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Vincent Renner

University of Lyon, School of Modern Languages, Faculty Member

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I have been Professor of English linguistics at the University of Lyon (Université Lumière Lyon 2) since 2015. My main areas of interest are lexicology and morphology, with a special focus on contrastive, cross-linguistic and contact approaches to word-formation.

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Drafts by Vincent Renner

Inflection dropping in the English-origin verbs of present-day French: A Twitter-wide exploration

Voids in Morphology: Exploring "Uninflectedness", 2025

Fifty frequent English-origin verbs extracted from a corpus of 100 million French tweets from 202... more Fifty frequent English-origin verbs extracted from a corpus of 100 million French tweets from 2020-2022 were analyzed for uninflectedness in two composite verb forms — the "passé composé" construction and the periphrastic future construction. It was found that a majority of these verbs show a substantial preference for the nonstandard practice of dropping inflectional marking on the past participle (for the "passé composé") and the infinitive (for the periphrastic future). This salient feature of written social media discourse is unexpected as it violates a presumably categorical norm but it is not truly exceptional in light of other underreported phenomena of verbal uninflectedness, especially when French is in contact with other languages. It is also suggested that unadapted forms are not only a marked choice flagging foreignness and peripherality, but also, in some cases, markers of in-group membership.

Papers by Vincent Renner

CFP Boundaries and continua in affixation (Košice, June 2025)

by Alexandra Bagasheva, Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, and Vincent Renner

We invite word-formationists to revisit a number of boundaries and continua in affixation, from a... more We invite word-formationists to revisit a number of boundaries and continua in affixation, from a diachronic or synchronic perspective, through specific case studies or more theoretically oriented discussions. The list of topics includes, but is not limited to:
a) derivation and inflection,
b) splinters, (bound) roots, affixoids, and affixes,
c) the emergence of new derivational affixes (= derivational affixization),
d) affixization and other "ization" processes such as constructionalization, grammaticalization, lexicalization, and morphologization,
e) evaluative and non-evaluative affixation,
f) affixation and deaffixation (= back-formation),
g) affixes in language contact situations.

Language creativity

by Gordana Lalic-Krstin and Vincent Renner

The Routledge Companion to English Studies, 2025

Towards a competition-based word-formation theory: Core research questions and major hypotheses

by Alexandra Bagasheva and Vincent Renner

Competition in Word-Formation (Benjamins), 2024

This chapter provides an overview of the study of competition in word-formation theories, drawing... more This chapter provides an overview of the study of competition in word-formation theories, drawing on the findings of the ten chapters collected in this volume and other recent contributions. It explores recurrent issues regarding (i) the triggers and outcomes of competition, (ii) the variety of competing forms, and (iii) the synonymy condition for competition. With respect to the first set of research questions, a binary typology of form-based and meaning-based resolutions is identified, with each pole providing multiple ways to resolve competition. Next, for the form-related research questions, the distinction between macro- and micro-level competition is significant. Finally, the synonymy condition is reassessed through a careful comparison between morphologically simplex and complex lexemes, leading to a definition of competing rivals in word-formation as a set of formally suppletive morphological processes that produce propositional, near, or sense synonyms.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, 2023

This contribution provides a crosslinguistic overview of lexical blending, a word-formation proce... more This contribution provides a crosslinguistic overview of lexical blending, a word-formation process pertaining to the domain of non-concatenative morphology. It starts with a discussion of its definition and delimitation from the processes of compounding and initialization. Its uneven presence in the languages of the world is then appraised and the conspicuous role of English in the new availability or increased frequency of the process in a variety of languages is emphasized. Next, a taxonomic outline of various key formal and semantic types and subtypes is given from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective and with illustrative data from languages of different genetic stocks. It ends with a focus on two issues of current debate in the field, i.e. the grammatical or extragrammatical status of blended outputs and the inclusion or exclusion of items made of two initial word fragments from the category. It concludes that two prototypical formal-cum-functional strategies of blend formation can be sketched crosslinguistically -- an associative strategy of novel naming preferably encoded by A{B|C|∅}D constructs and a syntagmatic strategy of compacted renaming preferably encoded by AC constructs.

