n. n.m. n. n.

1 4 2 1 1 1 5 1 7 8 1 6

1 4 2 1 1 1 4 1 7 6 1 5

n.f. n. n.m. adj. adj. n.m.

2 1 2 1 1 1

1 1 2 1 1 1

phrase

1

1

n.m. adj. adj., n. adj. n.m. n. n.m. n.

1 1 20 18 2 5 1 2

1 1 19 17 2 5 1 2

2 1 1 2 1 1

1 1 1 2 1 1

n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n.m.

159

160

160

Appendix Types healthy management practice heavy Music [PR 2015] heavy metal [PR 2015] hedge fund heroic fantasy heroic rock herself hic-​up yodel high art high frequency trading (HFT) high life, high-​life, hi-​life high society high-​tech, hi-​tech hijacking himself hindglish (blend of Hind(i) + (En)glish) hip-​hopeur ‘a hip-​hop artist’ (EN hip-​hop + FR suff. -​eur) hipster [PR 2015] hoax hobo hockey mom holiday film homecoming revolution home-​jacking homeless home-​made, homemade, home made homepage home-​studio home sweet home hometown homme-​performer (lit. ‘man-​performer’) honk honky tonk hool abbr. ‘hooligan’ hootenanny hospitality hostel hot-​spot house music housing first hub [PR 2015] hula hoop, hula-​hoop, houla-​hoop (Gallicized houla) human beatbox, human beat box human free hung parliament hut hype hype-​o-​mètre hyperfashion

Word class

Tokens in corpus

phrase adj. n., adj. n. adj. n.m. n.f. adj. pron. n.m. n. n.m. n., adj. n. adj. adj. n., adj. n.m. pron. n.m. n.m.

1 6 10 9 1 98 3 1 1 1 1 1 4 2 2 2 3 3 16 1 1

1 6 9 9 1 50 3 1 1 1 1 1 4 2 2 2 3 1 16 1 1

1 3 4 3 1 2 1 1 1 3 4 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 7 4 3 1 2 1 1 1 9 1 1

1 3 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 3 4 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 7 4 3 1 2 1 1 1 9 1 1

n.m. n.m. n., adj. n. adj. n.f. n. n.f. n.m. n. adj. n.f. n.m. phrase n.f. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n.m., adj. n. n. n. n.f. n. n.m. n., adj. n. adj. n. adj. n.m. n. n.f. n.m. n.

Number of articles

 16

Appendix Types

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n. n.

1 1

1 1

phrase

1

1

n.m. n. n. adj. prep. adj. adv., adj. phrase n. phrase adj. adj. phrase adv. n. phrase phrase phrase phrase n. n. phrase phrase pron. n.m. n. n.m. n.f. n.m. pron. phrase phrase

1 3 2 1 2 4 4 1 3 1 1 1 2 1 5 2 3 2 1 2 1 2 7 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1

1 1 2 1 2 4 4 1 3 1 1 1 2 1 5 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 7 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1

n. n.m. v. infin. n.f. adj. v. infin. n.f. n.m. n. adj. n.m. n., adj. adj., n.

1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 3 3

1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 3

I ice-​cream identwitté (FR iden(tit)é + EN twitt) (in the pun usurpateur d’identwitté ‘Twitter account faker’ < usurpateur d’identité ‘identity thief’) I hate you so much right now (after a line from the song “Caught out there” by Kelis) imageboard in-​between inch included including indie indoor in English info-​tainment, infotainement, infotainment in french in game inner in real life inside insider in the mood in the mood for in the pocket in the sixties irish stew iron Music is alive (perh. after Elvis is alive) is back it it bag (patterned on it girl) iteming it-​galurin ‘it hat’ (patterned on it girl) it girl, it-​girl it-​mot ‘it word’ (patterned on it girl) itself I was there I woerth it (Woerth: French politician) (after the advertising slogan Because I’m worth it) J jail jailbreak jailbreak (EN n.) jailbreaker jailbreak-​attitude jailbreaké jam jammer jammeuse Roller derby ‘jammer’ jazz-​band jazz night jazz’n’roll jet-​designer jet lag, jetlag jetlagg[u]‌é, jet lagg[u]é ‘jet-​lagged’

161

162

162

Appendix Types jet-​largué, jetlargué ‘jetbanned’ (patterned on jet lagg[u]‌é ‘jet-​lagged’) jetpack jet-​setteur (m.), jet-​setteuse (f.) ‘jet-​setter’ [PR 2015] jew deal jitterbug jumper ‘a person that jumps to their death because they’re forced from a building’ junior team junk bond junk food junk shot *junk yards (sg.) ‘junkyard’ junky

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

adj., n.

2

2

n. n.

1 3

1 3

n. n.m. n.

1 1 1

1 1 1

n.m. n. n.f. n.m. n.m. adj., n. adj. n.

1 1 5 5 1 7 4 3

1 1 5 3 1 6 4 2

n.m. n. phrase n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n.f. n.m. n.f. n. adj. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. v. pres. part. n. n.

1 1 1 2 4 2 4 1 1 2 1 4 1 3 4 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 2 3 2 4 1 1 1 1 4 1 2 4 1 1 1 1 1

n.m. n.m n. phrase

1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

n.m. adj. n. n. n.f., adj. n.m. n.m.

1 3 1 2 3 5 5

1 3 1 2 3 5 2

n. phrase n. n.m.

2 8 1 1

1 8 1 1

K keylogger keynotes kick and rush kick boxing, kickboxing kid kidding killer killer application killer instinct kill team king of comedy king size kiss closer kiss-​in kitesurf, kite surf kitty pidgin ‘lolspeak’ knock-​out knock-​outant Korea watcher kush doctor L lab-​meeting labor camp lady *gouvernor ‘lady governor’ the lady vanishes (after a film title by Hitchcock) lag laid back, laid-​back landscape lane lapsteel, lap steel laptop laptopogram ‘a screenshot produced by pressing photosensitive paper to a computer screen’ laser disc last but not least late show LBO abbr. ‘leveraged buyout’

 163

Appendix Types lead guitar lead independent director leather boots legal thriller lemon curd let’s twitt level design levelling up liberal license to kill life style, lifestyle line-​up lipdub, lip-​dub ‘a music video made using lip synching and audio dubbing’ lipstick liquor store little (used before a first name) little big man living theatre lobbyisme, lobbysme lock abbr. ‘locking’ ‘a style of funk dance’ lock-​down, lockdown lol [PR 2015] lolspeak lonelygirl 15 (after a web series) loner lonesome cow-​boy long beef ‘a sandwich from Belgian fast food chain Quick’ loop loop station ‘a device for applying a range of effects to electronic music’ lose, loose ‘a state of life failure’ «lost», but not least (patterned on last but not least) (pun referring to last episode of TV series “Lost”) lounge love love affair love and dice love-​hotel love-​love lovers rock love story low-​budget low copy number (LCN) low-​cost, low cost [PR 2015]

low design low-​fi, lo-​fi low-​pop, lo-​pop low-​tech luna-​park ‘an amusement park’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.f. phrase n. n.m. n. phrase n. n.m. adj. phrase n.m. n.m. n.m.

1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 6 5 7

1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 5 5 5

n.m. n.m. adj. phrase n.m. n.m. n.

1 2 2 1 1 2 2

1 2 2 1 1 2 1

n. n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n.m. n.m.

3 7 1 1 1 2 1

2 6 1 1 1 1 1

n.m. n.f.

1 1

1 1

n.f. phrase

8 1

8 1

9 6 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 5 1 2 68 41 23 4 1 13 11 2 2 7 1

6 5 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 46 35 14 3 1 12 11 2 2 5 1

adj., n. adj. n.m. adj. n.f. phrase n.m. adj. n.m. n.f. adj. n. adj., n. adj. n.m. n.f. n.m. adj., n. adj. n.m., n.f. adj. n.m. n.m.

163

164

164

Appendix Types

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n. v. pres. n.m. n.m.

1 1 1 2 1

1 1 1 2 1

phrase

2

2

v. infin. adj. n. adj., n. adj. n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n. n.m. n. n. n.m. adj., n. adj. n. n.m. n.m.

1 1 1 2 23 20 3 1 1 5 2 11 1 1 1 4 3 1 5 1

1 1 1 2 21 18 3 1 1 4 2 10 1 1 1 4 3 1 5 1

n. v. pres. n.m. n.m., n.f. adj.

1 1 1 3 2 1

1 1 1 3 1 1

n.m. n.

1 1

1 1

n.m. n.m. n. n.

3 2 1 4

3 2 1 3

n.m.

2

1

adj. v. pres. n.

1 1 1 2

1 1 1 2

n.m. phrase n.

1 1 2

1 1 2

1 2 25

1 2 20

M macro-​blogging madison n. (dance) madison magic mirror, magic-​mirror magic smile ‘a place for quick teeth whitening treatments’ magnolias for ever (after a song by Claude François) mail ‘email’ mailer mailesque ‘related to e-​mail’ mailing-​list mainstream make over make-​up mall malware managing director managing partner map mapping marketé ‘marketed’ marketeur ‘marketer’ marketeux ‘marketer’ (morpheme replacement with FR informal suff. -​eux) mash abbr. Brit. ‘mashed potatoes’ mashed potato n. (dance) mashed-​potato mash-​up, mash up mass start masterchiant informal ‘very boring, deadly’ (patterned on masterchef in context) mastering Music master of *ceremony ‘master of ceremonies’ masterpiece matching mayday mayor (online term specific to users of a mobile search app) mealie pap S. African ‘a corn-​based porridge’ media-​training meet meets melting potes, melting-​potes (lit. ‘melting buddies’) ‘friends with different stories, styles, etc.’ (patterned on melting-​pot) memory disk men in white (patterned on men in black) metalleux (m.), metalleuse (f.) ‘(heavy) metal musician’ me-​too (product) mickey abbr. ‘Mickey Mouse’ microblogging, micro-​blogging [PR 2015]

n. n. n.m.

 165

Appendix Types microhouse *middle age crisis ‘midlife crisis’ middle class, middle-​class middle office middle of the road middle-​tech mid 90’s mid-​60’s mid-​sixties mid tempo midterms abbr. ‘midterm elections’ midterm elections Mina’s touch (reference to successful crime writer Denise Mina’s style) (patterned on Midas touch) mind cure minstrel mirror people miscasting misfit misfitude mister misternobody mix [PR 2015] mixtape moanin’ blues, moanin’ abbr. mockumentary mod modern dance modern jazz modern style mogul mohawk money time Sports ‘a crucial moment of a match, typically at the end’ montage cut *monthy pythonien ‘Monty Pythonian’ mood mood jazz, mood abbr. moonboots mortgage mother fucker motion-​capture motion graphic mountaintop removal mouth bow moxibustion multitouch mushy peas must have must hear my last frontier my love

Word class

Tokens in corpus

n.f. n.f. n., adj. n.f. adj. n.m. phrase adj. n. adj. adj. n.f. n. n. n.f.

1 1 5 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 37 1 1

Number of articles 1 1 5 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 23 1 1

n.f. n. n. n.m. n. n.f. n. n.m. n.m. n. n., adj. n.m. n. n.f. n.m. adj. n. n. n.m.

