The MoNoPoli Database: Extragrammatical and Subverted Processes in French Words Based on Proper Names of Politicians

Résumé En

In this paper we present our method to build a derivational database of French deanthroponyms, which we call MONOPOLI for Mots construits sur Noms propres de personnalités Politiques (‘complex words based on politician proper names’). MONOPOLI contains 6,545 complex words amounting to a total of 55,030 tokens and includes almost only neologistic forms. The Web is the only conceivable resource for collecting them: it alone gives massive access to discourse genres that contain neologisms. To feed the database, a program automatically generates the set of all possible derived words. Generated forms are then used as queries on the Web. Attested forms are kept with their context. This method provides a potential solution to collect data that cannot be found elsewhere. Finally, this article describes some of the remarkable results obtained with the analysis of the deanthroponyms of MONOPOLI. We show that the original nature ofour data is reflected both in the use of new extragrammatical patterns (e.g., Xistan secretion pattern) and in the subversion of grammatical processes (e.g., foreign suffixation Xix).