The French borrowings in the Oxford English Dictionary - A lexicographical, linguistic and cultural analysis.

What Mario Pei affirms brings us back to the idea that almost nothing in language is created ex novo, that the majority of the words comes from somewhere. Not all of the words are borrowings, but it is true that borrowings are taken from another language and subsequently combined and adjusted into a new one. It is fascinating to see how words carry with them a combination of linguistic and cultural characteristics.
Languages, in fact, are made up of concepts, concepts become alive through sentences and sentences are made up of words. It is the word which is analyzed in this research and its fundamental and often underestimated role in bringing to life the culture and ideologies of the speakers. Words do not simply refer to and describe objects, but they also are strictly linked to the context in which they are used; the context that I am referring to is the society and culture in which a language operates.
What I tried to explain in this work is the importance of the lemma and the borrowings in particular and the close relationship between a language and its culture. In addition, I examined the contribution of the Oxford English Dictionary as a tool to discover and analyze the French borrowings.
This research follows the model of Laura Pinnavaia’s “The Italian borrowings in the Oxford English Dictionary”, but while Pinnavaia’s research focuses its attention on all of the Italian loans, this work took into consideration a portion of the borrowings and more precisely the ones from 1800 to present day, because of the extremely large number of the French borrowings in total (22,978 according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Another part which is not present in this work is the further analysis on some lemmas of uncertain origin with the etymological dictionaries.
This thesis is divided into three parts: the first is made up of two chapters and sets the definition of borrowing and the methodological procedure, the second analyzes the results of the research and the third is made up of two appendixes. In detail, the first chapter of the first part analyzes the state of the art of borrowings and the main studies related to loans, the reasons behind borrowings and the integration into the target language. The second chapter illustrates the aims of the research and studies the etymological phrases present in the Oxford English Dictionary to find out which ones are the true French loans.
The second part is made up of four chapters: the first chapter describes the typology of French borrowings in the Oxford English Dictionary based on the etymological phrases, the second takes into consideration the different types of adaptations, the third examines the semantic functions, that-is-to say the reasons behind the borrowing process in the first place, while the fourth chapter is an historical and cultural analysis on the relations between England and France.
The third part contains the bibliography and two appendixes: appendix A presents the French borrowings in alphabetical order while in appendix B the borrowings are listed in chronological and semantic order.