Feminization of agentive nouns in present-day French

(in English) The major aim of the thesis is to investigate the different ways of making feminine equivalents to masculine names of professions, titles and ranks based on the data acquired from French and Canadian press archives. Furthermore, the study explores the history of certain frequent feminine forms to analyse the evolutionary changes and, in particular, presents the view of the French-speaking public on this matter. The data collected from the press were compared to the hypothesis and consequently the most occurring feminine forms were selected. In addition, the possible factors causing or preventing the feminization of names are examined in this study. The objective of the questionnaire is to analyse responses depending on the age, gender, and origin of the tested subjects, and to provide an overview of the current trends