1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 46 1 2 1 3 2 2 1 6 1 3

1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 39 1 2 1 3 2 2 1 6 1 3

n. adj. n.m. n. n. n. phrase n.f. n.m. n. n.m. n.f. adj. n.m. n.m. n. phrase phrase

2 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 2

2 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 2

n.m. phrase n.m. n.m.

1 3 5 1

1 3 5 1

N naked Friday name and shame name-​dropping, name dropping namestorm

165

16

166

Appendix Types nanny nasty party nature writing navy near death experience néo-​metal nerd [PR 2015], nerde (EN nerd + FR fem. suff. -​e) nerd attitude netbook [PR 2015] netlabel ‘an online record label’ network never more new new age new burlesque new comer new deal new economy new folk new generation new journalism new management new-​punk new rave news news and talk news desk newsfeed newsletter [PR 2015] newsmagazine, newsmag abbr. new style new tory new wave, new-​wave [PR 2015] next Computing (< next button) nexter ‘to click next on the screen’ next gen nice night night-​clubbeuse ‘nightclubber’ night-​clubbing, nightclubbing night life nineties ninety-​niner no bail out nobody is perfect no-​budget no car « no car » generation no comment no Dédé day (Dédé: first name) no foot ‘no soccer’ no future

Word class

Tokens in corpus

n.f. n.m. n.m. n.f. n.f. n.m. adj., n. adj. n. n.f. n.m. n.m. n.m. phrase adj. adj. n., adj. n.m. adj. n.m. n.m. n. adj. adj. n.m. n.m. adj. adj. n. phrase n.m. n.m. n.f. n.m. n.m. n., adj. adj., n. adj. n.f. v. infin. adj. adj. n.f. n.f. n.m. n.f. adj. n. phrase phrase adj. n. phrase phrase phrase phrase n., adj. n.m. adj.

1 2 2 1 2 1 11 7 4 1 5 1 6 2 1 5 5 3 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 10 1 1 2 3 2 2 2 37 21 16 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 5 1 1 4 1 4 1 1 5 3 2

Number of articles 1 2 2 1 2 1 11 7 4 1 5 1 5 1 1 5 4 2 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 10 1 1 1 3 2 1 2 34 18 16 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 4 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 5 3 2

 167

Appendix Types no impact man noisy no kill no limit nomade’s land ‘nomad’s land’ (patterned on Anglicism no man’s land) no mariage day ‘no wedding day’ non cover officer non-​pipeule ‘non-​celebrity’ (< non-​people) nonsense nonsensique no relation to the shoes (parenthetical comment on a bilingual pun on Doc Martin (person)/​Doc Martens (British shoes)) no réveillon ‘no New Year’s Eve’ no sex intergroupes in the cavernes périgourdines? ‘No intergroup sex in the caves of Périgord?’ no sex last night no sex last night with Marie-​Antoinette (one of the multiple-​choice answers to a question from a Libération quiz on royalty) no smoking day no sorcier day ‘no sorcerer day’ no, sorry notebook [PR 2015] no télé ‘no TV’ nothing not in my backyard no voiture ‘no car’ now no wind’s land nude nudge nudie number one nursery rhyme, nursery-​rhyme nuts

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n. adj. n.m. adj., n.m. n.m.

1 6 1 3 1

1 6 1 3 1

phrase n. n. n.m. adj. phrase

1 1 1 3 3 1

1 1 1 3 2 1

n.m. phrase

1 1

1 1

phrase phrase

1 1

1 1

phrase phrase phrase n.m. phrase pron. phrase phrase adv. n.m. adj. n.m. n. n., adj. n. adj.

1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 1

1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 1

1 3 1 2 1 19 2 1 1 1 1 3 12 8 2 2 2 1

1 3 1 2 1 19 2 1 1 1

O offline off the record old old-​fashioned, *old fashion oldies old school old style old timer old tory olympic store one on one one-​woman-​show, one-​woman show online

only on the road

adj. phrase adj. n., adj. adj. adj. adj. n. adj. n. n.m. n.m. adj., adv., n. adj. adv. n.m. adv. phrase

3 11 7 2 2 2 1

167

168

168

Appendix Types on the rocks open source, open-​source open space, open-​space open world operating system organic or not outdoor out of order outplacement outstream over (used before an adjective) overbooking overdub overhype *over lol ‘lol again’ over-​over-​size oversize oversized over the Rambow (patterned on the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”)

Word class

Tokens in corpus

phrase adj., n. adj. n. n.m. n. n. adj. phrase adj. phrase n. adj. prefix n.m. n.m. adj. phrase adj. adj. adj. phrase

2 4 3 1 10 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1

Number of articles 2 4 3 1 10 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 4 1 1 5 1 1 2

1 4 1 1 2 1 1 2

n.m. n.m. n.f. n. adj. phrase phrase n.m. n. n.m. n. n.f.

1 15 2 1 2 1 4 1 1 2 3 3

1 13 2 1 1 1 4 1 1 2 3 3

n. n. adj., n. adj. n.m. n.

1 1 24 14 10 1

1 1 17 12 9 1

phrase

1

1

n.

1

1

P packed lunch pad padding paddle-​board page three girl, page three abbr. panty [PR 2015] paper parking day ‘annual event where artists and citizens convert metered parking spots into temporary public parks’ party-​game pass pasta pasty patché ‘patched’ pay what you want peace and love, peace & love peak demand peak oil peanut butter peanuts (sense of) ‘a paltry amount’ pedal-​steel guitar, pedal steel guitar, guitare pedal-​steel peer effect peer review peer to peer, peer-​to-​peer people-​addict ‘a person addicted to (gossip about) celebrities’ people have the power (after a song by Patti Smith) peoplelisé ‘covered by the media in a gossipy and excessive fashion’ (< EN people ‘celebrities’ + FR suff. -​isé ‘ized’)

n. n.m. n. n. phrase, n.f. n.m. n.m. n.

 169

Appendix Types peoplisation (see ‘pipolisation’) peopolisation (see ‘pipolisation’) (with partially Gallicized phonetic spelling) perfecto ‘a leather jacket’ (trademark) [PR 2015] perform performe performer personal brander personal branding personal digital assistant photo call photoshop photoshoper physical theatre physics physiologist piano-​toy picture disc piercé ‘pierced’ pink pipe band pipolerie ‘gossip about celebrities’ (< phonetically Gallicized people ‘celebrities’ + FR slightly pejorative suff. -​erie) pipolisation ‘gossipy and excessive media coverage of celebrities’ (< phonetically Gallicized people ‘celebrities’ + FR suff. -​isation ‘ization’) [PR 2015] pipolitisation ‘gossipy media coverage of politicians’ (blend of phonetically Gallicized people ‘celebrities’ + politique ‘politics’ + FR suff. -​isation ‘ization’) pitch (singing) pitcher pit lane, pit-​lane, pitlane pit stop pixie the place to be plane spotter planner play player (sense of) ‘seducer’ player’s lounge, players lounge playlist, play-​list playmate play-​off please plexicushion plop plug plug-​in, plugin plumpy nut ‘Plumpy’Nut’ (trademark) ‘a peanut-​based paste for treatment of malnutrition’ po’boy pocket podcasté ‘podcast’ point-​average

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.f. n.f.

2 1

2 1

n.m.

6

6

v. pres. n. n. n.m. phrase n.m. v. infin. adj. n. n. n. n.m. adj. adj. n.m. n.f.

1 1 9 1 7 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 2 1 2 3

1 1 9 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 2

n.f.

6

6

n.f.

1

1

1 1 4 2 1 4 2 1 1 7 2 25 12 12 2 1 1 2 3 1

1 1 3 1 1 3 1 1 1 3 2 20 7 10 2 1 1 2 3 1

1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

v. infin. n.f. n. n. phrase n. n. interj. n. n.m. n.f. n.f. n. adv. n.m. interj. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. adj. adj. n.m.

169

170

170

Appendix Types pointing police procedural polish political correctness politically correct pom-​pom girl pop-​boogaloo ‘a type of (dance) music’ pop-​corn movie, pop corn movie pop culture popisme Music (EN pop + FR -​isme) pop music poppers poppy pop song the population is the prize (after a reference to military officer Galula’s laws for counterinsurgency) pop-​up [PR 2015, sense of ‘pop-​up book’] pop-​up ‘temporary (business, exhibition, etc.)’ pork pie porn olympics porn valley pornstar positive movie postcolonial studies post-​drugstorien (EN drugstore + FR suff. -​ien) postgaming poultry Music powerpoint power-​pop power 4tet pow wow practice prayer pastor preach groove preppy pricing print private dining experience private dining room private equity process pro-​choice professor emeritus profiler pro-​gaming Video game prog folk prog rock pro-​life protest protest-​folk protest-​singer, protest singer protest song psychobilly Music ‘a rockabilly subgenre that mixes elements of punk rock, rock and roll, and rhythm and blues’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. adj. n.f. n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n.f. n.m. adj. n.f. phrase

1 2 3 1 1 4 1 3 2 1 3 8 1 3 1

1 2 3 1 1 4 1 3 2 1 3 5 1 3 1

adj.

3

3

adj.

1

1

adj. n. n.f. n. n.m. n. adj.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1

n. n., adj. n. n.m. n.m. n., adj. n.m. n. n.m. adj. n. n.m. phrase phrase n. n.m. adj. n. n. n. adj. n. n., adj. n. adj. n. n.f. n.m., adj.

2 2 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 3 6 1 1 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 2 3 3

1 2 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 3 1 2 1 1 3 6 1 1 1 1 2 2 3 1 1 2 3 2

 17

Appendix Types psy-​soap (blend of psy(chologique) + soap (opera)) PUA abbr. ‘pickup artist’ public editor publicist pulp abbr. ‘pulp magazine’ punch avoir punché punchline punchy punkitude pure player ‘a company that operates only on the Internet’ put abbr. ‘put option’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.

1

1

n. n.m. n. n. v. past infin. n. adj. n.f. n.

2 1 3 1 1 1 1 6 1 5

1 1 2 1 1 1 1 5 1 3

n.

3

1

8 5 3 5 1 2 1 21 18 2 1 1

5 5 1 2 1 2 1 18 16 2 1 1

n. n.m. n. n. n. n. n.m. n.f. n.

1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

n. n.m. n.f. n.f.

1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

n.m. v. infin. adj. n., adj. n. adj. n.f.

7 1 1 2 7 5 2 2

7 1 1 2 2 1 2 1

n. n. adj.

1 1 1

1 1 1

n.

2

2

Q quadruple play quantitative easing quarterback queen queen mother queer

quidditch (Harry Potter)

adj., n. adj. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n.f. adj, n., v. adj. n. infin. n.m.

