A LINGUISTIC SURVEY OF FRENCH BORROWINGS IN MODERN PERSIAN: THE ADAPTATION, INNOVATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF FRENCH LOAN-WORDS

French borrowings in Persian have not received the systematic and comprehensive linguistic analysis they deserve, in spite of their impressive number, high frequency and the passage of more than one and a half centuries since their entry into Persian. No linguist has ever dealt systematically with all the phonological, morpho-syntactic and lexico-semantic adaptations undergone and the innovations introduced by these borrowings, much less with the establishment of linguistic criteria for their identification. The several articles on the topic which are reviewed in Chapter One, have been mostly limited in their scope and traditional in their approach.; To determine the linguistic adaptations of French loan-words, a comparison is made between the linguistic characteristics of the original French words and their adapted forms in Persian. The differences between the two show their various linguistic adaptations. In order to determine the linguistic innovations of the French loan-words, their linguistic characteristics are compared with those of the Persian words. The differences show the various linguistic innovations introduced by French loan-words. These innovations are then systematized and used to establish linguistic criteria for their identification.; This study shows that French loan-words in Persian have undergone various drastic adaptations and introduced significant innovations. By using these innovations, we have been able to establish a number of linguistic criteria through which French loan-words can be distinguished from native words or loan-words from other sources. These criteria can identify more than two-thirds of our sample of 900 French loan-words.; French loan-words form a new lexical stratum in Persian due to their distinctive linguistic characteristics. These can and must be isolated and systematized into a set of criteria to be used for the identification of the French loan-words. Though these criteria can identify more than two-thirds of our sample, the rest can not be identified by them at this stage due to: (1) the lack of data on other phonological characteristics of Persian words required to detect other phonological innovations introduced by French loan-words, (2) the lack of morphologically related words and (3) phonological similarities of many mono- and dissyllabic Persian words and French loan-words.