La coordination des adjectifs modificateurs en russe et en français : la conjonction russe i et la conjonction française et

Le présent article établit les régularités d’emploi de coordination, par opposition à la codépendance, de deux adjectifs modifiant un nom en français et en russe. La possibilité de coordination par la conjonction française et / russe i est basée sur l’homogénéité des adjectifs (un regard lourd et morose), tandis que celle de leur codépendance se base sur leur hétérogénéité (une voiture rouge fiable). On distingue l’homogénéité sémantique (induite par le sens lexicographique des adjectifs) et l’homogénéité pragmatique (imposée par le locuteur voulant souligner la similitude situationnelle de deux adjectifs sémantiquement hétérogènes). Pour caractériser l’homogénéité des adjectifs, l’article propose une classification sémantique. Une comparaison systématique de la coordination et de la codépendance adjectivales dans les deux langues démontre que, dans la majorité des cas, le français préfère la coordination des adjectifs et le russe la codépendance : par exemple, un ciel haut et bleu ~ vysokoe sinee nebo .The present paper establishes regularities in the use of coordination vs. co-dependence of two adjectives that modify a noun in French and Russian. The possibility of coordination by the conjunction Fr. et ‘and’/Rus. i ‘and’ is based on homogeneity of adjectives, while that of their co-dependence on their heterogeneity. Two types of adjective homogeneity are distinguished: semantic homogeneity (induced by the lexicographic meaning of adjectives) and pragmatic homogeneity (determined by the speaker who wants to emphasize the situational similarity of two adjectives that are semantically heterogeneous). In order to characterize the homogeneity of adjectives, the paper proposes their semantic classification. A systematic comparison of adjectival coordination with co-dependence in both languages shows that in a majority of cases French prefers coordination of adjectives, while Russian prefers their co-dependence: for instance, ‘a high blue sky’ is rendered in French as un ciel haut et bleu , and in Russian as vysokoe sinee nebo

Anna Wierzbicka, Semantic Decomposition, and the Meaning-Text Approach

The paper aims to demonstrate that the main contribution of Anna Wierzbicka to linguistics is the idea of semantic decomposition - that is, representing meaning in terms of structurally organized configurations of simpler meanings - and a huge amount of specific decompositions of lexical meanings from many languages. One of possible developments of this idea of Wierzbicka’s is the Meaning-Text linguistic approach, and in particular - the Meaning-Text model of natural language. To illustrate the importance and fruitfulness of semantic decomposition, two Meaning-Text mini-models are presented for English and Russian. Two semantically equivalent sentences of these languages are considered: (1) a. Eng. A honeymooner was fatally attacked by a shark. ~ b. Rus. Molodožën pogib v rezul´tate napadenija akuly vo vremja medovogo mesjaca lit. ‘Young.husband died as result of.attack of.shark during honey month’ The formal representations of these sentences at four levels-Meaning-Text style-are shown: semantic, deep-syntactic, surface-syntactic, and deep-morphological. Examples of formal rules relating the representations of two adjacent levels are presented

