Introduction

The input for the lexical specifications and classification for French, in terms of the inventory and labels of the part of speech categories and morphosyntactic features, comes from the EAGLES synopsis and comparison of morphosyntactic phenomena (EAGLES, 1996).

In conformity with the general structure for the guidelines adopted for morphosyntactic phenomena, we devote a section to each main part of speech (pos) category, that is to nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, determiners, pronouns, articles, adpositions, conjunctions, interjections, unique members and residuals.

As for numerals, we distribute these over the three categories determiners, adjectives and pronouns, according to their possible syntactic distributions. We recall that EAGLES leaves open the treatment of numerals either in an independent part of speech category numeral or in the respective relevant categories determiner, adjective and pronoun (Calzolari & Monachini, forthcoming, 217).

Each major section contains the following:

1. A table showing the type hierarchy of the pos category. This table displays the hierarchical relationships between subcategories and the morphosyntactic features which are applicable to the given subcategories.
2. Subsections concerning the pos and type values. In these subsections, we provide criteria, tests, examples and confusion tables for the relevant main category (pos value) and its subcategories (type values). The criteria can be morphological, syntactic, semanticoconceptual or pragmatic. Each criterion is accompagnied by a linguistic test (or tests); in addition, numerous examples aim to illustrate the application of these tests. Our intention was not to provide a more or less complete description of each pos or type value, but to make criteria available on a linguistic basis, in order to help lexicographers in their tasks of lexical specification and classification. This is the reason why we do not necessarily specify a given value at the same set of linguistic levels (morphological, syntactic level, etc.) as another. The levels of description, and the number of criteria and tests, vary according to the complexity of specification, that is, according to possible confusion with other values. Borderlines between values are indeed more, or less, difficult to dress.
3. Feature sections where we provide examples for the features that are shared by the given categories and subcategories.

In appendix , we provide a wordform index which includes all wordforms used as examples for the application of the different linguistic tests, or those forms that are used as examples in the confusion tables.

Also, table 1 offers a means of rapidly finding the main section for each part of speech, its associated type hierarchy table and its associated confusion tables.

At any point in this document, clicking on the navigation button

will bring you directly to this table.

 

pos type confusion tables

hierarchy table pos type formation noun verb adjective    possessive adjective    indefinite adjective    cardinal adjective    ordinal adjective    qualitative adjective adverb    general adverb    adverb particle determiner    demonstrative determiner    possessive determiner    indefinite determiner    interrogative determiner    exclamative determiner    relative determiner    cardinal determiner pronoun    demonstrative pronoun    possessive pronoun    indefinite pronoun    int|rel|excl pronoun    relative pronoun    interrogative pronoun    exclamative pronoun    weak personal pronoun    strong personal pronoun    weak reflexive pronoun    strong reflexive pronoun    cardinal pronoun article definite article    indefinite article    partitive article    adposition    preposition    (formation fused)    (formation simple) conjunction    coordinate conjunction    subordinate conjunction interjection unique member residual