Structural borrowing

Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford University Press), 2023

The concept of structural borrowing stands in a binary contrast to that of matter borrowing, whic... more The concept of structural borrowing stands in a binary contrast to that of matter borrowing, which entails the copying of any concrete linguistic element, which prototypically corresponds to the borrowing of lexical units, but also comprises that of function words, bound morphemes, and phonemes. In contrast, structural borrowing can thus be explained as the copying of any abstract linguistic element (i.e., pattern) from one language to another. A crucial difference between the two types of borrowing is that matter borrowing is overt and thus, usually, easily identifiable, while structural borrowing is covert, because of its abstract nature, and this abstractness necessarily leads to broadening the definition of the concept so as to include all cases of significant contact-induced change in frequency of use of an abstract pattern. The dichotomy between matter and structural borrowing has been widely discussed in the contact linguistics literature and is expressed through a variety of oppositive terms including matter v. pattern replication, MAT v. PAT borrowing, global v. selective copying, direct v. indirect diffusion, and direct v. indirect transfer. This bibliography starts with a select number of suggested readings that offer general overviews of the field of linguistic borrowing and contact studies, and then, more narrowly, of structural borrowing. The subsequent sections introduce the various linguistic domains in which structural borrowing can be found. Each of them includes both a general overview of structural borrowing in the given domain and a select number of exemplary case studies.

L'apport du concept de tête à l'étude des amalgames lexicaux

Morphophonologie, lexicologie et langue de spécialité (Presses Universitaires de Rennes), 2021

Le concept de tête est fréquemment utilisé par les lexicologues dans l'étude de l'opération morph... more Le concept de tête est fréquemment utilisé par les lexicologues dans l'étude de l'opération morphologique de composition. Il semble moins usité dans la littérature spécialisée traitant de l'amalgamation lexicale alors que l'application de ce concept à la classe des amalgames s'avère précieuse pour décrire et analyser un certain nombre de phénomènes singuliers. Cet article se donne donc pour but de mettre en lumière ces phénomènes en prenant appui sur des exemples tirés du français et de l'anglais. Dans un premier temps, je rappellerai comment le concept est appréhendé et utilisé dans l'étude des mots composés ; je montrerai ensuite comment il peut être transposé au domaine de l'amalgamation lexicale ; je soulignerai pour finir qu'il permet d'offrir de nouveaux éclairages sur une variété de questions touchant aux amalgames.

An ecosystem view of English word-formation

The Mental Lexicon, 15 (1), 2020

This article takes a function-to-form approach to word-formation in present-day English and argue... more This article takes a function-to-form approach to word-formation in present-day English and argues that the ecosystem metaphor can help morphologists see competition in word-formation and its resolution in a new light. The analysis first draws correspondences between four lexical functions (transcategorial, transconceptual, evaluative, and compacting) and ten formal operations (prefixation, suffixation, compounding, blending, morphostasis, stress shift, clipping, desuffixation, initialization, and replication) and concludes that there is no across-the-board interoperation competition to encode each function, but rather a fairly complementary distribution of the operations between the four functional subsystems. Each functional subsystem is then reviewed in turn and it is shown that, again, there is no full-scale competition at this level, but rather some fairly pronounced tendencies towards complementariness, and, in one case, also towards combination. The broad division of labor within each subsystem can, remarkably, be accounted for in different terms: the conditioning is primarily semantic (with formal subconsiderations) in the transcategorial and transconceptual subsystems while it is formal in the evaluative and compacting subsystems.

Derivational networks in French

Derivational networks across languages (De Gruyter Mouton), 2020

French derivational networks can be characterized by three main features: a limited derivational ... more French derivational networks can be characterized by three main features: a limited derivational capacity overall (3rd order derivation is only marginally attested), fairly low saturation values in the different word-classes (under 60% for adjectives, under 40% for verbs, and under 20% for nouns), and wide gaps between individual saturation values in all word-classes and all orders of derivation.

New lexical blends in The Simpsons: A formal analysis of English nonce formations and their French translations

by Adam Renwick and Vincent Renner

Lexis, 14, 2019

This contribution examines the conspicuous presence of lexical blends in the long-running US tele... more This contribution examines the conspicuous presence of lexical blends in the long-running US television show The Simpsons and consists of two parts. The first part involves the formal analysis of 237 nonce blends in the original English-language version of the show, working on the underlying hypothesis that, despite their novelty, the audience is nonetheless able to easily decipher the blends due to a number of formal choices enhancing the recognizability of their source elements. The second part then examines the translation of these blends into Hexagonal French by taking account of formal and semantic considerations influencing whether the English nonce blends are rendered as blends in French and, if so, whether the latter display the same formal tendencies as in English. It is found that Simpsonian nonce blends notably stand out in terms of preferred type of lexical shortening and prevalence of segment overlap and phonological headedness, in both English and French. These results indicate that, against a widely-held view among morphologists, blends may not constitute a homogeneous class from a formal standpoint.

