Forty years ago, the IFA Team published The Inventory of the Lexical Particularities of
French in Black Africa “L’Inventaire des particularités lexicales du français en Afrique
noire” (Équipe IFA, 1983). Since then, the lexical particularities of French in Africa have
sparked renewed interest in lexicological research, lexicographical practices and even
vocabulary teaching. As the language evolves through its enrichment through the creation
of neologisms, we see new lexical forms emerging nowadays in the different varieties of
French in Africa. If the emergence of a regional lexicon is not without consequences on
the lexical system of the language, it goes without saying that these lexical particularities,
which are mainly the result of new lexicogenetic processes, considerably impact the
lexical system of French. Such an observation is legitimized by the specific case of French
spoken in Burkina Faso where new lexical particularities are legion offering new avenues
for reflection. These lexical particularities are flowing more and more into formal or
standard French, since it is not uncommon to encounter them in language dictionaries, in
teaching and in media, political, administrative and scientific discourse. They therefore
constitute a reserve of words, even a potential lexicon, for the French language. The
present study is interested in these lexical particularities, in order to determine, on the one
hand, the lexicogenetic mechanisms that they induce in the overall functioning of French
and, on the other hand, the reasons for their existence in that language.

particularities, lexicon, lexicogenetic, lexicology, French