Șăineanu's parallel investigations into the history of French included his 1905-1907 La Création métaphorique en français et en roman: images tirées du monde des animaux domestiques ("The Metaphoric Creation in French and Romance Languages: Images from the World of Domestic Animals"), which was structured into several tomes, respectively dedicated to the principal household companions. He also began work on major syntheses on French vocabulary, L'Argot ancien ("Ancient Argot") and its companion Les Sources de l'argot ancien ("The Sources of Ancient Argot", 1907). The former earned him the Volney Prize for 1908. Writing in 1999, historian Joan Leopold argued that this was a significant achievement, since the Volney Commission "seemed to fear direct competition by foreigners"—other exceptions to this rule being Liu Bannong, Wilhelm Schmidt and Marie-Louise Sjoestedt.Leopold, p.123 According to Leopold, Șăineanu was among the Volney prizewinners, "particularly foreigners", who "were never elected to an affiliation with the French Académies."Leopold, p.138 However, she also notes that "there were no titles honored [during 1900-1909] which are now remembered as significant in the history of linguistics".Leopold, p.97 She places the fact that Șăineanu "did not achieve major university positions in France" in connection with a tendency of awarding the prize to scholars who mainly did field work (Schmidt, Adolphe de Calassanti-Motylinski, George Abraham Grierson, Leo Reinisch and others). Literary critic Laszlo Alexandru passed a similar judgment: "Lazăr Șăineanu's disappearance from the Romanian cultural space was received with an almost unanimous silence; but the emergence of Lazare Sainéan in Parisian scientific research would not itself result, for the rest of his days, in the much coveted and entirely deserved university chair."
