Sémantique quantitative et corpus technique : des analyses statistiques aux interprétations linguistiques

This article discusses the results of a quantitative semantic analysis of pivotal terms (or keywords) in the domain of machining terminology in French. The investigation attempts to find out whether, and to what extent, pivotal lexical items in a technical domain are monosemous or polysemous. Since about 5 000 keywords are included in the semantic analysis, automation and quantification are required. Hence, we conducted a double quantitative analysis, including both the identification of pivotal lexical items and their semantic analysis, resulting in a statistical analysis of the quantitative data. In this article, we explain how to go from a qualitative semantic question to a quantitative semantic analysis and next to statistical analyses, in order to finally draw quantitative and linguistic conclusions.