On schematic constructional copying: The case of French "X slash Y"

Informalization and Hybridization of Speech Practices (Peter Lang), 2019

This chapter deals with a novel case of constructional copying, i.e. the incipient productivity o... more This chapter deals with a novel case of constructional copying, i.e. the incipient productivity of the partially schematic construction X slash Y in early-twenty-first-century French, as in chanteuse slash actrice 'singer slash actress' or consoles de jeu slash porte clés 'game consoles slash key rings'. Such occurrences are still exceedingly rare, but they can, however, be found repeatedly in online journalistic prose. On the basis of data collected from the news aggregator Google Actualités, it is advanced that the French schema was copied from an equivalent English construction associated with the concept of 'concurrent multiple careers', which was first popularized in the US by the journalist Marci Alboher in 2007, and that it rapidly acclimatized to the point that it is now used with different semantics than those of the original schema and appears in a variety of structures, including adjectival constructs and a remarkably high number of recursive constructs. From this latter fact, it is claimed that slash has been partially functionalized into a marker of immediate constituent structure that audibly signals internal boundaries within polylexemic constructs.

French and English lexical blends in contrast

Languages in Contrast, 19 (1), 2019

Two sets of 97 French and 374 English lexical units identified as lexical blends are examined fro... more Two sets of 97 French and 374 English lexical units identified as lexical blends are examined from a contrastive perspective. It appears that English displays a wider variety of patterns than French does – a larger number of marginal types of lexical input combination, of lexical shortening and of phonological splitting. Striking dissimilarities between the two languages also include an inclination for the pattern of double inner shortening in English and the pattern of left-hand-side inner shortening in French, as well as a preference for semantic and phonological right-headedness in English and the absence of a preferred lateral head position in French.

Structural borrowing in word-formation: An exploratory overview

SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 15 (2), 2018

This exploratory overview of structural borrowing in word-formation discusses the multiformity of... more This exploratory overview of structural borrowing in word-formation discusses the multiformity of processes and patterns affected by language contact and then reviews linguistic and sociolinguistic indicators that may impact on the relative plausibility of scenarios of contact-induced change. A number of key features of this type of borrowing are highlighted: first, it is not a negligible phenomenon and should gain a more prominent position in the general contact linguistics literature; second, it is a manifold phenomenon and fine-grained descriptions, in both their qualitative and quantitative aspects, need to be considered; third, certifying the external causation of change is a challenge and the analysis should cautiously be limited to arguments of relative plausibility, which may combine and strengthen each other.

Panorama rétro-prospectif des études amalgamatives

Neologica, 9, 2015

Cet article de synthèse propose un balayage de diverses questions et évolutions saillantes du cha... more Cet article de synthèse propose un balayage de diverses questions et évolutions saillantes du champ contemporain des études amalgamatives en s'appuyant sur des données provenant principalement de l'anglais, du français et de l'hébreu moderne. Il traite d'abord des différents termes français et anglais du domaine, des critères définitoires du concept dans la littérature spécialisée et de la distinction entre amalgamation et composition. Il aborde ensuite la variété des approches disciplinaires et méthodologiques développées au cours des dernières décennies et précise de nouvelles pistes de recherche susceptibles de mieux éclairer la complexité de l'amalgamation lexicale.

False Anglicisms in French and Bulgarian

by Alexandra Bagasheva and Vincent Renner

Sŭpostavitelno Ezikoznanie / Contrastive Linguistics, 40 (3), 2015

This article offers a contrastive description of the phenomenon of false Anglicization in French ... more This article offers a contrastive description of the phenomenon of false Anglicization in French and Bulgarian. French has about twice as many false Anglicisms (FA) as Bulgarian, but the distribution of the different processes of false Anglicization is very much the same, with two major processes – ellipsis and resemanticization – each accounting for about 40% of all FAs in the two languages, and a third process – compounding – accounting for another 10% of the two datasets. French contrasts with Bulgarian in its variety of lexical types and boasts a number of adjectival and verbal units, two categories which are virtually absent in Bulgarian. Another noteworthy fact is that the two languages share a considerable number of items: Bulgarian shares about 40% of its units with French, and French about 20% of its units with Bulgarian.

Lexical blending as wordplay

Wordplay and Metalinguistic/Metadiscursive Reflection (De Gruyter), 2015

This article deals with wordplay in word-formation and centers on lexical blending. It claims tha... more This article deals with wordplay in word-formation and centers on lexical blending. It claims that, because of their very formation process, lexical blends are instances of wordplay. Drawing on examples from a variety of languages, it offers a categorization of the different features which may be argued to increase wordplayfulness into five classes: formal complexity, structural transgression, graphic play on words, semantic play on words, and functional ludicity.