R rabbit hole race center rack (sense of) ‘shelf’ rail-​movie rallycross rallyman ‘a racing driver’ ranking rave party-​barbecue reader ‘an e-​book reader (manufactured by Sony)’ real time Web real wax reap-​royness (opaque sense) reblockbusterisation (< re- + EN blockbuster [PR 2015] + FR -​isation) reboot reboot rebooter rebooté ‘rebooted’ reborn abbr. ‘reborn doll’ reborneuse ‘reborner’ ‘an artist who makes reborn dolls’ recepted item Computing red bond Economics redbul[l]‌ique ‘hyperactive, as following consumption of energy drinks’ (EN Red Bull (trademark) + FR suff. -​ique) redlisté ‘blacklisted’

171

172

172

Appendix Types redneck red-​snapper remember repeat after me repeater ‘a returning customer’ reporting researcher reset resort retrogaming Video game retweet re-​use reverb revival rewind rhythmicon rhythm’n’blues rich and famous ring back tone rink hockey riot-​gun roadbook roadie road-​manager road show road trip robocop rock around the quiz (patterned on the song “Rock Around the Clock”) rock band rock-​critic rock’n’rap rock’n’roll life rockocracy rocksteady rocky role model romanoland ‘the land of the Roma’ romantic comedy rookie room-​service roots ruling class running gag

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n., adj. n. adj. n. interj. phrase n. n. n. n. n. n.m. n. n.m. n. n. n.m. n.m. adj. phrase n. n. n. n.m. n. n.m. n.m. n. n. phrase

7 4 3 1 7 1 1 5 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 3 2 1 1 1

6 3 3 1 7 1 1 4 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1

n.m. adj. n. n.f. n.f. adj. adj. n. n. n.f. n., adj. n.m. adj. n.f. n.m.

1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 11 1 6

1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 11 1 6

2 1 2 1 1 3 1 3 1 2 2 3

2 1 2 1 1 3 1 3 1 2 2 2

S safe safe sex safety car salade-​bar salary cap salaryman, salarymen salesman sample samplait samplant sample sampling

adj. n.m. n.f. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. v. imperf. pres. part. adj. n.m.

 173

Appendix Types a sanity clause sardine run Sarkoboy ‘a protégé of Sarkozy’ sausage roll scam scan scat Music scatte schoolboy *sciences studies ‘science studies’ scorecard score a scoré screener screen test script doctor seabus sea, sex, and sun second life secure security contractor see you later self-made-man self-​made-woman senior producer serendipity serendipity ‘a type of cocktail’ serial anticipateur ‘serial anticipator’ serial digger serial dragueur ‘serial flirt’ serial entrepreneur serial killer, serial-​killer, serial killeuse (f.) serial loser serial lover serial (rock) killer serious game Video game setting seventies *sex and drug ‘sex and drugs’ sex-​box sex buzz sex, drugs and rock’n’roll; sex and drugs and rock’n’roll sex gang sex-​office sex-​pistol sex-​positive feminism sextape sex worker shack shadow boxing shadow cabinet shadow company shadow football shake shakons shale gas

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

phrase n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n.m. v. pres. n. n. n.f. v. passé comp. n. n.m. n. n.m. phrase n.f. adj. n. phrase n.m. n.f. n. n.f. n.m. n.m. n. n. n. n.

1 1 1 1 1 8 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 25

1 1 1 1 1 6 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 24

n. n. n. n.m. n.m. adj., n. adj. n. phrase n. n.m. phrase

2 2 1 2 1 54 33 21 1 1 1 4

1 2 1 2 1 50 32 21 1 1 1 4

n.m. n.m. adj. n.m. n.f. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.f. n.m. v. imper. n.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 3 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 3 1 1 1 1

173

174

174

Appendix Types shale oil shame sharp shave-​ice ‘a dessert made of shavings of ice’ she is shit shit box shock and awe shock-​artist shoegaze shoot’em up Video game shooter-​game shooting ‘photo shoot’ shopper shopping bag shopping mall shortbread short-​com ‘a TV series of short programs, between sketch and drama’ (after sitcom, rom-​com, etc.) short-​list short selling short-​track showcase showman, showmen showreel shuffle Music side event sidemen side project silly week singing in the foin ‘singing in the hay’ (after the song “Singing in the Rain”) sing-​jay sister sitcomesque sixth form sixties ska [PR 2015] skate-​painting ‘the art of painting skateboards’ skatepark skater skateur ‘skater’ [PR 2015] skeleton (sense of) ‘sliding sport’ skiffle Music skyline Skype (trademark) skypent slacker slap slap slappe slapstick slasher sleeping partner Brit. ‘silent partner’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n. n. adj. n.

1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1

phrase interj. n.f. phrase n. n.m., adj. n. n.m. n.m. n. n. n.m. n. n.f.

1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 1 1 3 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1

n.f. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n. n. n. n. n. phrase

5 1 3 1 4 1 1 3 1 1 1 1

5 1 2 1 4 1 1 2 1 1 1 1

n. n.f. adj. n. n., adj. n. adj. n., adj. n.m. adj. n.m.

1 2 1 1 32 17 15 11 6 5 2

1 2 1 1 31 17 15 11 6 5 1

1 2 8 2 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3

1 2 8 2 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3

n.m. n. n.m. n. adj., n.m. n.m. v. pres. n. n. v. pres. n.m. n.m. n.m.

 175

Appendix Types slick (referring to tires) slide abbr. ‘slide guitar’ slide (PowerPoint) slim slime slop slow food slow journalism slow travel slunch (blend of s(upper) + lunch) small cod small talk smart gate smart grid smartphone [PR 2015] smartphoniste ‘a smartphone user’ smoothie [PR 2015] snacking snooker snuff snuff movie snuff thriller snuff tv so british so British, isn’t it? soccer mom so chic socialite social network social networker social time social washing so easy so French so frenchy soft power so funny, isn’t it? so Goude (pun on so good with reference to artist Jean-​Paul Goude) sold out soliparty ‘a party/​charity event organized for solidarity with people or a cause’ (German Anglicism) somewhere over the Rambo (patterned on the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”) songwriter songwriting sorry sorry, the Père Noël is dead ‘sorry, Santa Claus is dead’ so stupid so true soul brother soul music sound design sound designer soundpainter soundpainting sound system, sound-​system space opera

Word class adj., n. n.f. n. adj. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m., adj. n.m. n. n.m. n. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n. phrase phrase n.f. phrase n. n. n. n.m. n.m. phrase phrase phrase n.m. phrase phrase

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

3 3 1 4 1 5 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 1 96 1 2 1 8 1 3 1 1 2 1 1 2 4 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 3 1 1

2 3 1 4 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 64 1 2 1 1 1 3 1 1 2 1 1 2 4 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 3 1 1

adj. n.f.

5 1

5 1

phrase

1

1

n. n.m. interj. phrase

15 1 1 1

13 1 1 1

phrase phrase n. n.f. n.m. n. n. n.m. n.m. n.

1 1 1 3 1 1 3 6 12 2

1 1 1 3 1 1 1 2 9 2

175

176

176

Appendix Types spam spammer spambot spam-​free speak special guest speech act speed-​dating, speed dating speed-​meeting business speedy spill spin doctor spinning spin-​off splash spliff, *splif split split a split[t]‌é avait splitté, avaient splitté splitté ‘split’ split screen, split-​screen split vote spoiler spoil spoiler spoilera spoken word sporting club sportsman, sportsmen spotlight spotter ‘a police officer that identifies hooligans in English stadiums’ spread ‘the difference between two rates’ springbok sprunch (blend of sp(a) + (b)runch) spy girl stalker stand-​up starring starry night stars & stripes (bouton) start ‘start (button)’ startour ‘a bus tour of Hollywood celebrities’ homes’ steadycam steamboat steel drum steel pan stickage ‘laying boycott stickers (on products)’ stickman stiletto stock-​shot stomp stop-​motion stop-​motion capture story storytelling straight (referring to a piece of clothing)

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

2 2 1 1 3 1 2 8 1 2 2 5 1 2 1 2 5 3 1 2 1 7 1 9 4 3 1 5 1 2 2 1

2 2 1 1 3 1 1 8 1 2 2 5 1 1 1 2 4 3 1 2 1 6 1 9 4 3 1 4 1 1 2 1

16

9

n., adj. n.m. n. n. n. prep. n. adj. adj. n.m.

2 2 1 1 8 8 1 1 1 1

2 1 1 1 6 8 1 1 1 1

n.f. n.m. n.m. n. n.

1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1

n.m. n. n. n.m. n.m. n.f. n.f. n.m. adj.

1 5 2 1 1 1 1 21 1

1 5 2 1 1 1 1 17 1

v. infin. n.m. adj. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. phrase adj. n. n. n.m. n.m. interj. n., adj. n.m. v. passé comp. pluperf. adj. n.m. n.m. n.m. v. infin. fut. n.m. n. n. n.m. n. n.m.

 17

Appendix Types straight ahead jazz streaming [PR 2015] streamlining street street art [PR 2015] street artist, street-​artist, street artiste street culture street fashion street painting street pastor street pasty streetwear strip abbr. ‘comic strip’ strip-​poker stuffed banana subaltern studies suburbs subway successful success story, success-​story summa cum laude summer of love superflat (opaque sense) supergold (referring to a type of credit card) surbooker ‘to overbook’ surfing club surf music surge surrogacy survival horror sustainable SVP abbr. ‘sexually violent predator’ swamp pop sweatshop *sweet à capuche, *sweet-​capuche ‘hoodie’ (*sweet < FR sweat < EN sweatshirt) swingaroo swinging London switch switcher ai switché sword and sandal

Word class

Tokens in corpus

n.m. n.m. n.m. adj., n. adj. n. n.m. n. n.f. n.f. n.m. n.m. n.m. n., adj. n.m. adj. n. n.m. n. n. n.f. n.m. adj. n.f. adv. phrase adj. adj.

1 22 1 6 5 1 11 7 1 3 1 16 1 6 5 1 11 1 1 1 3 1 1 35 1 2 1 1

Number of articles 1 17 1 5 4 1 6 5 1 1 1 2 1 5 5 1 7 1 1 1 3 1 1 34 1 2 1 1

v. (infin.) n. n.f. n.m. n.f. n.m. adj. adj. n.m. n.m. n.m.

1 2 2 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 2

1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 2

n. n.m., adj. v. infin. passé comp. phrase

1 3 2 1 1 1

1 3 2 2 1 1

n.f. phrase phrase

3 1 1

1 1 1

n.m. n.m. n.m. n.f. n. n.m. n.

2 6 1 4 2 1 1

1 3 1 4 1 1 1

T tagline take a chance on take a chance on TV (after the song “Take a Chance on Me” by ABBA) take away talk abbr. ‘talk-​show’ talk-​over tap dance tap dancer tap dancing tapping finger

177

178

178

Appendix Types targeted task force tax cut tchat ‘online chat’ (phonetically spelled variant of chat) [PR 2015] tchat(t)er ‘to online chat’ (phonetically spelled variant of chatter) [PR 2015] tchat(t)er tchatent tchate tchatant tea-​partier team Sports team leader team manager tease teasait avait teasé teaser tech company techie techno-​center teddy boy, teddy-​boy teenage teenage movie, teenage-​movie teen comedy teen-​movie teen novel teen-​pop telenovela screening tenniswoman ‘female tennis player’ testing thank God thanks thank you for the doc (abbr. ‘documentary’) that is the question the1 thieves’ cant think and act tank think tank, think-​tank third party this is the end 3D washing thumbs up timecode time is money timeline time-​shifting to be or not to be toffie ‘toffee’ (Gallicized phonetic spelling) toilet reader token tom abbr. ‘tom-​tom’

Word class adj. n.f. n. n.m. v. infin. pres. pres. pres. part. n. n.m. n. n. v. imperf. pluperf. n. n.f. n. n.m. n.m. adj. n.m. n.f. n.m. n.m. adj. n. n.f. n.m. phrase n. phrase phrase stressed art. n.m. phrase n.m. adj. phrase n.m. phrase n. phrase n.f. n.m. phrase n.m. n.m. n. n.

