Semantics and pragmatics of false friends (review)

The phenomenon of false friends has been widely studied in linguistics, especially with reference to language learning and translation. Studies on false friends generally aim at warning their readers against the pitfalls that they may encounter when they translate or when they speak a foreign language. In his book, Chamizo-Domínguez provides a different treatment of false friends. The book is more theoretically oriented than most studies. It is not intended as a pedagogical resource, but rather aims to discuss such aspects as the definition, classification, origin, and emergence of false friends. The book is not restricted to a specific language pair; its examples are drawn from many languages, including English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. It also suggests a number of discovery procedures, which can be used to detect errors in language use or translation that have their origin in false friends.

The organization of the book is quite logical and appropriate for its objectives. The Introduction emphasizes the importance of a theoretical treatment of the topic and shows in what ways the book contributes to the literature on false friends. Chapter 1, "Clearing the terrain", begins by defining false friends and then classifies them into two main types—"chance" and "semantic" false friends, corresponding respectively to homonymy and polysemy within a single language. The following three chapters are devoted to different aspects of the semantics of false friends. Chapter 2, "Synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, register and diachrony", discusses false friends with reference to lexical semantic relations, and emphasizes the importance of register and historical context for any theoretical discussion of the topic. Chapter 3, "Semantics of false friends: Borrowings, calques and inheritances", examines false friends with reference to borrowings, which occur between languages that are not necessarily affiliated, and inheritances, which result from the natural transmission of words from a parent language. Chapter 4, "Semantics of false friends: Tropical false friends", introduces the idea that semantic false friends typically have their origin in metaphorical use and lexicalization of certain senses of given words in one language. Chapter 5, "Pragmatics of false friends", offers some strategies for detecting misuses resulting from false friends and reconstructing the speaker's intended meaning. Finally, Chapter 6, "Main theses exposed and conclusions", summarizes the main results and findings of the book and shows their applicability to various fields.

The book provides useful insights into the study of false friends from a theoretical perspective. Chamizo-Domínguez emphasizes the importance of a diachronic approach, capable of explaining the emergence of false friends, in contrast with a synchronic approach which cannot offer much beyond listing or describing the false friend forms. It is shown that false friends appear at a certain point in time and disappear at another, and that they may be found across dialects of the same language. This last point has received comparatively little attention from scholars and researchers in spite of its importance at both the theoretical and applied levels. A related important contribution is the classification and discussion of the different ways in which semantic false friends are created. These involve restriction of the range of meanings that the word has in the source language, amplification of meaning by adding new senses to the word borrowed, or a combination of both restriction and amplification. Each way is analysed in detail and illustrated with relevant examples.

The approach of the book is not simply taxonomic and analytic, but also explanatory. Chamizo-Domínguez argues that the main mechanism for the creation of false friends lies in metaphorical use and subsequent lexicalization of the different or additional sense of the word in one language, but not the other. It is because of this mechanism, for instance, that the Spanish camello and English camel have become false friends, since the Spanish word has developed the sense of 'drug-pusher' while the English one has not (p. 102). The term "metaphor" is used as a general term covering different types of extension of meaning, such as...