Constructions définitoires des tables du Lexique-Grammaire

Lexicon-Grammar tables are a very rich syntactic lexicon for the French language. This linguistic database is nevertheless not directly suitable for use by computer programs, as it is incomplete and lacks consistency. Tables are defined on the basis of features which are not explicitly recorded in the lexicon. These features are only described in literature. Our aim is to define for each tables these essential properties to make them usable in various Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications, such as parsing.

Very strict selectional restrictions

We discuss the characteristics and behaviour of two parallel classes of verbs in two Romance languages, French and Portuguese. Examples of these verbs are Port. abater [gado] and Fr. abattre [b\'etail], both meaning "slaughter [cattle]". In both languages, the definition of the class of verbs includes several features: - They have only one essential complement, which is a direct object. - The nominal distribution of the complement is very limited, i.e., few nouns can be selected as head nouns of the complement. However, this selection is not restricted to a single noun, as would be the case for verbal idioms such as Fr. monter la garde "mount guard". - We excluded from the class constructions which are reductions of more complex constructions, e.g. Port. afinar [instrumento] com "tune [instrument] with".