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

1 4 1 22

1 3 1 17

8

8

4 2 1 1 1 12 1 2 2 1 1 4 1 2 1 5 3 2 1 2 1 1 1 3 7 1 1 1 1 ?

4 2 1 1 1 11 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 4 3 2 1 2 1 1 1 3 6 1 1 1 1 ?

1 2 72 2 2 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1

1 1 63 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1

1 1 1

1 1 1

1  It was virtually impossible to go manually through the hundreds of links for the in search of its occurrences as a stressed article (see section 4.4.2).

 179

Appendix Types too much top-​case top-​gun top kill topless top team top ten torture chart ‘a playlist used to torture detainees in US military prisons’ touchphone tower defense toy toy boy toy piano tracklisting tracks (figurative sense of ) ‘marks left by a person’ trade trader-​killer (perh. patterned on serial killer) traditional traffic manager trail trail blazer trailer (sense of) ‘preview’ trailer ‘trail runner’ trailer park traileur abbr. ‘ultratrailer’ trainer ‘a sports shoe’ transfer pricing transmedia storytelling trap a été trappé avait été trappé trappé ‘trapped’ trash movie trashy traveller tremor trendy tribute tribute band tribute to trigging trip-​hop triple play, triple-​play Telecom tripod true republican turker ‘an Internet drudge’ turntablism tutorial tuxedo twang

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

adv. n.m. n. n., adj. n.m. adj. adj., n. adj. n.m. n. n.m. n.

3 1 1 12 8 4 8 5 3 1 5 1

3 1 1 6 4 3 7 5 3 1 5 1

1 1 1 1 6 1 1

1 1 1 1 3 1 1

1 1 1 1 5 1 3 1 1 4 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 4 1 7 1 1 10 5 5 46 31 15 1 1 4 1 2 1 1

1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 4 1 1 4 1 2 1 1 7 5 4 23 16 15 1 1 2 1 2 1 1

n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.m. n. n. n. n. n. n. n. n.m. n.m. n. n. n. n. n.m. v. passé comp. pluperf. adj. n.m. adj. n. n. adj. n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n., adj. n.m. adj. n., adj. n.m. adj. n. n.m. n. n. n. adj. n.

179

180

180

Appendix Types twangué ‘twanged’ tweet tweet tweeter [PR 2015] tweete tweeteraient avait tweeté twelve twin twisteuse ‘twisting’ (EN twist + FR suff. -​euse) twit, twitt Twitter (trademark) twitter twitte twittait a twitté twitterer twittering twitteur ‘twitterer’ (EN Twitt(er) + FR suff. -​eur) twittosphère (< Twitt(er) + o + FR sphère) tycoon

Word class

Tokens in corpus

adj. n.m. v. infin. pres. cond. pluperf. n. n. adj.f.

1 37 8 4 3 1 1 1 1 1

Number of articles 1 27 8 2 3 1 1 1 1 1

n.m. v. infin. pres. imperf. passé comp. n. n.m. n.

2 11 3 6 1 1 4 2 1

2 9 3 4 1 1 2 2 1

n.f. n.

1 10

1 10

n. adj. adj. adj. n. n.m.

1 1 1 1 1 5

1 1 1 1 1 3

n.

1

1

n.m. adj. n. phrase n. n. adj. phrase n.m. adj. n. n.m. n. n. adj. adj. adj. n. n. adj. n.m. n.

1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 5 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 2 1

1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 5 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 2 1

n. n. n.m.

1 1 1

1 1 1

U ultra abbr. ‘ultratrail’ ultra-​bright ultrabritish ultragroovy ultra-​tailoring ultratrail abbr. ‘Ultra-​Trail du Mont-​Blanc (trademark)’ ultratrailer ‘runner of the Ultra-​Trail du Mont-​Blanc’ umlaut undercover understatement understood? yes, yes. unfollower (Twitter) unfriender (Facebook) unisex up and down update updaté ‘updated’ upfront upgrade uploadeur ‘uploader’ uploading uppercut up to date urban urbancycliste ‘urban cyclist’ user user-​friendly, user friendly user generated content usual suspect V vajazzling value at risk VAN abbr. ‘voter activation network’

 18

Appendix Types Venus day ‘a beautiful day’ (in context) verified account very very bad trip vetting vibe victim-​offender encounter video-​game viet vet vigilante movie vintagerie ‘vintagish object’ (EN vintage + FR slightly pejorative suff. -​erie) VIP ‘very important product’ (after VIP ‘very important person’) visiting professor voice acting voice track voice tracker volunteer voodoo VVIP abbr. ‘very very important person’

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n. n. adv. phrase n.m. n.f. n. n.m. n. n.m. n.f.

1 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 1 1 1

n.m.

1

1

n. n.m. n.m. n.m. n.

1 2 8 7 1

1 2 2 1 1

adj.

1

1

phrase n.m. n. n.m. n.

2 1 1 1 1

2 1 1 1 1

n. n.m. phrase

2 3 1

2 2 1

1 6 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 2 1 10 6 4 1 1 1 4 5 2 1 1 1 1

1 5 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 2 1 8 6 3 1 1 1 1 5 2 1 1 1 1

W wait and see wall garden wannabe waouh effect warlogs (referring specifically to the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs released by WikiLeaks) warrior waterboarding we are the world (after the charity single by USA for Africa) wear strip webmaster weed welfare welsh rarebit we never slip we prefer not to what’s next? what the fuck? whip ‘a roller derby technique’ whistle whistleblower white cube white male white trash, *white thrash why why not wild win winner win-​win wireless wishful thinking wit wobbulator

n. n. n. n. n.m. phrase phrase phrase phrase n.m. n. n. n.m. adj. adj., n. adj. n. adv. phrase adj. n. n. adj., n.m. adj. n.m. n.m. n.m.

181

182

182

Appendix Types Woerthgate ‘a scandal involving French politician Woerth’ (patterned on Watergate < -​gate [PR 2015]) *woman battle ‘woman’s battle’ womanizer wonderful wonder women wonky pop wonky rap wood-​block wording workaholic working class hero (after a song by John Lennon) working poor working women work in progress work package workshop world Music world food world music worldwide wow wrap a été wrappée wrestling write in candidate writer WSB abbr. ‘wheat soya blend’ wwoof wwoofer

Word class

Tokens in corpus

Number of articles

n.m.

1

1

n.f. n.m. adj. n. n.m. n.m. n. n.m. n. phrase

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1

2 1 13 1 6 23 18 5 1 5 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1

1 1 12 1 6 21 17 5 1 4 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

adj.

1

1

n.f. n.f. interj. n. n.m. phrase n.m.

1 2 2 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1

n.m. n.m. interj.

1 4 1

1 4 1

n. n.m. n.m. n.

1 1 8 7

1 1 2 1

n. n. n.m. n. n.m. adj., n. adj. n.f. adj. n., adj. n.f. adj. adj. interj. v. passé comp. n.m. n. n. n. v infin.

X XXL (referring to a camera) [PR 2015] Y yal music yard chain yeah yellowcake «yes we can»-​président ‘President Obama’ young british artist young Turk Z zoning code zoo fashion zoot alors (patterned on FR interj. zut alors ‘shoot’) zooter zootrope zoot suit zoot suiter

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INDEX OF WORDS AND PHRASES This index exhaustively lists the words and phrases of English origin cited throughout the manuscript. addict, 128t, 129 after, 44, 44n11, 108 after-​hours, 44n11 after-​shave, 110t, 112t, 114, 127t, 133 alias, 42 all, 12–​13 all aprèm long, 40 allégeance, 34 all star cast, 38 ambient music, 23 (A)(a)merican way of life, 71–​72, 75, 139 amish, 110t, 115–​16, 127t, 130 and now, 73 and so on, 73, 83 and the winner is, 29, 68, 76t, 139 angliche, 9n7 angry young man, 83 antitrust, 127t, 129 apibeursdè touillou, 63 art street fighting, 74 artwork, 102–​3, 102t arty, 59, 84t artyisme, 59 as we know, 13, 65, 73 X attitude, 60 auburn, 127t, 134 auto-​coat, 54 autoreverse, 127t, 134 babies, 64 baby, 35, 57, 111, 126, 127t, 137t baby-​blues, 110t, 117 baby boomer, 32 baby-​foot, 54, 57, 64t baby-​sitter, 111 back, 113–​15 backstage, 99 back to the USSR, 67–​68 X-​back, 113, 115 bacon, 36 bad boy, 85t, 86n12, 96 bader, 44

bad trip, 74–​75 bad-​triper, 44 baggy, 8, 14, 42, 107, 107n3, 116, 123, 126, 127t, 135–​36, 137t bâille-​naïte, 63 banana split, 39 bang, 105, 110t, 115, 120–​21 barista, 43, 78n5 barmaid, 35 barmans, 116 X bashing, 1, 60, 102t, 103 battle, 98–99 battle-​dress, 110t bay-​window, 111 béatitude attitude, 60 Beauté Club, 111 beautiful looser, 61, 64t, 83, 119 beautiful people, 61, 64t, 83, 117, 117n11, 119–​20 beauty truck, 99 because, 49–​50, 53t, 63, 64t, 72, 87–​88 bed and breakfast, 110t, 121 benchmarking, 5 best of, 110t, 112t bicause, 50, 53t, 63, 64t bicose, 50, 63 bicoze, 50, 53t, 63, 64t, 139 bifteck, 37 big band, 38 bigger than life, 69 Big Mac, 139 binge drinking, 2 binne, 102 bio attitude, 60 biopic, 19, 23, 43, 84t, 85 bitchy, 83 bizness, 9n7, 63 black, 108–​9, 111, 125, 127t–​128t, 130–​31, 137t black-​jack, 13, 105, 111 blacklister, 81 blackos, 59 black-​out, 13, 105, 109, 110t, 112t

