Néologie sémantique et néologie catégorielle : quelques propositions

This paper focuses on adjective-to-noun conversion in French, a phenomenon viewed as a potential process of semantic neology. We first discuss our theoretical approach in relation to conversion, “transcategorisation”, categorial mismatch and semantic neology. We then present our research method, based on the constitution of a corpus of words derived in “-aire”, nouns (récipiendaire) as well as adjectives (alimentaire) or two-category items (volontaire/le volontaire; ordinaire/l’ordinaire). The adjectives from this corpus are then examined in utterances from Frantext (19^th and 20^th essays and novels) in order to test their realization as nouns, compared to the two-category realizations. We then comment on cases of genuinely nominal uses, whether new or stabilized. Our conclusion is that real cases of semantic neology are those in which a new nominal value appears as the stabilized designator of a socially relevant semantic class.