Transformed historical allusions in French as reflection in democratization of linguistic processes
The article is devoted to the issues of changing proverbial and aphoristic units of the French language in the process of intertextual derivation with the help of structural-semantic transformations. In recent decades, linguists have been writing a lot about the secondary nature of texts, about interweaving old texts into newly created ones, and about a vertical text universe thus formed. Quotes, paremias and other well-known ready-made texts are widely used. This is one of the manifestations of intertextuality, or the use of a component of the content structure of one text in the process of text-generation and the creation of a new text. Users of the language transform texts within the framework of the pragmatic attitude, causing an increment of meanings. Ready-made language units undergo intertextual derivation, resulting in transformed paremias. This phenomenon has received theoretical understanding on the material of the Russian and English languages, while in the field of French large-scale research has not yet been conducted. This fact determined the purpose of the study: to analyze the structural-semantic transformations of the French language paremias occurring during intertextual derivation, leading to the formation of transformed paremias. The analysis of 200 units of proverbs and sayings collected by the writer B. Werber showed that transformations are carried out within the framework of the described structural-semantic transformations of phraseological units, however, in the case of paremias one of the main text-generating factors is pun. Transformations are replacements, additions, permutations of elements and the creation of secondary transformed paremias based on the primary text with semantic development, ironic rethinking and destruction of the original paradox. The semantic fields of derivatives are also changing: the values of freedom, equality, individualism and a proactive activity approach in modern society of the scientific and technological progress are proclaimed. The meaning of the prototype is superimposed on the meaning of the new proverb, meanings multiply, responding to the needs of the modern linguocultural community, reflecting its carnival freedom and democratization of language processes.