191

192

192

Index of Words and Phrases blender, 78 bling-​bling, 59, 110t, 120–​21, 127t, 133, 133n7, 139 bling-​blinguant, 59 blog, 62 bloggueur, 98 blogue, 62, 64t bloody mary, 110t, 115 bloudjinnzes, 63 blue-​jean, 37 bluesman, 54, 84t Blu-​ray, 30n6 boat people, 2, 2n3, 110t, 117, 119–​20 bobo, 53, 53n16, 64t, 126 body, 57 boicot, 62 book, 57 booster, 13n11, 50 bootlegger, 37 borderline, 32, 78–​79, 78n4 boss, 110t, 116 botox, 19 botoxé, 103 botoxique, 30n6 boumeur, 62 boycott, 62 boyfriend, 85t, 86, 86n12, 104 boy next door, 74, 76t boys band, 64, 64t break, 36, 38 breakfast, 35 bridge, 36 bright smile, 30, 66 brik, 107 bristol, 37 britiche, 9n7, 94 british, 84t, 94 brushing, 54, 137t bubble-​gum, 30–31 budget, 34, 37 buggy, 37 bungalow, 43 burger au fromage, 5 burn-​out, 1, 53 business, 63, 65 business as usual, 66, 68, 75 business is business, 68 busing, 48, 53t but, 87n13 buzzomètre, 81 cab, 37 cakos, 59 camping-​car, 20, 54–​55 canaping, 59–​60, 64t cantilever, 35, 127t, 134

cash, 3, 44–​45, 47, 47t, 50, 52, 53t, 54n19, 127t, 130, 141 casual, 83, 85t C.B., 116 chat, 40, 85t cheap, 126, 127t, 129, 129n4 cheapos, 59, 64t checke, 82 checker, 13n11 check in, 82 check-​up, 110t, 112, 112t cheddar, 36 cheeseburger, 5, 12, 139 chien-​loup, 35 (C)(c)hinese way of life, 71–​72, 139 chip, 51 chris-​craft, 110t, 121 cibiste, 116 clapman, 54 clean, 50, 127t, 130 close shot, 38 clubmen, 37 coaltar, 35 coboille, 63 cockney, 126–​27, 127t–​128t, 137t collector, 54–​55 come-​back, 110t, 112t, 113 coming(-​)out, 54n19, 110t, 112t, 136 commodore, 35 compound, 127t, 130, 137t conference call, 98 confusant, 30 conjoint-​friendly, 3 contre fashion, 99 cookie, 45, 53t cool, 98, 125, 127t, 130 coolos, 59 coquetèle, 62–​63 corned-​beef, 35 correct, 5 cosy, 126, 127t, 137t country, 126, 127t cranberry, 78, 139 crash, 115–16 crêpe(s) party, 60 creved, 60, 64t crossing-​over, 110t, 112t crunchy bad boy, 40 cupcake, 19, 51 a cup of tea, 36–​37, 65 curator, 9 curatorial, 9 curios-​shops, 113 cyberattaque, 139 cyberspace, 40 cybersquatting, 83

 193

damned if you do, damned if you don’t, 68 dancing, 107 darling, 37 date, 25 deale(u)r, 45 déjetlag[u]‌er (se), 29, 59 demi-​pipole, 132 déontique, 42 desperate, 97 destroy, 50, 126, 126n2, 127t deuspi, 65 dime novel, 83 director, 38 disco, 127t, 134 Disneyland, 59 disneylanderie, 59, 139 djeun(e)(s)(’s), 63 doggy bag, 53 dollar-​shop, 113 don’t worry, be happy, 66 do tanga trzeba dwojga, 65n26 double-​cliquer, 30 drag, 57, 64t drive, 36 drive-​in, 110t, 112, 112t, 114 drop-​goal, 36 drug-​store, 113 dry, 126, 127t, 137t dub, 84t, 85 e-​X, 59–60, 64t, 116 eat boy, 83 e-​book, 1, 60, 64t écolo attitude, 60 e-​commerce, 60 e-​déchets, 40, 60, 64t eighties, 86 e-​learning, 79 e-​mail, 40, 60 e-​marché, 60 Envy, 98–99 escort-​girl, 79 E.T., go home, 23, 66 eurocrats bashing, 103 extra-​dry, 127t, 133 faire du sens, 65n26 fair-​play, 110t, 117, 127t, 133 famous people, 117n11 famousse, 8 fancy fair, 54 FAQ, 110t, 116 far west, 110t, 117, 139 fashion, 44, 44n10, 84t, 85 fashionable, 44n10

Index of Words and Phrases fashionista, 99 fashion-​victim, 44n10 fashion week, 44n10, 99 fast-​bistouri, 11 fast-​food, 5, 11, 111 Fast-​Frites, 11 fast-​X, 11 featuring, 87, 91–​92, 92t, 104 feed-​back, 110t, 112t, 113 feeling, 38 fellow, 37 fifties, 86 fish & green, 99 fishing for compliments, 36–37, 65 fixie, 53, 64t flash, 55, 113 flashant, 55 flash-​back, 55, 110t, 112t, 113 flash-​ball, 55, 114 flashcode, 55, 64t, 79, 114, 139 flasher, 55 flasheuse, 55 flashy, 126, 127t flaveur, 42 flipper, 54n19 flirt, 37 flop, 105, 120–​21 folk, 127t, 131–​32, 134 folkeux, -euse, 134, 136 footing, 54 fox-​trot, 117 frac, 37 free, 57 free cash flow, 66, 74 free climbing, 65 free(-​)jazz, 65, 117 free-​lance, 127t, 133 free trade, 65 French bashing, 60, 103 French paradox, 83 X-​friendly, 3 front row, 99 fuck, 82 full English breakfast, 74 fun, 102, 107n5, 127t, 128t, 130, 130n6 funk, 127t​, 131, 134 funky, 14, 126, 127t gai, 126 gamer, 83, 84t gangster, 37 garden-​party, 36, 60 Xgate, 61, 103 gay, 125–​28, 127t–​128t, 137t Gayetgate, 61 gay-​friendly, 3

193

194

194

Index of Words and Phrases geek, 30, 40 gentleman, 36–​37 G.I., 39 gif, 139 gin-​fizz, 110t girlfriend, 102–​3, 102t girly, 42 give me five, 68 glace, 50n13 glamour, 127t, 134 glass, 35 glasse, 50–51n13 glitch, 82 go, 81n8 God save the green, 71, 76t, 141 goji, 20 golden bad boy, 65, 74 golf, 36 good old days, 67 gore, 127t, 134 granny smith, 110t, 115 grassroots movement, 66 greatest local band, 66 green-​beauty, 99 grog, 35 groggy, 50, 126, 127t groom, 37 grunge, 51, 127t, 134 guerilla gardening, 83 gueuta, 65 guiderope, 35 gun, 50 hackeur, 81 half-​track, 39 hall, 37 hamburger, 37 handy, 54 hang-​over, 113 happiness is a warm gun, 65 happy end, 39 happy few, 35, 110t, 117, 119 hard, 127t, 128, 130 hard boiled, 83 hardos, 59 has been, 110t, 112t, 114–​15, 115n9, 127t, 133 hashtag, 79, 139 healthy, 128 hedge fund, 83, 84t, 98, 102–​3, 102t, 139 hello, 36 herself, 88 hi-​fi, 127t, 133 himself, 12–​13, 42, 84t, 85, 87–90, 104 hip, 36 hip-​hop, 110t, 127t, 134

hip-​hopeur, 83 hippie, 126n3, 137t hippy, 126, 126n3, 127t, 137t hipster, 53, 78 hold-​up, 107, 110t, 112t, 122n13 Hollande bashing, 1, 60, 103 Hollandegate, 61 home cinéma, 43 home sweet home, 40, 68–​69, 76t, 139 horse-​power, 117 hors-​la-​loi, 35 hot, 38, 127t, 129 hot-​dog, 37 hully-​gully, 107 hype, 54–​55, 64t, 127t, 132 impeachment, 34 in, 114, 127t, 133 in a nutshell, 67 in-​bord, 127t, 133 including, 87, 91–​92, 92t, 104 in the mood for, 69 in the sixties, 75 is back, 66, 99–​100, 100nn17–​18 isn't it?, 73–​74, 76t, 141 it X, 60 it accessoire, 60 it coiffure, 60, 139 it couple, 60 it galurin, 60 it girl, 60, 99 it pièce, 99 itself, 88, 139 jam-​session, 38 jazzman, 38, 105n1 jazzy, 126, 127t jean, 39, 124 jean boyfriend, 86, 99 jean flare, 99 jean slim, 14, 46–​47, 124, 137t jetlag, 59n24 jetlagg[u]‌é, 22–​23 jetlargué, 22–23 Jockey Club, 3​ 7, 37n6 joint-​venture, 39 juke-​box, 110t, 116 junkie, 39 kaki, 127t, 134 keepsake, 35 kepon, 65 kicker, 54 kitesurf, 54, 57 knock-​down, 107, 110t, 112t, 122n13

 195

knock-​out, 62, 110t, 112t, 127t, 133 know-​how, 103 Kremlin bashing, 103 the lady vanishes, 68, 76t last but not least, 66, 71–​73, 75, 76t learning by doing, 65 LED, 116 legging, 137t lemon-​grass, 35 let, 36, 127t, 129 liberty, 37 libre-​échange, 42 libre-​penseur, 42 lift, 102 lifting, 59 light, 46, 127t–​128t, 129 links, 36 live, 127t, 134 living room, 60 locavore, 53 locavore attiture, 60 lock-​out, 110t, 112t lock-​outer, 82n11 lol, 18–​19 look, 50 lo(o)se, 56–​57, 56nn20–​21, 139 loser, 5, 56 looser, 56, 64, 64t lost, but not least, 71 louze, 56–​57, 57n22 low cost, 78, 83, 84t made in, 36, 115, 127t, 133 magnet, 53 making of, 110t, 112t management, 5 managing partner, 98 mash-​up, 82 master of ceremony, 64 meeting, 34, 62 melting pot, 8 melting potes, 8, 8n6 men in black, 71 men in white, 40, 71, 76t, 139 métrosexuel, 42, 78n5 middle life crisis, 64 midship, 35 milk-​bar, 114 milk-​shake, 39, 114 mister, 54 miting, 62 mix énergétique, 43 MMS, 110t, 116 Modern Hôtel, 36

Index of Words and Phrases modern-​style, 110t, 117 moleskine, 35 MOOC, 115, 139 mousses party, 60, 60n25 moviola, 38 muffin, 37 mustang, 43, 53 my boy, 37 my dear major, 37 my last frontier, 31 my love, 37 nail bar, 99 nerd, 85t, 102–​3, 102t, 123 nerde, 8, 102–​3, 102t nesbi, 65 net, 127t, 129 netiquette, 103 never been, 115n9 new-​look, 117, 127t, 133 night, 54 nineties, 86 nobody is perfect, 69 nocaut, 62 no comment, 68 nomade’s land, 61, 64t no man’s hand, 61, 141 no man’s land, 61, 117 non-​pipeule, 8 non-​stop, 127t, 133 no relation to the shoes, 100–​101 Normandy Hôtel, 36 notebook, 19 now, 83, 101, 104, 139 nugget, 20 off, 127t, 133 offshore, 127t, 133 off the record, 68 one, two, three, 85 on speaking terms, 65 open, 123, 126, 127t, 130, 137t open space, 54, 85t oscar, 38 ouisqui, 63, 64t out, 36, 127t, 133 outplacement, 39 over lol, 75, 76t over there, 74, 74n28 oxford, 54 pack, 36 parent hélicoptère, 42 party, 62 X party, 60

