The English Influence On

Philippa Maurer-Stroh THE ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON MODERN FRENCH, GERMAN AND ITALIAN – a comparative lexicographical study based on Duden – Deutsches Universalwörterbuch, Le Nouveau Petit Robert and lo Zingarelli DIPLOMARBEIT zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Magistra der Philosophie Studium: Anglistik und Amerikanistik mit der individuellen Fächerkombination "Angewandte Romanistik" Universität Klagenfurt Fakultät für Kulturwissenschaften Begutachter: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Allan R. James Institut: Anglistik und Amerikanistik Klagenfurt, Dezember 2001 EHRENWÖRTLICHE ERKLÄRUNG Ich erkläre ehrenwörtlich, dass ich die vorliegende Schrift verfasst und alle ihr vorausgehenden oder sie begleitenden Arbeiten durchgeführt habe. Die in der Schrift verwendete Literatur sowie das Ausmaß der mir im gesamten Arbeitsvorgang gewährten Unterstützung sind ausnahmslos angegeben. Die Schrift ist noch keiner anderen Prüfungsbehörde vorgelegt worden. Klagenfurt, 19.Dezember 2001 THE ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON MODERN FRENCH, GERMAN AND ITALIAN – a comparative lexicographical study based on Duden – Deutsches Universalwörterbuch, Le Nouveau Petit Robert and lo Zingarelli Diploma thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Magistra philosophiae at the Institute for English and American Studies at the University of Klagenfurt supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Allan R. James by Philippa Maurer-Stroh Klagenfurt, December 2001 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Univ.-Prof. Dr. Allan James for supervising this thesis. Furthermore, I wish to express my being deeply grateful to him for introducing me to the topic of (English) linguistics. His enthusiasm concerning this topic and the highly comprehensive explanations in his lectures brought me to, finally, know what I am aiming at in professional life. Attending his lectures, I have learned to love ‘linguistic signs’, analyse them, interpret them, put them in relation. I would also like to thank Chris Upward and Fred Swartz for making relevant newspaper articles available on the Internet, all the people responding to my questionnaires and Martine Vitteau and Julius Wallner for providing me the answers to the two missing French questionnaires. Further acknowledgements go to my close friends for supporting me, each of them in her/his own special way. Especially, I would like to thank Ingrid Fernandez de Retana for constructive criticism and useful discussions as to the final reading of this paper. Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my family. My parents, for providing me the opportunity to make my studies. Dad, for keeping me in a good mood when I was just to throw away the word lists, Mum for lending me her new notebook and for her ever presence when computer problems occurred, Grandma for causing some diversion with her parrot, Sebastian for his support not only concerning layout of a diploma thesis and Johannes for his being my contact to important topics other than studies. 1 PREFACE “The definition of an Anglicism, in all its parameters, is itself an issue that anticipates in microcosm virtually every important element of the vast debate that will unfold in the pages of this volume.” (Michel Piccone, 1996) 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 1 Table of contents 2 Abbreviations 6 1. Introduction 7 1.1. The influence of the English language on other languages 9 1.1.1. The English influence on French, German and Italian 10 1.1.1.1. Langue versus parole 10 1.2. Procedure 11 1.3. The fundamental definition 12 2. The Corpus 13 2.1. An introduction to lexicography 13 2.1.1. How a word finds its way into a dictionary 16 2.2. Presentation of the dictionaries 17 2.2.1. The Concise Oxford Dictionary 18 2.2.2. Le Nouveau Petit Robert 21 2.2.3. Duden – Deutsches Universalwörterbuch 23 2.2.4. lo Zingarelli 26 2.2.5. Dizionario delle parole straniere nella lingua italiana 29 2.2.6. Wörterbuch überflüssiger Anglizismen 30 2.2.7. Les mots anglais du franíais 31 2.3. Assembling the corpus data 32 2.3.1. Search criteria 32 2.3.2. Problems with the results 34 3. Terminology and status of linguistic borrowing 36 3.1. Linguistic borrowing from foreign languages – models of reference 37 3.1.1. Maurizio Dardano 37 3.1.2. Karin Viereck 38 3.1.3. Wolfgang Viereck 40 3.1.4. Mirosłav Jabłoński 42 3.1.5. Ulrich Busse 43 3.1.6. A new approach towards loan terminology 44 3 3.2. The model of reference for this paper 45 3.2.1. Linguistic borrowing from English in French, German and Italian 46 4. English Internationalisms 54 4.1. Authentic English Internationalisms 54 4.1.1. List of authentic English Internationalisms 55 4.1.2. Pseudo-Anglicisms as English Internationalisms 57 4.1.3. General monolingual dictionaries versus special dictionaries of foreign words 61 4.1.4. English