The use of morphologically unintegrated English-origin verbs in Quebec Hip Hop

The present variationist study investigates the use of morphologically unintegrated English-origin verbs in rap songs from Quebec Hip Hop artists. The main objective is to better understand how this new lexical insertion strategy for English-origin verbs is being used in rap songs. To this end, a database of 214 songs was created and coded, with a total of 371 English-origin verbs that were unintegrated (n=254) and integrated (n=117) into French. Results indicate that the use of morphologically unintegrated English-origin verbs is favored when these verbs appear towards the end of a phrase and when the equivalent form in English would be the bare form. They also show that there is variation among Hip Hop artists in their use of the English-origin verbs, with rappers from Montreal in particular exhibiting a preference for the unintegrated form, and among the verbs, with the unintegrated forms being more recent borrowings. I argue that this new lexical insertion strategy is an instance of direct insertion.