Non-canonical proverbial occurrences and wordplay: A corpus investigation and an enquiry into readers’ perception of humour and cleverness

by Pierre Arnaud and Vincent Renner

Wordplay and Metalinguistic/Metadiscursive Reflection (De Gruyter), 2015

This article is an investigation of wordplay – defined as the clever and humorous formal manipula... more This article is an investigation of wordplay – defined as the clever and humorous formal manipulation of language strings – in the use of proverbs in written discourse. A set of 303 occurrences of six English proverbs was collected in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the non-canonical occurrences were analysed and classified. It appears that most of these manipulations are simple contextual adaptations including noun-phrase substitutions, and only very few occurrences could qualify as instances of wordplay. To verify this, a questionnaire with 32 of the non-canonical occurrences was administered to a group of 12 native speakers who rated them for humour and cleverness. A comparison of the five occurrences with the highest ratings and the five with the lowest ones confirmed that the simple contextual adaptation of proverbs does not create wordplay, which requires semantic complexity combined with humour.

False Anglicization in the Romance languages: A contrastive analysis of French, Spanish and Italian

by Vincent Renner and Jesús Fernández-Domínguez

Pseudo-English. Studies on False Anglicisms in Europe, 2015

False Anglicization, the process by which new meanings are conveyed either through units which ar... more False Anglicization, the process by which new meanings are conveyed either through units which are formally identical to items already institutionalized in English or through units arising from the novel combination of word-building elements of the English language, is widespread in the Romance languages. In this article, we contrast data from French, Spanish and Italian and show that cross-linguistic false Anglicization is a frequent phenomenon (about one-third of all units are shared by at least two of the three languages), which suggests that many false Anglicisms might be circulating somewhat freely from a language to another. We also proffer a synchronically principled typology of false Anglicization and conclude that resemanticization and, to a lesser extent, compounding are the two major processes by which the overwhelming majority of false Anglicisms appear in the three languages.

A Study of Element Ordering in English Coordinate Lexical Items

English Studies, 95 (4), 2014

This article aims at determining the statistical validity of various constraints which are held t... more This article aims at determining the statistical validity of various constraints which are held to influence the element ordering of coordinate lexical items in English. Twelve constraints mentioned in the literature are tested on 562 binomials, compounds and blends. Nine of them are found to be statistically significant: experiential closeness, temporal iconicity, syllable number, vowel length, initial consonant obstruency, final consonant obstruency, stress alternation and lexical frequency for binomials; temporal iconicity and syllable number for compounds; syllable number and initial consonant complexity for blends.

English and French [NN]N lexical units: A categorial, morphological and semantic comparison

by Pierre Arnaud and Vincent Renner

Word Structure, 7 (1), 2014

This article presents a detailed classification of noun-noun nominal lexical units which shows th... more This article presents a detailed classification of noun-noun nominal lexical units which shows that French and English have the same categories. It then contrasts French subordinative units with their English equivalents, and it appears that French units constitute less prototypical compounds, and their status as morphological or syntactic objects is a matter of debate.

Inflection dropping in the English-origin verbs of present-day French: A Twitter-wide exploration

Voids in Morphology: Exploring "Uninflectedness", 2025

Fifty frequent English-origin verbs extracted from a corpus of 100 million French tweets from 202... more Fifty frequent English-origin verbs extracted from a corpus of 100 million French tweets from 2020-2022 were analyzed for uninflectedness in two composite verb forms — the "passé composé" construction and the periphrastic future construction. It was found that a majority of these verbs show a substantial preference for the nonstandard practice of dropping inflectional marking on the past participle (for the "passé composé") and the infinitive (for the periphrastic future). This salient feature of written social media discourse is unexpected as it violates a presumably categorical norm but it is not truly exceptional in light of other underreported phenomena of verbal uninflectedness, especially when French is in contact with other languages. It is also suggested that unadapted forms are not only a marked choice flagging foreignness and peripherality, but also, in some cases, markers of in-group membership.

CFP Boundaries and continua in affixation (Košice, June 2025)

by Alexandra Bagasheva, Jesús Fernández-Domínguez, and Vincent Renner

We invite word-formationists to revisit a number of boundaries and continua in affixation, from a... more We invite word-formationists to revisit a number of boundaries and continua in affixation, from a diachronic or synchronic perspective, through specific case studies or more theoretically oriented discussions. The list of topics includes, but is not limited to:
a) derivation and inflection,
b) splinters, (bound) roots, affixoids, and affixes,
c) the emergence of new derivational affixes (= derivational affixization),
d) affixization and other "ization" processes such as constructionalization, grammaticalization, lexicalization, and morphologization,
e) evaluative and non-evaluative affixation,
f) affixation and deaffixation (= back-formation),
g) affixes in language contact situations.