Internationalisms, their linguistic properties and the role they play in the replica languages 63 4.1.4.1. Graphology and orthography 64 4.1.4.2. Phonetics and phonology 65 4.1.4.2.1. Vowels and diphthongs 67 4.1.4.2.2. Consonants 69 4.1.4.3. Morphology and syntax 70 4.1.4.3.1. Parts of speech 71 4.1.4.3.2. Gender 72 4.1.4.3.3. Plural marking 75 4.1.4.3.4. Other syntactic indications 76 4.1.4.4. Semantics and stylistics 77 4.1.4.4.1. English Internationalisms on the semantic level 77 4.1.4.4.1.1. Semantic narrowing 79 4.1.4.4.1.2. Semantic extension 79 4.1.4.4.1.3. Semantic shift 80 4.1.4.4.2. English Internationalisms on the stylistic level 81 4.1.4.5. Authentic English Internationalisms – assimilated forms causing ambiguity 82 4.2. Assimilated Internationalisms 83 4.2.1. Assimilation according to the rules of grapheme-phoneme relation and representation 83 4.2.2. Assimilation on the morphological level 85 4.2.2.1. Verbs 85 4.2.2.2. Nouns 86 4.3. Prospects 87 4 5. Attitudes towards English influence and the use of Anglicisms 89 5.1. Questionnaires 89 5.1.1. Procedure 91 5.1.2. Results 94 5.1.2.1. French 94 5.1.2.2. German 99 5.1.2.3. Italian 103 5.1.2.4. Comparison 107 5.1.3. The ‘Top Ten‘ of Anglicisms in the examined languages 112 5.2. Projects in progress against the use of Anglicisms 115 5.2.1. La Loi Toubon 115 5.2.2. ‘Verein deutsche Sprache‘ and ‘Wiener Sprachblätter‘ 117 5.2.3. Italian projects 118 6. Conclusion 119 7. Bibliography 123 Appendices 128 A. E-mail correspondence as to Le Nouveau Petit Robert and Duden 129 a. Latest version of LNPR 129 b. Problems with Duden- Die deutsche Rechtschreibung 129 B. Corpus lists 132 a. Duden – Deutsches Universalwörterbuch 132 b. Le Nouveau Petit Robert 145 c. lo Zingarelli 157 C. English words according to Microsoft spell check 169 a. Duden – Deutsches Universalwörterbuch 169 b. Le Nouveau Petit Robert 177 c. lo Zingarelli 183 D. Direct lexical borrowings – English Internationalisms in DDUWB, LNPR, LOZ, LMADF, PS, WBÜA 190 E. Direct lexical borrowings in LMADF, PS and WBÜA 194 F. Phonetic transcription 196 G. Questionnaires 201 a. French 202 5 (1) Questionnaire 202 (2) Survey results 203 (3) Examples of Anglicisms 204 b. German 205 (1) Questionnaire 205 (2) Survey results 206 (3) Examples of Anglicisms 207 c. Italian 208 (1) Questionnaire 208 (2) Survey results 209 (3) Examples of Anglicisms 210 6 ABBREVIATIONS COD The Concise Oxford Dictionary DDUWB Duden – Deutsches Universalwörterbuch LMADF Les mots anglais du français LNPR Le Nouveau Petit Robert LOZ lo Zingarelli PS Le parole straniere nella lingua italiana WBÜA Wörterbuch überflüssiger Anglizismen 7 1. INTRODUCTION In its easiness of grammatical construction, in its paucity of inflection, in its almost total disregard of the distinctions of gender excepting those of nature, in the simplicity and precision of its terminations and auxiliary verbs, not less than the majesty, vigour and copiousness of its expression, our mother tongue seems well adapted by organization to become the language of the world. (a reviewer of the British periodical The Athenaeum, 1848)1 Beyond doubt, this prophecy proves to be true, as English, in fact, has become the global language in these days. So, what makes a global language? Is it simple grammatical structure? Certainly not. According to David Crystal, ‘the world authority on English language’, the fact that English is the global language has little to do with structure or its number of speakers, but “It is much more to do with who those speakers are. Latin became an international language throughout the Roman Empire, but this was not because the Romans were more numerous than the people subjugated. They were simply more powerful. And later, when Roman military power declined, Latin remained for a millennium as the international language of education, thanks to a different sort of power – the ecclesiastical power of the Roman Catholicism. There is the closest link between language dominance and cultural power, and this relationship will become increasingly clear as the history of English is told […]. Without a string power-base, whether political, military or economic, no language can make progress as an international medium of communication. Language has no independent existence, living in some sort of mystical space apart from the people who speak it. Language exists only in the brains and mouths […] of its users. When they succeed, their language succeeds. When they fail, their language fails.”2 In other words, the fact that English, nowadays, has become the global language is mainly due to the dominance of the English speaking world throughout recent history. Starting to spread in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution from Great Britain to rest of the world, the English language, or more accurately its influence, first appeared around 1750 in other European countries.

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