Compounds and multi-word expressions in French

Abstract

French compounds differ from Germanic compounds in two important aspects. First, while Germanic compounding complies with the Right-hand Head Rule (e. g. English postage stamp, German Briefmarke, Dutch postzegel), French, like other Romance languages (see the chapters by Masini (Italian) and Fernández-Domínguez (Spanish) in this volume), has a general tendency towards lefthand headed compounding (e. g. timbre-poste lit. stamp-post). Second, whereas languages such as Dutch and German establish a clear demarcation between compounds and lexicalized phrases on the basis of formal criteria (spelling, prosody, linking elements, loss of adjectival inflection in [A N] compounds), French compounds are not easily distinguishable from syntactic expressions, and true compounds in Germanic languages often correspond to syntactic multi-word units in French (e. g. English admission ticket vs. French billet d'entrée (lit. ticket of entrance)) (Zwanenburg 1992: 222; see also the chapters by Booij (Dutch), Schlücker (German) and Bauer (English) in this volume). Contrary to Germanic languages, French has no distinctive word stress, only phrase stress. Moreover, whereas Germanic compounds may present linking elements (e. g. Dutch zonnebril, German Sonnenbrille 'sunglasses'), these do not occur in French. Furthermore, the spelling of French multi-word units is characterized by many inconsistencies and irregularities: many combinations can be spelled with or without a hyphen (e. g. bébé(-)éprouvette 'test-tube baby' (lit. baby(-)test tube), porte(-)monnaie 'coin purse' (lit. carry(-)money)) or even as one word (e. g. portefeuille 'wallet, billfold' (lit. carrysheet) (Lehmann/Martin-Berthet 2008). Spelling of complex lexical units as one word occurs (e. g. vinaigre 'vinegar' (lit. wineacid)), but it is far from being the rule (cf. French vin rouge vs. German Rotwein), and the French spelling rules are systematically updated by orthographic reforms. 1 Finally, many French compound-like expressions have 1 The orthographic reform of 1990 proposed, for instance, to hyphenate complex numerals greater or lower than one hundred (e. g. vingt-trois 'twenty-three', cent-cinquante-huit 'one hundred and fifty-eight'), whereas this was only the case for numerals lower than one hundred before. The French Academy also suggested writing as one word a list of complex lexical units Open Access.