Language creativity

by Gordana Lalic-Krstin and Vincent Renner

The Routledge Companion to English Studies, 2025

Towards a competition-based word-formation theory: Core research questions and major hypotheses

by Alexandra Bagasheva and Vincent Renner

Competition in Word-Formation (Benjamins), 2024

This chapter provides an overview of the study of competition in word-formation theories, drawing... more This chapter provides an overview of the study of competition in word-formation theories, drawing on the findings of the ten chapters collected in this volume and other recent contributions. It explores recurrent issues regarding (i) the triggers and outcomes of competition, (ii) the variety of competing forms, and (iii) the synonymy condition for competition. With respect to the first set of research questions, a binary typology of form-based and meaning-based resolutions is identified, with each pole providing multiple ways to resolve competition. Next, for the form-related research questions, the distinction between macro- and micro-level competition is significant. Finally, the synonymy condition is reassessed through a careful comparison between morphologically simplex and complex lexemes, leading to a definition of competing rivals in word-formation as a set of formally suppletive morphological processes that produce propositional, near, or sense synonyms.

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, 2023

This contribution provides a crosslinguistic overview of lexical blending, a word-formation proce... more This contribution provides a crosslinguistic overview of lexical blending, a word-formation process pertaining to the domain of non-concatenative morphology. It starts with a discussion of its definition and delimitation from the processes of compounding and initialization. Its uneven presence in the languages of the world is then appraised and the conspicuous role of English in the new availability or increased frequency of the process in a variety of languages is emphasized. Next, a taxonomic outline of various key formal and semantic types and subtypes is given from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective and with illustrative data from languages of different genetic stocks. It ends with a focus on two issues of current debate in the field, i.e. the grammatical or extragrammatical status of blended outputs and the inclusion or exclusion of items made of two initial word fragments from the category. It concludes that two prototypical formal-cum-functional strategies of blend formation can be sketched crosslinguistically -- an associative strategy of novel naming preferably encoded by A{B|C|∅}D constructs and a syntagmatic strategy of compacted renaming preferably encoded by AC constructs.

Structural borrowing

Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford University Press), 2023

The concept of structural borrowing stands in a binary contrast to that of matter borrowing, whic... more The concept of structural borrowing stands in a binary contrast to that of matter borrowing, which entails the copying of any concrete linguistic element, which prototypically corresponds to the borrowing of lexical units, but also comprises that of function words, bound morphemes, and phonemes. In contrast, structural borrowing can thus be explained as the copying of any abstract linguistic element (i.e., pattern) from one language to another. A crucial difference between the two types of borrowing is that matter borrowing is overt and thus, usually, easily identifiable, while structural borrowing is covert, because of its abstract nature, and this abstractness necessarily leads to broadening the definition of the concept so as to include all cases of significant contact-induced change in frequency of use of an abstract pattern. The dichotomy between matter and structural borrowing has been widely discussed in the contact linguistics literature and is expressed through a variety of oppositive terms including matter v. pattern replication, MAT v. PAT borrowing, global v. selective copying, direct v. indirect diffusion, and direct v. indirect transfer. This bibliography starts with a select number of suggested readings that offer general overviews of the field of linguistic borrowing and contact studies, and then, more narrowly, of structural borrowing. The subsequent sections introduce the various linguistic domains in which structural borrowing can be found. Each of them includes both a general overview of structural borrowing in the given domain and a select number of exemplary case studies.

L'apport du concept de tête à l'étude des amalgames lexicaux

Morphophonologie, lexicologie et langue de spécialité (Presses Universitaires de Rennes), 2021

Le concept de tête est fréquemment utilisé par les lexicologues dans l'étude de l'opération morph... more Le concept de tête est fréquemment utilisé par les lexicologues dans l'étude de l'opération morphologique de composition. Il semble moins usité dans la littérature spécialisée traitant de l'amalgamation lexicale alors que l'application de ce concept à la classe des amalgames s'avère précieuse pour décrire et analyser un certain nombre de phénomènes singuliers. Cet article se donne donc pour but de mettre en lumière ces phénomènes en prenant appui sur des exemples tirés du français et de l'anglais. Dans un premier temps, je rappellerai comment le concept est appréhendé et utilisé dans l'étude des mots composés ; je montrerai ensuite comment il peut être transposé au domaine de l'amalgamation lexicale ; je soulignerai pour finir qu'il permet d'offrir de nouveaux éclairages sur une variété de questions touchant aux amalgames.

