Dynamic Processes in Dictionaries of Word Associations in French

Abstract

The paper presents preliminary results of the comparison of the Dictionaries of word associations for French referred further to as FAS-1 and FAS-2, compiled respectively in 2010 and 2020. To check the reliability of their data we used information on word associations provided by an alternative source, the French project Jeuxdemots, which began in 2007. The first part of the article accounts for dynamic processes in the vocabulary of direct associative dictionaries, focusing on the analysis of the associative field of the adjective malade . We established that the psycholinguistic meaning of this item hasn’t undergone considerable changes during the last 10 years: most frequent associations are the same, its structure has not changed, small semantic changes in the content of certain categories are not essential and can be neglected. As for its structure, the associative field of malade includes the following major slots: ‘kind of disease’, ‘symptoms’, ‘treatment’, ‘visual characteristics of the patient’, ‘ways of spreading’, ‘health’, and some other related concepts. Cultural allusions and reactions to the form (not to the meaning) of the lexeme were singled out too. The paper also puts emphasis on the emergence of words related as reactions to the pandemic of COVID-19 though they represent only 0.03 % of the 506317 reactions collected in FAS-2. To provide a comprehensive comparison, dynamic changes in the inverse vocabulary were also studied. The list of reactions elicited by 50 or more stimuli (so called super-connectors) was analyzed, as well as the list of the most frequent reactions. For this purpose, two special research dictionaries were designed, based on the reactions to 610 identical stimuli. The lists of the first 75 super-connectors in FAS-1 and FAS-2, as well as the most frequent reactions, proved to be almost identical. We only observed an increase in the frequency and number of stimuli which provoked reactions related to the material side of life (namely, work, earning money, studies), and their decrease for reactions related to social life. However, to summarize the major result of the comparative analysis, we may state that the changes in the associative norms of speakers of French are insignificant, being within the statistical margin of error.