Predicting new words from newer words

Lexical borrowings in French

Bibliographic Data

ID3987159
AuthorsPaula Chesley (University of Minnesota System), R Harald Baayen (0000-0003-3178-3944, University of Alberta)
Year2010
Volume48
Issue6
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling.2010.043
OpenAlexW2330513350
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited18

This study addresses entrenchment into the lexicon of lexical borrowings. We search for all new lexical borrowings in a corpus of French newspaper texts and examine the frequency with which these borrowings reoccur in a second corpus of newspaper texts from about 10 years later. Lexical entrenchment emerges as depending on a variety of factors, including length in syllables, the original language of the borrowing, and also semantic and contextual factors. The dispersion of a word in the early corpus is found to be a better predictor of its frequency in the later corpus than its frequency, but both measures contribute to predicting the degree of entrenchment of a lexical item. The interaction between these two variables implies that borrowings are penalized for their burstiness

Corpus linguistics · Lexical density · Lexical item · Lexicon · Linguistics · Newspaper · Sociology · Variety (cybernetics) · Word lists by frequency · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · History · Linguistics, Language Diversity, and Identity · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Second Language Acquisition and Learning