Congratulations to Dr. Marie-Eve Bouchard, Assistant Professor of French, for receiving a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her research project titled The use of English-origin verbs in Quebec French.
The TikTok Team, with Prof. Marie-Eve Bouchard, Tamar Ly, Anna Kouao, Elina Villemin and Veronica Ramirez.
“How does a speaker decide if they’ll integrate the verb into French or not?”
About the research project:
In this research project, I examine the use of English-origin verbs in Quebec French. These lexical borrowings are usually integrated grammatically into the language, as in elle m’a ghosté and il va chiller in Quebec French. They are integrated because the morphemes -é and -er were added to mark the past tense and the infinitive, respectively. However, a new lexical insertion strategy for English-origin verbs has been observed in the past few years: verbal borrowings can lack integration, as in elle m’a ghost and il va chill. Why is this happening? How does a speaker decide if they’ll integrate the verb into French or not? The main objective of this project is to better understand how the morphologically unintegrated English-origin verbs are being used in Quebec French as their use is currently emerging in the speech of young French-speaking Quebecers.
To answer my research questions, I will create three datasets: one with rap songs from Quebec artists, one with data from the Dictionnaire du Chilleur (a new dictionary published in October 2024 that describes the language of young French-speaking Quebecers), and one with data from Quebec influencers on TikTok. I currently have a group of research assistants helping me find those anglicisms on TikTok!