Les sémantèmes de causation en français

Cet article propose une description linguistique des emplois de verbes du français dont le sens contient un sens de causation. Nous étudions en premier lieu deux sens du verbe CAUSER : ‘causer1’ (≈ ‘être la cause de’) et ‘causer2’ (≈ ‘être le causateur de’). Notre analyse de ‘causer1’ insiste sur le caractère « multidiathétique » de ce sémantème, qui possède deux variantes de régime ; nous proposons quatre décompositions sémantiques possibles de ce sémantème, qui sont des variantes d’expression du même contenu sémantique (du type représenté dans les paraphrases L’explosion de la dynamite a causé des dégâts ~ La dynamite a causé des dégâts par son explosion). Nous ébauchons également la description des sémantèmes ‘agir’ qui font, selon notre analyse, partie des sens ‘causer’. Nous distinguons les verbes de causation proprement dits (comme causer, pousser [à], provoquer, entraîner, ...), qui n’expriment que la causation comme telle, et les verbes causatifs (comme construire, cuire, briser, ....), dont le sens inclut l’effet produit par la causation. Nous défendons l’hypothèse que plusieurs verbes causatifs en français ont deux acceptions, l’une basée sur ‘causer2’, et l’autre sur ‘causer1’ (Jean coupe bien ~ Le couteau coupe bien). Les propriétés sémantiques, lexicales et syntaxiques des deux types de verbes sont présentées pour étayer cette nécessaire distinction, en même temps que la primauté lexicographique de la première acception (dite « agentive »). En illustration, nous donnerons les décompositions sémantiques de deux acceptions du verbe tuer et du verbe angl. have (comme dans She had John clean the room). Cette analyse fine des sémantèmes de causation nous amène à considérer des contraintes variées sur la combinatoire des sémantèmes et en particulier une prise en compte d’une certaine représentation de la situation réelle.We give a linguistic description of different uses of several French verbs whose mean­ing includes a meaning of causation. First, we study two senses of the verb CAUSER: ‘causer1’ (≈ ‘be the cause of’) and ‘causer2’ (≈ ‘be the causer of’). Our analysis of ‘causer1’ insists on the ‘multidiathetical’ character of this semanteme, which features two variants of government pattern); we propose for it four semantic decompositions, which are expression variants of the same semantic content (of the type presented in the paraphrases L’explosion de la dynamite a causé des dégâts ‘The dynamite explosion caused damage’ ~ La dynamite a causé des dégâts par son explosion ‘The dynamite caused damage by its explosion’). Then we sketch a description of the semantemes ‘agir’ (‘[to] act’), which, according to our analysis, are part of the semantemes ‘causer’. Two types of French transitive verbs are distinguished: causation verbs (such as CAUSER (‘[to] cause’), POUSSER [à] (‘[to] force [to]’), PROVOQUER (‘[to] provoke), ENTRAÎNER (‘[to] entail’), ...), which express only causation as such, and causative verbs (such as CON­STRUIRE (‘[to] build’), CUIRE (‘[to] cook’), BRISER (‘[to] break’), etc.), whose meaning includes also the effect achieved by the causation. Our hypothesis is that many French causative verbs have two senses, one based on ‘causer2’, and the other on ‘causer1’ (Jean coupe bien ‘Jean cuts well’ ~ Le couteau coupe bien ‘The knife cuts well’). Semantic, lexical and syntactic properties of these two types of verbs are presented in order to justify this necessary distinction and, at the same time, the lexicographic primacy of the first sense (called agentive). To illustrate, we give the semantic decompositions of two senses of the French verb TUER(‘[to] kill’) and of the English verb HAVE (as in She had John clean the room). The fine-grained analysis of causation semantemes in French requires one to consider various constraints imposed on semantemes’ cooccurrence and in particular to take into account a representation of real life situations

Prédicats et quasi-prédicats sémantiques dans une perspective lexicographique

La notion de prédicat sémantique permet de distinguer deux classes de sens lexicaux, ou sémantèmes : 1) les prédicats, qui tous dénotent des faits, au sens le plus large (évènements, actions, activités, états, caractéristiques, relations, etc.), et 2) les noms sémantiques, qui dénotent des entités au sens large (êtres vivants, objets physiques, substances, etc.). Nous nous intéressons tout particulièrement au fait qu’il existe une troisième classe de sémantèmes, ni prédicats véritables ni noms sémantiques : il s’agit des quasi-prédicats. Ces derniers dénotent, tout comme les noms sémantiques, des entités et non des faits. Cependant, comme les prédicats, ils ne peuvent être modélisés sans tenir compte de positions actancielles qu’ils contrôlent. L’ensemble des quasi-prédicats d’une langue est très hétérogène, et chaque type de quasi-prédicat pose ses propres problèmes au niveau de la modélisation. Nous examinons différents types de quasi-prédicats présents dans les langues, en adoptant une perspective lexicographique. Plus précisément, nous nous situons dans le cadre de la Lexicologie Explicative et Combinatoire, en empruntant nombre de nos illustrations aux données de la base lexicale DiCo des dérivations sémantiques et collocations du français ainsi qu’aux données publiées dans le Lexique actif du français.The notion of semantic predicate allows for the distinction of two classes of lexical meanings, or semantemes: 1) predicates, all of which denote situations in the broadest sense (events, actions, activities, states, characteristics, relations, etc.), and 2) semantic names, which denote entities, also in the broadest sense (living beings, physical objects, substances, etc.). In this paper we concentrate in particular on the existence of a third class of semantemes that are neither genuine predicates nor semantic names: these are quasi-predicates. Like semantic names, quasi-predicates denote entities, and not situations. But like predicates, they cannot be described without accounting for the actant slots they control. The set of quasi-predicates of a language is quite heterogeneous, and each type of quasi-predicate poses its own problems from the point of view of formal description. The paper examines several types of quasi-predicates found in natural languages by putting them into a lexicographic perspective. More precisely, we conduct the discussion in the framework of Explicative and Combinatorial Lexicology, borrowing our illustrations from the lexical database DiCo (semantic derivations and collocations of French) as well as from the recently published Lexique actif du français

