Origins: Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology at Université de Montréal
Concretization: the RELIEF project (2011–2014)
References

Origins: Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology at the Université de Montréal

Current work on Lexical Systems is based on research projects conducted in the framework of Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology (Mel’čuk et al. 1995; Mel’čuk 2006) at the Observatoire de linguistique Sens-Texte (OLST) of the Université de Montréal by Igor Mel’čuk and his colleagues. These projects – rooted in the descriptive practice of Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicography – led to two types of lexical resources:

Dictionaries – cf. the Dictionnaire explicatif et combinatoire du français contemporain DECFC [Combinatorial and Explanatory Dictionary of Contemporary French] (Mel’čuk et al. 1984, 1988, 1992, 1999) and the Lexique actif du français LAF [Active Lexicon of the French Language] (Mel’čuk & Polguère 2007);
Lexical databases – cf. the DiCo (Polguère 2000) and its online versions Dicouèbe (access through SQL queries) and Dicopop (“general public” browsing through DiCo’s data).

The Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology approach has given rise to lexicographic applications for languages other than French (especially Russian, Spanish and English). It has also inspired applications in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP), in particular automatic text generation. OLST research also had an influence on companies developing linguistic software. A notable example is the Antidote suite by Druide informatique which incorporates in its linguistic resources a so-called dictionary of combinations inspired by principles of collocation modeling borrowed from Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology (Charest et al. 2007).

Concretization: the RELIEF project (2011–2014)

Project summary

The RELIEF project (REssource Lexicale Informatisée d’Envergure sur le Français) officially started at ATILF in June 2011 ending in December 2014. Its goal was to develop a new generation lexical resource – the French Lexical Network or fr-LN – and to work towards practical applications of this resource, for instance in the field of textual information processing.

RELIEF was funded by the Agence de Mobilisation Économique de la Région Lorraine and the FEDER Lorrain. It was a collaboration with the MVS company (located in Saint-Dié) for the construction of lexicographic tools and the exploration of practical applications.

Towards a lexicography of virtual dictionaries

The French Lexical Network fr-LN belongs to a new generation of lexical resources dubbed “virtual dictionaries” (Selva et al. 2003). Its structure and design make it compatible with computer processing of linguistic information – in the same vein as traditional dictionaries can be seen as being in harmony with book editing and printing technology.

The construction of the fr-LN is a long-term project which is being pursued, following the RELIEF project, in the context of the work on Lexical Systems. The long-term target is for the fr-LN to cover the lexicon of common contemporary French.
Work on the fr-LN has given rise to the writing of fr-LN Memos, which are short documents dealing with very specific lexicographic problems. These memos are listed in the reference bibliography on Lexical Systems.
One can find in the same bibliography a paper which is a general presentation of the initial construction phase of the fr-LN: Lux-Pogodalla & Polguère (2011), written shortly after the launching of the RELIEF project.

Data extracted from the fr-LN are freely accessible since 2017 on the ORTOLANG platform – see the Downloads page of the present site for more information.

Staff of the RELIEF project

Project managers

Alain Polguère – scientific manager
Jean-Marie Pierrel – leader

Administrative assistant

Émilie Dethine

ATILF lexicographic team

Delphine Beauseroy
Jean-Luc Benoit
Candice Delaite
Anaïs Ferté
Sébastien Haton
Aurore Koehl
Veronika Lux-Pogodalla
Christelle Ménétrier
Sandrine Pescarini
Alain Polguère

ATILF collaborators

Pascale Bernard
Yann Desalle
Geneviève Fléchon
Bertrand Gaiffe
Karen González Orellana – Ph.D. student
Évelyne Jacquey
Éva Juroszek – M.A. student
Mi Hyun Kim – Ph.D. student
Sandrine Ollinger – Ph.D. student
Marie-Sophie Pausé – M.A. student
Étienne Petitjean

External collaborators

Lucie Barque (Paris 13)
Paolo Frassi (Univ. of Verona, Italy)
Nabil Gader (MVS, Saint-Dié)
Bruno Gaume (CLLE, CNRS & U. of Toulouse)
Svetlana Krylosova (INALCO, Paris)
Jose Levices (MVS, Saint-Dié)
Igor Mel’čuk (OLST, Univ. de Montréal, Canada)
Jasmina Milićević (Dalhousie Univ., Canada)
Alexis Nasr (LIF, Aix-Marseille 2)
Dorota Sikora (Université du Littoral-Côte d’Opale & HLLI EA4030)
Inka Wissner

References

Charest S., Brunelle É., Fontaine J., Pelletier B. (2007) Élaboration automatique d’un dictionnaire de cooccurrences grand public. Proceedings of TALN-RECITAL 2007, Université de Toulouse-le-Mirail, IRIT Press, vol. 1, pp. 283&ndsh;292.

Mel’čuk I. (2006) Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary. In G. Sica (ed.): Open Problems in Linguistics and Lexicography, Monza, Polimetrica, 225&ndsh;355.

Mel’čuk I., Polguère A. (2007) Lexique actif du français. L’apprentissage du vocabulaire fondé sur 20 000 dérivations sémantiques et collocations du français, Champs linguistiques series, Brussels, De Boeck & Larcier.

Mel’čuk I., Clas A., Polguère A. (1995) Introduction à la lexicologie explicative et combinatoire, Paris/Louvain-la-Neuve, Duculot.

Mel’čuk I. et coll. (1984, 1988, 1992, 1999) Dictionnaire explicatif et combinatoire du français contemporain. Recherches lexico-sémantiques I–IV, Montreal, Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal.

Polguère A. (2000) Une base de données lexicales du français et ses applications possibles en didactique, Revue de linguistique et de didactique des langues (Lidil) 21, 75&ndsh;97.

Selva T., Verlinde S., Binon J. (2003) Vers une deuxième génération de dictionnaires électroniques. Traitement Automatique des Langues 44(2), 177–197.