Pour un Bescherelle des prédicats nominaux

The Bescherelle is a well-known reference where one can look up — in the form of tables — the conjugation of all French verbs. It is often forgotten that all predicates can be conjugated whether they are expressed in verbal or nominal forms. This article outlines the basis of linguistic descriptions which can be used to generate all the forms of “nominal conjugations” in French. As the form of support verbs depends on the semantic class of the nominal predicate, we need first to establish a semantic typology of predicative nouns where the distinction between actions, events and states plays an important role. Moreover, we need to enumerate the appropriate support forms (active, passive and reciprocal). In addition, it is necessary to list for each class of predicative nouns the support verbs expressing aspectual meanings (inchoative, progressive, iterative, etc.). Once these forms have been listed, we will be able to provide an alphabetic list of predicative nouns, where each entry will be coded in terms of the conjugation forms it assumes. Such a table will have obvious applications for the automatic analysis of French.