Abstract

In this paper, we address the issue of what we call deonomastics, i.e. morphologically complex words based on proper names, and their paradigmatic organisation. More specifically, we examine 55,263 French deonomastics based on a set of 90 French Politicians Proper Names (PPNs). The derivational families into which these complex words can be gathered show apparent asymetries, both formal and semantic: they may be characterized by affix competition (e.g. both "sarkozien" 'sarkoz-ian' and "sarkoziste" 'sarkoz-ist' name followers of Nicolas Sarkozy), lexical gap (incomplete families), polysemy (e.g. sarkozisme 'sarkoz-ism' is a doctrine and an action) and what apparently qualifies as suppletion (e.g. "nicolasiste" 'nicolas-ist', "sarkoziste"). These irregularities disappear when a paradigmatic approach is adopted: namely, we show that PPNs can be seen as the core of formal and semantico-referential networks which do not overlap, and that the paradigmatic organization of deonomastics is highlighted by an approach distinguishing the formal and semantic levels in Word Formation.