195

196

196

Index of Words and Phrases pastrami, 43 peace, 50 peer to peer, 83, 84t people, 13, 63, 98–​99, 110t, 117–​20, 117n11, 118n12, 127t, 132, 140 people have the power, 40, 67–​68 peopleisation, 132 peoplisation, 132 peopolisation, 132 peps, 64, 64t performe(u)r, -​euse, 54, 59, 64t personne n’est parfait, 69 pickpocket, 62 pick-​up, 97, 110t, 112t piercing, 137t pimpón, 62 ping-​pong, 62, 117 pink, 12–​13, 40 pinotte, 63 pin’s, 64 pin-​up, 110t, 112t pipeulaire, 132, 140 pipeule, 63, 118–19, 127t, 132, 140 pipeulerie, 119, 132, 140 pipi room, 60 pipole, 59, 63, 119, 127t, 132, 140 pipolerie, 59 pipolisation, 119, 140 pitch, 13, 54, 83 pixel, 39 plaid, 37 play, 82 play-​back, 110t, 112t, 113 pocket book, 107 podcaster, 82 poker, 37 policeman, 35 pop, 127t, 134 pop-​up, 82, 106, 110t, 112t post, 13 post-​it, 110t, 121 ne pas prendre de prisonniers, 100, 100n17 profilage, 20 puffin, 35 pull, 113–​14 pull-​over, 112–​14 punk, 65, 123, 127t–​128t, 130–​32, 137t punkette, 132 push-​pull, 110t, 112t, 114 putter, 36 puzzle, 36 quiz, 110t, 116 rallye-​paper, 54

ranch, 37 rapper, 134 ready-​made, 110t, 112t, 114–15 réaliser, 42 recordman, 54–​55 redingote, 62, 64t redneck, 42, 48, 53t, 97, 135, 139 reggae, 127t, 134 relookage, 59 remember, 82, 139 remix, 110t revolving, 127t, 130, 137t riff, 39 road movie, 39 roadster, 36 rock, 127t, 131–​32, 134 rock around the quiz, 71 los Rolling, 58n23 romanoland, 83 rosbif bashing, 103 RSS, 78n6 rugby, 36 rugbyman, 36 running, 58 runnings, 58, 64t, 139 running shoes, 58 salade-​bar, 81 sandwich, 115–16 Sarko-​bashing, 103 Sarkoboy, 83 scat, 38 schooner, 35 scotch, 121 scout, 129, 132 scoutesse, 129 scoutisme, 129 scrapbooking, 42 scratch, 54, 82, 127t, 130 select, 126, 128t, 129 sélect, 126 selfie, 78, 78n3, 139, 141 self-​made-​man, 61 self mode man, 61 semi-​people, 98 Sénat bashing, 60, 139 serial X, 13n10, 60–​61, 64t serial agitatrice, 13n10 serial anticipateur, 60 serial dragueur, 60–​61, 64t serial entrepreneur, 60 serial-​killer, 13, 13n10, 60–​61, 64t, 84t serial-​killeuse, 29, 139 serial noceur, 13n10, 64t seventies, 53, 64t, 84t, 86

 197

sex and crime, 74 sexy, 126, 127t shaker, 114 shocking, 127t, 130, 137t shorty, 57 show, 98 show-​business, 110t, 117 sit-​in, 110t, 112t, 114 sixties, 86, 102 skunks, 37 skyscraper, 111 slameur, -​euse, 59 sleeping partner, 102–​3, 102t slim, 14, 44, 46–​47, 53t, 124, 127t–​128t, 134, 137t, 141 slim fast, 48–49 slip, 54 smart, 36–​37, 124–​25, 127t, 129 smartphone, 83, 84t, 103 smok, 57 smoking, 36, 57 smoothie, 136 SMS, 20, 103 snob, 37, 125 snobisme, 37 so + X, 92–​96, 93n14, 93t, 95n15, 104 so + year, 95–​96, 95n15 so british, 93–​94, 93t so chic, 93t, 94–​95 soda-​water, 35 so easy, 93t so fashion, 93 so french, 92–​94, 93t, 139 so frenchy, 92, 93t soft, 127t, 129 software, 39 so Goude/​so true/​so stupid, 93n14, 93t songwriter, 23, 84t, 85 sooo, 95, 95n15 so toc, 93, 93t soul, 39, 127t, 134 space, 54 spammer, 81 speakeasy, 37 speech, 35, 37 speed, 54n19, 55–​56, 64t, 65, 127t, 130 speedé, 39 spider, 36 sport(s)wear, 127t, 134 spot, 127t, 129, 137t spoule, 62 sprat, 35 standard, 125 stand-​by, 110t, 112t, 127t, 133 star, 38

Index of Words and Phrases starlet(te), 38 starring, 87, 91–​92, 92t, 104, 139 starting-​block, 107 start-​up, 110t, 111, 112t, 115 steamboat, 35, 96 sterling, 127t, 130, 137t stilton, 35 les Stones, 58n23 stop, 82 stop-​over, 110t, 111, 112t strange, 50 strapping, 137t streaming, 79, 84t street art, 43, 79, 139 street artist, 42 street nécessaire, 62 strip-​tease, 114 superfeature, 38 surbooker, 98 sweet à capuche/​sweet-​capuche, 64 syndicalisme bashing, 60 tablette, 42 tag, 65 take-​off, 110t, 112t tartan, 35 taximan, 54–​55, 111 tchater, tchatent, tchates, 8 technicolor, 38 techno, 127t, 134 teddy-​bear, 111 teddy boy, 30–​31 teenager, 5 tee-​shirt, 39 téléréalité, 42 le temps c’est de l’argent, 69 tennis, 36 texter, 79 that is the question, 67–​68 the (stressed), 8, 87, 89–​91, 102, 104, 139, 141 think tank, 83, 84t, 136 time is money, 13, 68–​69, 75, 76t tip-​top, 127t, 133 toast, 37 toasté, 126 to be, or not to be, 68 toffie, 8 tom-​pouce, 110t, 115, 115n10 top, 45, 127t, 129 top secret, 127t, 133 tory, 126–​27, 127t–​128t, 137t Touring Club de France, 36 tour-​opérateur, 111 trader-​killer, 12–​13, 13n10 trash, 123, 126, 127t, 130

197

198

198

Index of Words and Phrases trench, 54 trendy, 98–99 triple play, 83, 84t troc party, 60 t-​shirt, 124 tupperware, 49, 121 turn-​over, 110t, 112n7, 112t underground, 127t, 130, 137t ups and downs, 67 urbancycliste, 81 végane, 42 vélo-​friendly, 3 velvet, 35 very, very soldes, 75 very bad trip, 74–​75, 76t, 139 victoria, 37 vintage, 59, 127t, 134 vintagerie, 59 VIP, 116 vote, 34 wagon, 37 wah-​wah, 110t, 120–​21, 127t, 133 walk-​over, 110t, 112t (W)(w)asp/​WASP, 116, 127t, 129 Watergate, 61, 103 waterproof, 62, 127t, 130, 137t wattman, 54

webmestre, 20 well, 37 welter, 107 we prefer not to, 100 western, 38 what else?, 70, 76t what the fuck, 3n4 whisk(e)y, 35 whistleblower, 5 wifi, 110t, 117 Woerthgate, 103 woman battle, 64 working class hero, 66 work in progress, 85t, 141 XXL, 40, 45–​46, 50, 78n6 yankee, 124, 128t, 137t yes, 50, 85 yes we can, 69–​70, 76t, 83 yes we can-président, 69, 139 yes weekend, 70 yé-​yé, 54, 127t, 134 yiddish, 127t, 130 young british artist, 76t zapping, 59 zoning, 54n19

 19

SUBJECT INDEX abbreviation. See nouns, abbreviated; truncated compounds absolute synonymy, 3, 51–52, 87 ABU (Association des Bibliophiles Universels), 24–​25 Académie française, 1–5, 2n1, 10, 18, 41, 51–52, 141 acronyms, 78, 78n6, 106, 110t, 115–​16 adjectival Anglicisms, in plural adjectives ending in -​e, 127t, 132 adjectives ending in -​l, -​f, and -​k, 127t, 130–​32 adjectives ending in -​y, 126–​28, 127t color, 125, 125n1, 127t, 134 compounds, 127t, 133 dictionary-​sanctioned, 125–26, 138 dictionary-​unsanctioned, 128, 135 gender of, 129, 136–​37 inflection-​facilitating factors for, 126–27, 128t, 129, 130n6, 131–32 inflection-​inhibiting constraints on, 123–34, 127t, 136–37, 137t morphological hypothesis for, 123–25 nominal Anglicisms vs., 135–​37, 137t non-​native traits recognized in, 126–​32, 127t uninflected English adjectives complying with French morphology, 127t, 133–​34 adverbs, 44, 94–​95, 101, 110–​15, 110t, 112t affixation donor affixation, 59–​60, 64t, 105, 105n1, 107, 107n3, 116–​17 informal suffixation, 57, 59 native affixation, 59, 64t, 132 suffix substitution, 59–​60, 64t À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past) (Proust), 33, 36–​37, 36n3, 65 American English in history of French lexicon, 37–​39 linguistic hegemony of, 4–​5 pop culture and, 52, 96–​97, 99 resistance to, 51–​52, 52n15 analytic language, French as, 11, 58 Anglicisms. See also adjectival Anglicisms, in plural; borrowed phraseology; compound Anglicisms; dictionary-​sanctioned Anglicisms; dictionary-​unsanctioned

Anglicisms; false Anglicisms; French Anglicisms; nominal Anglicisms, in plural definition of, 42–​43, 139–​41 across European languages, 7–​8, 10, 24, 40, 54, 54nn17–​18, 65–​67, 72, 75, 78n3, 79–81, 83, 88, 99, 114n8, 115 Anglicisms, Neologisms and Dynamic French (Picone), 11 Angloclassicalisms, 42 Anglomania, 34–​37 Arabic, 6–​7, 6t, 7n5, 40, 50, 82, 105, 105n1 arts, phrases from, 67–​68, 76t Association des Bibliophiles Universels. See ABU autonomous compounds, 54–​55, 64t bare plurals, in French, 106–​7, 125 Beauvoir, Simone de, 96, 113 Belle Époque, 36 bilingualism code-​switching in, 10, 65, 67, 80 discourse markers in, 72n27 English and, 10, 39–42, 42n9 the French and, 40–​42, 40n7, 64, 68 plural forms and, 107n3, 110–11, 113–15 Boniface, Yohan, 24 Le bon usage (Grevisse), 18, 106 borrowed phraseology, 7, 13, 33, 40, 65–67, 100n17 from arts, 67–​68, 76t in Dictionary of European Anglicisms, 65, 66t, 67, 72 discourse markers/​functions, 72–​74, 72n27, 76t, 99–​100 expressions détournées, 71–​72, 76t, 141 false phrasal Anglicisms, 74–75, 76t idioms and proverbs, 68–​69, 76t interpretation of, 75 lexicalized slogans, 69–​70, 76t pragmatic markers, 72–​74, 76t three-​element, 74, 76t typology of, 67, 76, 76t, 140 borrowing. See lexical borrowing bound morphemes. See affixation, donor affixation Brooks, David, 53n16 Bulot, Thierry, 18

