Emile Gaboriau

9.3

A French writer from the 1800s who helped start detective novels

proper noun

: Emile Gaboriau

Many scholars credit Emile Gaboriau with laying the groundwork for modern detective fiction.

Examples

I recently finished a novel by Emile Gaboriau, and I was impressed by his intricate plotting.
The works of Emile Gaboriau were highly influential in shaping the genre.
Emile Gaboriau is famous.
What a great author Emile Gaboriau was!
Scholars often highlight Emile Gaboriau as one of the pioneers of the detective novel genre.
The detective stories written by Emile Gaboriau continue to inspire modern authors.
Fans of mystery literature greatly admire the contributions of Emile Gaboriau to the field.

Surface Forms

Emile Gaboriau main

Morphology

Emile + Gaboriau

This is a personal name composed of two proper nouns; knowing the constituents 'Emile' and 'Gaboriau' (which have no lexical meanings here) does not allow a learner to infer the biographical information or the sense 'French writer/founder of the detective novel'. Proper names are arbitrary labels and their referential information is not compositionally derived, so the expression is opaque to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Emile Gaboriau wrote some of the first crime stories where a clever detective, Monsieur Lecoq, learns a person's life from small clues and fits them together like pieces of a puzzle. That's why he is often called a founder of the 'detective novel'.