Predicting new words from newer words: Lexical borrowings in French

Abstract

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.