199

20

200

Subject Index calques French Anglicisms, 7, 30, 35, 42–​43, 65, 65n26, 69, 72, 90, 100n17, 111, 114n8 juxtapositional neology and, 11, 111 Carrère d’Encausse, Hélène, 4 changes from donor language, 43–​52, 47t CIEL-​F. See Corpus International Écologique de la Langue Française clichés, 67–68, 95 clipping, of compounds. See truncated compounds closed-​class words, 49–50, 86–​92, 87n13, 92t, 104 Club d’orthographe de Grenoble, 78n2 Cluzel, Jean-​Paul, 9 code-​switching, 10, 65, 67, 80, 100–​101 color adjectives, 125, 125n1, 127t, 134 Commission générale de terminologie et de néologie, 2, 19 complexification, 55, 75, 133, 136–37, 141 compound Anglicisms adjectival, 127t, 133 autonomous, 54–​55, 64t dictionary-​unsanctioned, 3, 23, 30–31, 44, 113, 115n9, 117n11 false Anglicisms, 54–​55 without hyphen or space, 112n7 nominal, 2n3, 109–​15, 110t, 112t phrasal vs., 65–66 plural, 105, 109–16, 110t, 112t, 119–21, 127t, 133 from reduplication, 127t, 133 serial bilingual, 60–​61, 64t, 103 serial so + X, 92–​96, 93n14, 93t truncated, 37, 44, 44n11, 54–​55, 57–​59, 58n23, 64t, 108, 113 X + adverb, 110–​15, 110t, 112t X + preposition, 110–15, 110t, 112t X + verb, 110–​12, 110t, 112t, 114–​15 connotative shift, 51–​52, 53t, 99, 104 consonants, final. See final consonants contact linguistics, 10 Contre la pensée unique (Hagège), 2, 4–​5 core lexicon, 85, 104 corpora. See also dictionary corpus; newspaper corpus benefits of, 11–​12 choice of, 17 Corpus International Écologique de la Langue Française (CIEL-​F), 9 corpus linguistics for contact linguistics, 24–​32, 26f–​29f, 32f database of Anglicisms in, 11–12, 15, 25, 31–32 selection criteria and flagging devices, 29–​ 31, 42–​43, 65–67 text mining for, 24–​29, 26f–​29f

Cuba, 4 cultural borrowing, 51, 104, 139 database, of Anglicisms methodology, 24–​32, 26f–​29f, 32f overview of, 11–​12, 15, 139–​41 DEA. See A Dictionary of European Anglicisms Deak, Étienne, 39 Deak, Simone, 39 definite articles, stressed, 8, 89–​91, 102, 104, 141 derivatives, 54–55, 59–60, 64t. See affixation Deux dialogues du nouveau langage françois italianizé, et autrement desguizé, principalement entre les courtisans de ce temps (Estienne), 34 dictionary corpus. See Petit Robert A Dictionary of European Anglicisms (DEA) (Görlach), 7, 24, 29 etymology and, 42–​43 phrases in, 65, 66t, 67, 72 dictionary-​sanctioned Anglicisms, 19–20, 29, 33, 34n1 dictionary-​unsanctioned vs., 17, 78–​79 dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms, 12, 14–15, 33, 77, 140 closed-​class words, 86–​92, 87n13, 92t, 104 compounds, 3, 23, 30–31, 44, 113, 115n9, 117n11 dictionary-​sanctioned vs., 17, 78–​79 donor-​culture restricted, 96–​97 ephemeral borrowed vocabulary, 79 jargonistic overuse of, 97–​99 life cycle of, 102–​4, 102t linguistic humor and, 13, 61–​63, 73–​74, 74n28, 80, 87–​89, 95, 98–​99, 101, 104, 140–​141 methodology, 20, 24–​32, 26f–​29f most frequent, 83–​86, 84t–​85t nonce borrowings, 40, 52, 59, 61–62, 79–​82 serial so + X, 92–​96, 93n14, 93t verbs, 81–​82, 81n8 very low-​frequency, 79–​82 Dictionnaire des anglicismes (Rey-​Debove and Gagnon), 23–​24 discourse markers/​functions, 68, 72–​74, 72n27, 76t, 99–​100 dispersion, 81n7 donor-​culture restricted context, vs. unrestricted, 6, 47–​49, 96–​97 double stylistic marking, 59 Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way) (Proust), 33, 36–​37 e-​Anglicisms, 79, 103 economy, 101–​2. See also ellipsis electronic newspaper corpus. See online corpus elite closure, 9–10, 37

 201

Subject Index ellipsis, 54, 86, 94–96, 102, 131 with metonymic uses, 127t, 134 music styles and, 127t, 134 novel genre and, 127t, 134 Encrevé, Pierre, 22 English. See also American English; Anglicisms; global English bilingualism and, 10, 39–42, 42n9 in form and denotation, 53, 64t history of French lexicon and, 33–​42, 41f as international language, 7, 10 irregular plural in, 110t, 117–​20 linguistic hegemony of, 4–​5, 7 in neologisms, 1, 11–12, 19–21, 25, 33, 39, 45, 52, 59–60, 71, 75, 77, 97–98, 111, 124, 141 online, 40 as synthetic language, 58, 111 virtual contact with, 14, 39–​40 English-​French homographs, 25 ephemeral vocabulary, 12, 59–​62, 79, 81, 99, 103–​104, 141 erroneous spelling, 56n20, 64, 64t Estienne, Henri, 34 Étiemble, René, 38, 52, 107, 122n13 etymology, 15, 18, 20, 30, 42–43, 50, 61–62, 76, 78, 105, 111, 114, 132 European languages, Anglicisms across, 4, 7–8, 10, 24, 40, 54, 65–67, 72, 75, 78n3, 79–81, 83, 88, 99, 114n8, 115 exception culturelle, 96n16 expressions détournées, 71–​72, 76t, 141 false Anglicisms, 3, 20, 44–45, 53–57, 59, 64t compounding, 54–​55 among European languages, 54, 54nn17–​18 juxtapositional neology and, 111 phrasal, 74–75, 76t false Hellenisms, 54 fashion film genre, ellipsis and, 127t, 134 as semantic field, 98–​99 feminine Anglicisms, 99 Fernandez, Dominique, 3–​4 Figaro, Le, 22n2, 24, 77 final consonants usually pronounced, 127t, 130–​32 usually silent, 127t, 128–​30 First World War, 37 flagging devices, 9–10, 29–​31, 81, 110t, 121 FranceTerme, 3 Francophonie, 4 French. See also history, of French lexicon as analytic language, 11, 58 bare plurals in, 106–​7, 125, 125n1 bilingualism and, 40–42, 40n7, 42n9 informal, 45–​46, 49–​51, 57–​59, 85, 94, 140

national policy on, 1–2, 10n8 open-​ended nature of, 79, 141 Québec, 10n8, 58, 101–​2, 124 written vs. oral, 7–​10 French Anglicisms. See also adjectival Anglicisms, in plural; borrowed phraseology; compound Anglicisms; dictionary-​ sanctioned Anglicisms; dictionary-​ unsanctioned Anglicisms; false Anglicisms; nominal Anglicisms, in plural; spelling acronyms, 78, 78n6, 110t, 116 calques, 7, 30, 35, 42–​43, 65, 65n26, 69, 72, 90, 100n17, 111, 114n8 database of, 11–​12, 15, 25, 26f–​29f, 29–​32, 32f, 139–​41 definition of, 42–​43, 139–​41 demystified, 1–​6 derivatives, 54–55, 59–​60, 64t e-​Anglicisms, 79, 103 etymologically English, 42–​43 feminine, 99 forgotten, 10–​14 French/​English affixation on English/​French bases, 59–​60, 64t frequency of, 40, 79–86, 84t–85t, 102–4, 102t general types, 64t initialisms, 78, 78n6, 110t, 115–16 journalistic language and, 8, 20–23, 29–31, 64–65 loaded, 51–​52, 53t, 99, 104 national language policy and, 1–2, 10n8 necessary, 51 non-​English borrowing vs., 6–​7, 6t, 33–34, 49, 111 opposition to, 1–​6, 10–​11, 38–​39, 51–​52, 122, 140–​41 orthographically assimilated, 62–​63, 64t, 81, 126 phonetically assimilated, 8, 9n7, 38, 43, 62–63, 64t, 85t, 119, 132 recognized as English, 42–​43, 52–​65, 64t research agenda, 10–​14 social prestige of, 9, 51n14 sources of, 23–​24 style and, 49–51, 49n12, 50–51n13 superfluous, 51 truncated compounds, 37, 44, 44n11, 54–​55, 57–59, 58n23, 64t, 108, 113 very low-​frequency, 40, 79–​82, 101 written vs. oral, 7–​10 frequency, of Anglicisms, 40, 79–86, 84t–85t, 102–4, 102t, 119 Gagnon, Gilberte, 23–​24 Gallicisms, 45, 87, 99 gender, grammatical, 57, 129, 136–​37, 136n8, 141

201

20

202

Subject Index German, 10–​11 Germanic languages, 58, 112 global English, 7, 10 American pop culture and, 52, 96–​97, 99 context of, 33 influence of, 4, 11–12, 14, 19, 52, 74, 79, 102, 104, 139–41 in international press, 80 as universal donor language, 33, 39–40, 104 glossing, 30, 67, 81, 121 Görlach, Manfred, 7, 24 government opposition, to Anglicisms, 2–​4, 10–​11, 38 grammatical gender. See gender, grammatical grammatical shift, 44–​45, 47t, 53t Grand dictionnaire d’américanismes (Deak and Deak), 39 Grevisse, Maurice, 106–​7, 120, 125 Hagège, Claude, 2, 2n1, 4–​6 Hellenisms, false, 54 hierarchies of borrowability, 49, 87 history, of French lexicon, 76 American English in, 37–​39 Anglomania in, 34–​37 English and, 33–​42, 41f technical terms, nineteenth-​century, 35 virtual language contact in, 39–​42 homographs, 25 Humbley, John, 10–​11 Humboldt-​Sapir-​Whorf hypothesis, 4–​5 humor. See linguistic humor hybrids, 42–43, 111 hyphen, compound Anglicisms without, 112n7 idioms, 67–​69, 76t Industrial Revolution, 35 inflectional behavior, 13–​14. See also adjectival Anglicisms, in plural; nominal Anglicisms, in plural informal French, 45–​46, 49–​51, 57–​59, 85, 94, 140. See also style, Anglicism and; stylistic shift initialisms, 78, 78n6, 106, 110t, 115–16 integration, 13–​14, 30–​31 frequency and, 81–82, 113–14, 119, 128t, 130n6 gradient phenomenon of, 123–​24 morphological, 59, 63, 119–​20, 125, 129–​32 orthographically assimilated Anglicisms, 62–63, 64t, 81, 126 phonetically assimilated Anglicisms, 62–​63, 64t, 119 rapid, 78–​79, 128, 140 international press, global English in, 80 irregular plural, in English, 110t, 117–​20 Italian, 3–4, 6, 6t, 33–34, 43, 78n5

false Anglicisms, 54, 54nn17–​18 plural forms, 105, 105n1, 117 italicization, 30–​31, 81, 89, 121 Japanese, 6, 6t, 126, 130 jargonistic overuse, 97–​99 journalistic language, 8, 20–23, 29–31, 64–65 Journal officiel, 2 juxtapositional neology, 11, 111 language analytic, 11, 58 Germanic, 58, 112 journalistic, 8, 20–23, 29–31, 64–65 national policy on, 1, 10n8 planning, 1–​2 reproduced, 29–​30 Romance, 58, 62, 112, 136 ruling, 4 SMS, 101 spoken, 7–​10 synthetic, 11, 58, 111 universal donor, 33, 39–40, 104 vassal, 4–​5 Latin phrases, 65 Lecoq, Titiou, 3n4 lexical borrowing. See also Anglicisms; borrowed phraseology; non-​English borrowing bilingualism and, 10, 39–42, 42n9 changes from donor word in, 43–​52, 47t connotative shift in, 51–​52, 53t, 99, 104 grammatical shift in, 44–​45, 47t, 53t history of, 33–​42 innovation with, 80, 104, 141 limitless, 80, 104 nonce, 30, 40, 52, 59, 61–62, 69, 75, 79–82 process, 12, 14–15, 43–44, 47, 87, 103, 108, 111, 114, 119–21, 125, 136, 139–41 reasons for, 3, 51, 51n14, 80, 86, 99–​102, 104 rule, 124, 141 scale, 75, 75n30 semantic shift in, 45–​49, 47t, 53t, 54–​55 stylistic shift in, 47t, 49–51, 49n12, 50–51n13, 53t, 87, 140 traditional, 33, 53 typology of, 52–53, 64, 64t, 67, 76, 76t, 140 lexicalized slogans, 69–​70, 76t lexicogenic process, 14, 71, 76, 83, 122, 140 lexicography, 11, 18–20, 32, 78–79 Libération choice and presentation of, 22–​23, 22n3 humor in, 22–​23, 41n8 loi Fioraso and, 41–42, 41f online corpus of, 1, 6, 11–12, 12n9, 17, 20–32, 26f–29f, 32f, 43, 67, 77, 77n1, 79–80, 83, 84t–85t, 102, 102t, 108–9, 125–26, 140

