Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

75other words or sequences of words in a given sentence and, therefore, bring morecontribution to its meaning. Predicates can be verbs, nouns, adjectives and evenprepositions taken in one single sense. Other parts of the sentence play a different rolein that they complete the sentence. These are called arguments. The function of thepredicate is to describe the specific relationship between the arguments (Clas and Gross2003).Languages should be described in terms of the semantics and syntax of a―schéma d‘arguments‖ (the predicates together with the totality of their arguments).Predicates have a given number of arguments and these belong to a given semanticclass. If the semantic class of a given argument changes, the sense of the predicate maychange as well, i.e. in the case of polysemy, predicates cannot have the same classes ofarguments. For instance, the verb prendre as in prendre le train and prendre un couteauhas two different meanings. Although train and couteau belong to the semantic class ofCONCRETE they also belong to narrower classes (means of transport and tangibleobjects, respectively) which are called classes of objects. In order to describe a predicateone has to list all the lexical units that occur as a given argument and makegeneralizations about their semantic classes and most importantly about their objectclasses.Predicates, regardless of their part of speech, can be grouped together by meansof their schemata of arguments and object classes. When predicates are enumeratedalong with their object classes, large classes of predicates that share the same generalproperties can be identified, e.g. predicates of movement, predicates of communication,etc. These large classes of predicates, or hyperclasses, can in turn be sub-divided intosub-classes, this meaning that a predicate both inherits properties of the hyperclass andis characterized by specific properties of the sub-class to which it belongs.