An ecosystem view of English word-formation

The Mental Lexicon, 15 (1), 2020

This article takes a function-to-form approach to word-formation in present-day English and argue... more This article takes a function-to-form approach to word-formation in present-day English and argues that the ecosystem metaphor can help morphologists see competition in word-formation and its resolution in a new light. The analysis first draws correspondences between four lexical functions (transcategorial, transconceptual, evaluative, and compacting) and ten formal operations (prefixation, suffixation, compounding, blending, morphostasis, stress shift, clipping, desuffixation, initialization, and replication) and concludes that there is no across-the-board interoperation competition to encode each function, but rather a fairly complementary distribution of the operations between the four functional subsystems. Each functional subsystem is then reviewed in turn and it is shown that, again, there is no full-scale competition at this level, but rather some fairly pronounced tendencies towards complementariness, and, in one case, also towards combination. The broad division of labor within each subsystem can, remarkably, be accounted for in different terms: the conditioning is primarily semantic (with formal subconsiderations) in the transcategorial and transconceptual subsystems while it is formal in the evaluative and compacting subsystems.

Derivational networks in French

Derivational networks across languages (De Gruyter Mouton), 2020

French derivational networks can be characterized by three main features: a limited derivational ... more French derivational networks can be characterized by three main features: a limited derivational capacity overall (3rd order derivation is only marginally attested), fairly low saturation values in the different word-classes (under 60% for adjectives, under 40% for verbs, and under 20% for nouns), and wide gaps between individual saturation values in all word-classes and all orders of derivation.

New lexical blends in The Simpsons: A formal analysis of English nonce formations and their French translations

by Adam Renwick and Vincent Renner

Lexis, 14, 2019

This contribution examines the conspicuous presence of lexical blends in the long-running US tele... more This contribution examines the conspicuous presence of lexical blends in the long-running US television show The Simpsons and consists of two parts. The first part involves the formal analysis of 237 nonce blends in the original English-language version of the show, working on the underlying hypothesis that, despite their novelty, the audience is nonetheless able to easily decipher the blends due to a number of formal choices enhancing the recognizability of their source elements. The second part then examines the translation of these blends into Hexagonal French by taking account of formal and semantic considerations influencing whether the English nonce blends are rendered as blends in French and, if so, whether the latter display the same formal tendencies as in English. It is found that Simpsonian nonce blends notably stand out in terms of preferred type of lexical shortening and prevalence of segment overlap and phonological headedness, in both English and French. These results indicate that, against a widely-held view among morphologists, blends may not constitute a homogeneous class from a formal standpoint.

On schematic constructional copying: The case of French "X slash Y"

Informalization and Hybridization of Speech Practices (Peter Lang), 2019

This chapter deals with a novel case of constructional copying, i.e. the incipient productivity o... more This chapter deals with a novel case of constructional copying, i.e. the incipient productivity of the partially schematic construction X slash Y in early-twenty-first-century French, as in chanteuse slash actrice 'singer slash actress' or consoles de jeu slash porte clés 'game consoles slash key rings'. Such occurrences are still exceedingly rare, but they can, however, be found repeatedly in online journalistic prose. On the basis of data collected from the news aggregator Google Actualités, it is advanced that the French schema was copied from an equivalent English construction associated with the concept of 'concurrent multiple careers', which was first popularized in the US by the journalist Marci Alboher in 2007, and that it rapidly acclimatized to the point that it is now used with different semantics than those of the original schema and appears in a variety of structures, including adjectival constructs and a remarkably high number of recursive constructs. From this latter fact, it is claimed that slash has been partially functionalized into a marker of immediate constituent structure that audibly signals internal boundaries within polylexemic constructs.

French and English lexical blends in contrast

Languages in Contrast, 19 (1), 2019

Two sets of 97 French and 374 English lexical units identified as lexical blends are examined fro... more Two sets of 97 French and 374 English lexical units identified as lexical blends are examined from a contrastive perspective. It appears that English displays a wider variety of patterns than French does – a larger number of marginal types of lexical input combination, of lexical shortening and of phonological splitting. Striking dissimilarities between the two languages also include an inclination for the pattern of double inner shortening in English and the pattern of left-hand-side inner shortening in French, as well as a preference for semantic and phonological right-headedness in English and the absence of a preferred lateral head position in French.

