Critères heuristiques pour l'encodage des collocations au moyen de fonctions lexicales

Abstract

Lexical functions (LFs), as developed by I. Mel'¡cuk in the Meaning-Text Theory are a formal means for the representation of collocations. LFs allow for a fine-grained description of collocations with respect to their syntactic and semantic characteristics. However, it has repeatedly been pointed out that the definition of LFs is far from being transparent for linguists and lexicographers not trained in this theoretical framework. Especially problematic from this perspective is the combinatorial capacity of LFs. In this paper, we suggest some criteria for the encoding of collocations in terms of LFs. These criteria draw on LF definitions, i.e., both the syntactic and semantic properties of LFs. The research reported on in the paper is part of an ongoing project within which an on-line collocational dictionary of Spanish is compiled. Our objective is to incorporate a heuristic model the backbone of which are the criteria for the encoding of LFs into an interface of the lexical database. The interface will support the identification of (combinations of) LFs and permit the verification of proposed formulations.