Clichés and pragmatemes

In order to properly classify the phraseme (that is, a constrained, or non-free, expression) No parking, a universal typology of lexical phrasemes is proposed. It is based on the following two parameters:• The nature of constraints— Lexemic phrasemes: the expression is constrained with respect to freely constructed meaning.—  Semantic-lexemic phrasemes: the expression is constrained/non-constrained with respect to the meaning constrained by the conceptual representation.—  Pragmatemes: the expression is constrained with respect to pragmatic conditions, that is, to the extralinguistic situation of its use (in a letter, on a street sign, on a package of perishable food).• The compositionalityThe expression can/cannot be represented as regular “sum” of its components.As a result, we have, firstly, the following major classes of lexical phrasemes:1)  Non-compositional lexemic phrasemes: idioms (˹cold feet˺, ˹shoot the breeze˺)2)  Compositional lexemic phrasemes: collocations (rain heavily, pay a visit)3)  Non-compositional semantic-lexemic phrasemes: nominemes (Big Dipper, New South Wales)4)  Compositional semantic-lexemic phrasemes: clichés (See you tomorrow! | Absence makes the heart grow fonder.)For clichés, the least-studied class of phrasemes, a more detailed classification is proposed (as a function of the type of their denotation). Secondly, each phraseme (except a nomineme) and each lexemes can be pragmatically constrained, i.e. a pragmateme: ˹Fall out!˺ (idiom; a military command) | Take aim! (collocation; a military command) | Emphasis mine/added (cliché; in a printed text) | Rest! (lexeme; a military command)

Multiple Subjects and Multiple Direct Objects in Korean

The paper discusses multiple same-case noun strings in a Korean clause. The notion of prolepsis is introduced (a detached fronted clause element expressing the Theme or the Focalized Rheme). The distinction is drawn between the unmarked (= zero marked) nominative case and the –ka/-i marked subjective case. General formal definitions of syntactic subject and direct object are proposed. It is shown that: 1) a string of multiple subjective nouns in Korean is resolved in one of the three following ways: Rhematic Prolepses + Subject, Subject + Agentive Complement (of a non-finite form), and Subject + Quasi-Conjuncts (clause elements adding a semantic elaboration to the preceding element); 2) a string of multiple accusative nouns is resolved in one of the four following ways: Indirect Object + Direct Object, Direct Object + Quasi-Direct Object (a clause element forming a whole with a light verb), Direct Object (of the Main Verb) + Direct Object of a non-finite form, and Direct Object + Quasi-Conjuncts

Theory and Practice of Lexicographic Definition

International audienceThe paper offers a rigorous characterization of the notion of lexicographic definition: a minimal paraphrase formulated in the same language as the word defined and satisfying six lexicographic principles, which are formulated and discussed. The major types of semantic components in a lexicographic definition are identified and described: firstly, central vs. peripheral components, semantic-class marking components, presuppositional components, actant-specification components, weak components, and metaphor-marking components; secondly, conjunctive and disjunctive components. Three additional topics are introduced: the roles that the definition plays in a lexical entry (accounting for the semantic, syntactic and lexically restricted cooccurrence of the headword); lexical units whose definition is problematic; lexical connotations and semantic labels. Though the perspective offered on lexicographic definition is theory-oriented-within the framework of Explanatory Combinatorial Lexicology (ECL)-, a strong emphasis is put on the writing of actual definitions, a couple dozen of which is proposed and analyzed

Mapping protein energy landscapes with amide hydrogen exchange and mass spectrometry: I. A generalized model for a two-state protein and comparison with experiment

Protein amide hydrogen exchange (HDX) is a convoluted process, whose kinetics is determined by both dynamics of the protein and the intrinsic exchange rate of labile hydrogen atoms fully exposed to solvent. Both processes are influenced by a variety of intrinsic and extrinsic factors. A mathematical formalism initially developed to rationalize exchange kinetics of individual amide hydrogen atoms is now often used to interpret global exchange kinetics (e.g., as measured in HDX MS experiments). One particularly important advantage of HDX MS is direct visualization of various protein states by observing distinct protein ion populations with different levels of isotope labeling under conditions favoring correlated exchange (the so-called EX1 exchange mechanism). However, mildly denaturing conditions often lead to a situation where the overall HDX kinetics cannot be clearly classified as either EX1 or EX2. The goal of this work is to develop a framework for a generalized exchange model that takes into account multiple processes leading to amide hydrogen exchange, and does not require that the exchange proceed strictly via EX1 or EX2 kinetics. To achieve this goal, we use a probabilistic approach that assigns a transition probability and a residual protection to each equilibrium state of the protein. When applied to a small protein chymotrypsin inhibitor 2, the algorithm allows complex HDX patterns observed experimentally to be modeled with remarkably good fidelity. On the basis of the model we are now in a position to begin to extract quantitative dynamic information from convoluted exchange kinetics