Structural borrowing in word-formation: An exploratory overview

SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 15 (2), 2018

This exploratory overview of structural borrowing in word-formation discusses the multiformity of... more This exploratory overview of structural borrowing in word-formation discusses the multiformity of processes and patterns affected by language contact and then reviews linguistic and sociolinguistic indicators that may impact on the relative plausibility of scenarios of contact-induced change. A number of key features of this type of borrowing are highlighted: first, it is not a negligible phenomenon and should gain a more prominent position in the general contact linguistics literature; second, it is a manifold phenomenon and fine-grained descriptions, in both their qualitative and quantitative aspects, need to be considered; third, certifying the external causation of change is a challenge and the analysis should cautiously be limited to arguments of relative plausibility, which may combine and strengthen each other.

Panorama rétro-prospectif des études amalgamatives

Neologica, 9, 2015

Cet article de synthèse propose un balayage de diverses questions et évolutions saillantes du cha... more Cet article de synthèse propose un balayage de diverses questions et évolutions saillantes du champ contemporain des études amalgamatives en s'appuyant sur des données provenant principalement de l'anglais, du français et de l'hébreu moderne. Il traite d'abord des différents termes français et anglais du domaine, des critères définitoires du concept dans la littérature spécialisée et de la distinction entre amalgamation et composition. Il aborde ensuite la variété des approches disciplinaires et méthodologiques développées au cours des dernières décennies et précise de nouvelles pistes de recherche susceptibles de mieux éclairer la complexité de l'amalgamation lexicale.

False Anglicisms in French and Bulgarian

by Alexandra Bagasheva and Vincent Renner

Sŭpostavitelno Ezikoznanie / Contrastive Linguistics, 40 (3), 2015

This article offers a contrastive description of the phenomenon of false Anglicization in French ... more This article offers a contrastive description of the phenomenon of false Anglicization in French and Bulgarian. French has about twice as many false Anglicisms (FA) as Bulgarian, but the distribution of the different processes of false Anglicization is very much the same, with two major processes – ellipsis and resemanticization – each accounting for about 40% of all FAs in the two languages, and a third process – compounding – accounting for another 10% of the two datasets. French contrasts with Bulgarian in its variety of lexical types and boasts a number of adjectival and verbal units, two categories which are virtually absent in Bulgarian. Another noteworthy fact is that the two languages share a considerable number of items: Bulgarian shares about 40% of its units with French, and French about 20% of its units with Bulgarian.

Lexical blending as wordplay

Wordplay and Metalinguistic/Metadiscursive Reflection (De Gruyter), 2015

This article deals with wordplay in word-formation and centers on lexical blending. It claims tha... more This article deals with wordplay in word-formation and centers on lexical blending. It claims that, because of their very formation process, lexical blends are instances of wordplay. Drawing on examples from a variety of languages, it offers a categorization of the different features which may be argued to increase wordplayfulness into five classes: formal complexity, structural transgression, graphic play on words, semantic play on words, and functional ludicity.

Non-canonical proverbial occurrences and wordplay: A corpus investigation and an enquiry into readers’ perception of humour and cleverness

by Pierre Arnaud and Vincent Renner

Wordplay and Metalinguistic/Metadiscursive Reflection (De Gruyter), 2015

This article is an investigation of wordplay – defined as the clever and humorous formal manipula... more This article is an investigation of wordplay – defined as the clever and humorous formal manipulation of language strings – in the use of proverbs in written discourse. A set of 303 occurrences of six English proverbs was collected in the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the non-canonical occurrences were analysed and classified. It appears that most of these manipulations are simple contextual adaptations including noun-phrase substitutions, and only very few occurrences could qualify as instances of wordplay. To verify this, a questionnaire with 32 of the non-canonical occurrences was administered to a group of 12 native speakers who rated them for humour and cleverness. A comparison of the five occurrences with the highest ratings and the five with the lowest ones confirmed that the simple contextual adaptation of proverbs does not create wordplay, which requires semantic complexity combined with humour.

False Anglicization in the Romance languages: A contrastive analysis of French, Spanish and Italian

by Vincent Renner and Jesús Fernández-Domínguez

Pseudo-English. Studies on False Anglicisms in Europe, 2015

False Anglicization, the process by which new meanings are conveyed either through units which ar... more False Anglicization, the process by which new meanings are conveyed either through units which are formally identical to items already institutionalized in English or through units arising from the novel combination of word-building elements of the English language, is widespread in the Romance languages. In this article, we contrast data from French, Spanish and Italian and show that cross-linguistic false Anglicization is a frequent phenomenon (about one-third of all units are shared by at least two of the three languages), which suggests that many false Anglicisms might be circulating somewhat freely from a language to another. We also proffer a synchronically principled typology of false Anglicization and conclude that resemanticization and, to a lesser extent, compounding are the two major processes by which the overwhelming majority of false Anglicisms appear in the three languages.

