Lexicon-grammar and the syntactic analysis of French

A lexicon-grammar is constituted ot the elementary sentences of a language. Instead of considering words as basic syntactic units to which grammatical information is attached, we use simple sentences (subject-verb-objects) as dictionary entries, Hence, s full dictionary item is a simple sentence with a description of the corresponding d is t r ibut ional and t ransformat ional propert ies, The systematic study of French has led to an organization of its lex icon-grammar based on three main components: the lexicon-grammar of free sentences, that is, of sentences whose verb imposes selactionel restrictions on its subject and complements (e.g. to fal l , to eat, to watch), the lexicon-grammar of frozen or idiomatic expressions (e.g. N takes N into account, N fa iaea a quest ion, the lexicon-grammar ot support verbs. These verbs do not have the common selactional restrictions, but more complex dependencies between subject and complement (e.g. to have, to make in N has an impact on N, N makes a certain impression on N) These three components interact in specific ways. We present the structure of the lexicon-grammar built for French and we discuss its a lgor i thmic impl icat ions for parsing. The construction of a lexicon-grammar of French has led to an accumulation of linguistic information that should significantly bear on the procedures ot automatic analysis of natural languages. We shall present the structure of a lexicon-grammar built for French <2> and will discuss its a lgor i thmic main implicat ions.