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Article Dans Une Revue Lexis. Journal in English Lexicology Année : 2022

How proper names enter the lexicon – From the Central Intelligence Agency to CIA: the reduction of full denominative expressions interpreted as a means to achieve (greater) lexicalization

Manon Philippe

Résumé

This paper analyses the integration of proper names into the lexicon when they are reduced to initialisms, acronyms and clippings. We confirm their apparently abnormal inclusion in ‘common’ dictionaries, despite their not being semantically or referentially modified, and analyse their distribution compared to that of other reduced units, marked "abbr." in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (our corpus of reference). We notice a strong tendency to include reduced names of institutions (hybrid between animate and inanimate reference, mostly collective). We then discuss the reasons for their inclusion in dictionaries, which we take to be a sign of their lexicalization, and conclude to an extreme illustration of opacification, demotivation and wordification, all of which achieved via reduction. Beyond the simple orthographic and phonological form these reduced proper names assume, we also show via a case study that their syntactic and semantic profile differs slightly from that of their full-forms, which further justifies their differentiated lexical treatment.
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hal-03808847 , version 1 (01-03-2023)

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Paternité - Pas d'utilisation commerciale

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Elise Mignot, Manon Philippe. How proper names enter the lexicon – From the Central Intelligence Agency to CIA: the reduction of full denominative expressions interpreted as a means to achieve (greater) lexicalization. Lexis. Journal in English Lexicology, 2022, Proper names and the lexicon, Elise Mignot and Manon Philippe (eds.), 20, ⟨10.4000/lexis.6672⟩. ⟨hal-03808847⟩
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