A Study of Element Ordering in English Coordinate Lexical Items

English Studies, 95 (4), 2014

This article aims at determining the statistical validity of various constraints which are held t... more This article aims at determining the statistical validity of various constraints which are held to influence the element ordering of coordinate lexical items in English. Twelve constraints mentioned in the literature are tested on 562 binomials, compounds and blends. Nine of them are found to be statistically significant: experiential closeness, temporal iconicity, syllable number, vowel length, initial consonant obstruency, final consonant obstruency, stress alternation and lexical frequency for binomials; temporal iconicity and syllable number for compounds; syllable number and initial consonant complexity for blends.

English and French [NN]N lexical units: A categorial, morphological and semantic comparison

by Pierre Arnaud and Vincent Renner

Word Structure, 7 (1), 2014

This article presents a detailed classification of noun-noun nominal lexical units which shows th... more This article presents a detailed classification of noun-noun nominal lexical units which shows that French and English have the same categories. It then contrasts French subordinative units with their English equivalents, and it appears that French units constitute less prototypical compounds, and their status as morphological or syntactic objects is a matter of debate.

Foreword: New territories in word-formation

by Jesús Fernández-Domínguez and Vincent Renner

Competition in Word-Formation

by Alexandra Bagasheva and Vincent Renner

This volume focuses on a number of interrelated issues in the theorizing and interpretation of mo... more This volume focuses on a number of interrelated issues in the theorizing and interpretation of morphological rivalry, including the differences between a semasiological and an onomasiological approach to competition phenomena in word-formation, the scope of such phenomena (micro-level rivalry between individual affixes, as well as macro-level competition between different processes), the different sources of competition, and the possible resolutions of competitive situations. An overview of existing research in the field is provided, as well as new, cutting-edge findings and proposals for analytical innovation. Linguistic data are drawn from European and Asian languages, and morphologists, semanticists, and anyone interested in the dynamics of language will be stimulated by the analytical models and explanations offered in the 11 chapters.

La néologie des langues romanes : nouvelles approches, dynamiques et enjeux

Cet ouvrage offre une vision multidimensionnelle de la recherche actuelle dans le domaine de la n... more Cet ouvrage offre une vision multidimensionnelle de la recherche actuelle dans le domaine de la néologie des langues romanes (français, espagnol, catalan, galicien). Un ensemble de spécialistes reconnus se propose d'explorer de nouvelles approches, aborde de façon complémentaire des aspects très divers du phénomène néologique, en diachronie ou en synchronie, en langue générale ou de spécialité, menant ainsi à une meilleure compréhension globale des faits néologiques, notamment dans leurs dynamiques historiques et leurs enjeux d'aujourd'hui et de demain.

La néologie en langue de spécialité : détection, implantation et circulation des nouveaux termes, coll. Travaux du CRTT, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Lyon, 2014

by José Carlos de Hoyos, Vincent Renner, María Belén Villar Díaz, and George J . Xydopoulos

Ce volume collectif trilingue (français, anglais, espagnol) rassemble 14 articles issus des trava... more Ce volume collectif trilingue (français, anglais, espagnol) rassemble 14 articles issus des travaux présentés lors du colloque international « la néologie en langues de spécialité : détection, implantation et circulation », organisé par le Centre de Recherche en Terminologie et Traduction (CRTT) de l’Université Lumière Lyon 2, les 2 et 3 juillet 2012.

Le présent ouvrage n’a pas pour objectif de proposer un état de l’art sur la question de la néologie, tant le champ à étudier est vaste, et tant les travaux déjà produits sont riches. En effet, de nombreuses recherches ont déjà été menées pour observer et analyser les termes nouveaux, et beaucoup d’outils ont été élaborés pour les repérer et les classer, pour ne citer que quelques exemples du travail déjà accompli en matière de néologie spécialisée.
Ce volume ambitionne par contre de présenter un ensemble de réflexions variées mais complémentaires sur certains aspects liés à l’apparition de termes nouveaux dans un lexique donné. Ainsi, la première partie de ce volume est-elle composée d’articles qui abordent la question des outils et des méthodes de détection des néologismes, ainsi que leur traitement. La deuxième partie se consacre à l’implantation, la circulation et la diffusion des termes nouveaux, trois étapes consécutives mais étroitement liées dans le cycle de vie d’un néologisme. Enfin, la troisième partie a pour but de valoriser la dimension diachronique dans les études sur la néologie, un aspect souvent négligé dans ce domaine de recherche.