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Subject Index Petit Robert complementing, 20 proofreading at, 22, 25 life cycle, 102–​4, 102t linguistic hegemony, of English, 4–​5, 7, 39–​40 linguistic humor, 45, 49–50 dictionary-​unsanctioned Anglicisms and, 13, 61–​63, 73–​74, 74n28, 80, 87–​89, 95, 95n15, 98–​99, 101, 104, 140–​141 in Libération, 22–​23, 41n8 playful spelling, 50, 63, 64t, 119 typologies and, 76 wordplay, 13, 22, 61–​62, 64t, 99, 141 linguistic purism, 2–​3, 10n8 linguists, opposition from, 4–​6 loaded Anglicisms, 51–​52, 53t, 99, 104 loanblends, 5, 42–43, 115 loi Fioraso, 41–​42, 41f loi Toubon, 2n2, 92 Maurois, André, 37 modish usage, 3, 9, 52, 79, 86, 88, 95 Monde, Le, 22n2, 24, 42, 77 monosyllabic words, 106, 110t, 115–​16 music styles, ellipsis and, 127t, 134 national language policy, 1–2, 10n8 native-​like ending, with non-​native phonemic-​ graphemic correspondence, 127t, 130–​32 necessary Anglicisms, 51 negative list, 24 neologisms derivatives and, 59 English used in, 1, 11–12, 19–21, 25, 33, 39, 45, 52, 59–60, 71, 75, 77, 97–98, 111, 124, 141 false Hellenisms, 54 juxtapositional, 11, 111 literary, 62–​63, 64t in the press, 21–23, 25, 79 state-​sponsored, 2–3, 19–20 newspaper corpus, 1, 6–​9, 11–​12, 12n9. See also Libération nominal Anglicisms, in plural acronyms, 110t, 116 adjectives vs., 135–​37, 137t bare plurals in French, 106–​7 bilingualism and, 107n3, 110–11, 113–15 compound structures, 109–​15, 110t, 112t dictionary-​sanctioned, 19, 107–9 dictionary-​unsanctioned, 111, 113, 119, 135 factors disfavoring inflection of, 109–​21, 110t, 112t flagging devices, 110t, 121 initialisms, 110t, 116 irregular plural in English, 110t, 117–​20 methodology, 107–​9

monosyllabic/​short words, 106, 110t, 115–​16 morphology and, 106–9 nominalized onomatopoeia, 105–​6, 110t, 115, 120–​21 nouns ending in -​s, -​x, and -​z, 110t, 116 nouns without plural, 110t, 117 proper nouns, 106, 110t, 115–16, 121 nominalized onomatopoeia, 105–​6, 110t, 115, 120–​21 nonce borrowing, 30, 40, 52, 59, 61–​62, 69, 75, 79–​82 non-​English borrowing, 33–​34. See also Arabic; Italian; Japanese; Latin phrases; Russian; Spanish French Anglicisms vs., 6–​7, 6t, 49, 111 plural forms, 105, 105n1, 111, 126, 136–​37 non-​native traits, incorporation of adjectives ending in -​y, 126–​28, 127t native-​like ending with non-​native phonemic-​graphemic correspondence, 127t, 130–​32 in plural adjectival Anglicisms, 126–​32, 127t realization of usually silent final consonants, 127t, 128–​30 nouns. See also nominal Anglicisms, in plural; truncated compounds abbreviated, 54, 57–​58, 106, 115 ending in -​s, -​x, and -​z, 110t, 116 gender of, 57, 136–​37, 136n8, 141 with non-​nominal second constituent, 109–​15, 112t without plural, 110t, 117 proper, 29–30, 36–37, 54, 106, 110t, 115n10, 116–18, 121 novels genre, ellipsis and, 127t, 134 translation of, 35 online corpus databases, 11–12, 15. See also database, of Anglicisms Libération, 1, 6, 11–12, 12n9, 17, 20–32, 26f–29f, 32f, 43, 67, 77, 77n1, 79–80, 83, 84t–85t, 102, 102t, 108–9, 125–26, 140 online English, 40 onomatopoeia, 105–​6, 110t, 115, 120–​21 open-​class words, 87 open-​ended nature, of lexicon, 79, 141 oral Anglicisms, written vs., 7–​10 orthographically assimilated Anglicisms, 62–​63, 64t, 81, 126. See also spelling Parlez-​vous franglais? (Étiemble), 38, 107, 107n4 perfect synonyms. See absolute synonymy Petit Larousse, 18–​19

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Subject Index Petit Robert (PR) corpus, 1, 6–​7, 6t, 17–​20, 24, 29–​30, 34n1, 43, 54, 78–​79, 107–​9, 107n5 Libération complementing, 20 most frequent Anglicisms not found in, 83, 84t–​85t presentation of, 18–​19 phonestheme, 57, 94 phonetic spelling, 8, 9n7, 38, 43, 62–63, 64t, 85t, 119, 132 phraseology. See borrowed phraseology phrases vs. compounds, 65–66 Picone, Michael, 11, 111 plural forms, 13–​14, 82. See also adjectival Anglicisms, in plural; nominal Anglicisms, in plural bare, 106–​7, 125 bilingualism and, 107n3, 110–11, 113–15 compound, 105, 109–16, 110t, 112t, 119–21, 127t, 133 irregular, 110t, 117–​20 Italian, 105, 105n1,117 morphemes, 8, 82, 130, 132 in non-​English borrowing, 105, 105n1, 111, 126, 136–37 nouns without, 110t, 117 pluralization patterns of, 14, 82, 106, 125 politics and jurisprudence, Anglomania and, 34–​35 pop culture, 52, 67–​69, 76t, 96–​97, 99 postcarding, 96–​97 PR. See Petit Robert pragmatic markers, 72–​74, 76t prepositions, 50, 58, 82, 87, 91–92, 92t, 104, 108 in compound Anglicisms, 110–15, 110t, 112t uninflected English adjectives complying with French morphology, 127t, 133 proofreading, 22, 25 proper nouns, 29–30, 36–37, 54, 106, 110t, 115–16, 115n10, 121. See also trademarks Proust, Marcel, 33, 36–​37, 36n3, 37n4, 65 proverbs, 67–​69, 76t, 99 pseudo-​Anglicisms. See false Anglicisms puns, 8, 8n6, 13, 61–​62, 64t, 75, 93n14, 97, 101, 141 purism. See linguistic purism Québec French, 10n8, 58, 101–​2, 124 Queneau, Raymond, 37n4, 63, 119 quotation marks, 88, 121 reduplication, compounding from, 127t, 133 register, 21, 49n12

regularization, 58, 61, 112, 114, 119, 127t reproduced language, 29–​30 research agenda, 10–​14 Rey, Alain, 18–​20, 40n7, 118n12 Rey-​Debove, Josette, 23–​24 Romance languages, 58, 62, 112, 137 ruling language, 4 Russian, 40, 105, 130 Sartre, Jean-​Paul, 22n3 scale, lexical borrowing, 75, 75n30 Second World War, 2, 7, 38, 74n28, 114 semantic extension, 45–​47, 64t semantic restriction, 45 semantic shift, 45–49, 47t, 53t, 54–57 serial bilingual compounds, 60–​61, 64t, 103 serial effect, 97–99 serial so + X, 92–​96, 93n14, 93t short words, 101–​2, 106, 110t, 115–​16 Les Silences du colonel Bramble (Maurois), 37 simplification, 14, 42n9, 114, 121, 127t, 133, 137, 141. See also regularization slogans, lexicalized, 69–​70, 76t SMS language, 101 space, compound Anglicisms without, 112n7 Spanish, 6t, 9, 43, 58n23, 62, 65n26, 75, 79, 83, 111 spelling erroneous, 56n20, 64, 64t literary Anglicisms, 62–​63, 64t orthographically assimilated Anglicisms, 62–​63, 64t, 81, 126 phonetic, 8, 9n7, 38, 43, 62–63, 64t, 85t, 119, 132 playful, 50, 63, 64t, 119, 132 spoken language, 7–​10 state-​sponsored neologisms, 2–3, 19–20 structural calques, 42 style, Anglicism and, 49–51, 49n12, 50–51n13 stylistic shift, 47t, 49–​51, 49n12, 50–51n13, 53t, 87, 140 suffixation. See affixation Sulci, 24, 26f–​29f, 79 superfluous Anglicisms, 51 Swann’s Way (Du côté de chez Swann) (Proust), 33, 36–​37 synonymy. See absolute synonymy synthetic language, 11, 58, 111 technical terms, nineteenth-​century, 35 text messages, 101 text mining, 11, 17, 24–​29, 26f–​29f three-​element phraseologisms, 74, 76t Toubon Law, 2n2, 92

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Subject Index trademarks, 30, 30n6, 49, 54n18, 55, 121 translation economy, 102 of film titles, 42n9, 74–75 of novels, 35 truncated compounds, 37, 44, 44n11, 54–​55, 57–​59, 58n23, 64t, 108, 113 Turkish, 6 typology of borrowing, 52–53, 64, 64t, 67, 76, 76t, 140 uninflected English adjectives, complying with French morphology, 127t, 133–​34 universal donor language, global English as, 33, 39–40, 104 vassal language, 4–​5 verbs

in compound Anglicisms, 110t, 111, 112t, 114–​15 inflectional integration, 13n11, 81–​82, 81n8 Verlanization, 64–​65 very low-​frequency Anglicisms, 40, 79–​82, 101 virtual language contact, 14, 39–​42 Westlake, Donald E., 17 What’s so funny? (Westlake), 17, 21 Winter-​Froemel, Esme, 11 word class, 110–12, 135–37. See also closed-​class words; open-​class words wordplay, 13, 22, 61–​62, 64t, 99, 141. See also puns World Wide Web, 7, 33, 40 written Anglicisms, oral vs., 7–​10

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