Lexical obsolescence of French loanwords in Canadian English

The purpose of this study is to present a refined classification of Canadianisms of French origin that have fallen out of use but have not been identified as obsolete in the second edition of the “Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles”, taking into account the causes of their obsolescence, as well as their frequency and association with a particular semantic field. The article examines 169 Gallicisms extracted from the dictionary, with their subsequent distribution into frequency categories (based on their use in the three Canadian media outlets – “The Globe and Mail”, “Montreal Gazette”, “CBC”) and 14 semantic fields. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that it presents, for the first time, a subject-related classification based on the frequency of occurrence for obsolete borrowed Canadianisms and a detailed discussion of the underlying causes of their obsolescence. The results of the study show that the lexical obsolescence of these loanwords is mainly due to extralinguistic factors. Many of the French-derived Canadianisms refer to still-existing realities of Canada, such as wildlife or geographical features. They therefore do not qualify for the most common classification as either archaic (they have no single-word equivalent) or historical (they express realities that still exist today). Since these obsolete words highlight a conceptual change in perception due to the loss of relevance of certain ways of life, they can be categorised as notiolisms.