Complexité lexicale : le substantif débat(s)
Lexical Complexity: the substantive débat(s)

Summary/Abstract: The exclusively semantic definitions of the words found in different dictionaries present a simplified and distorted image of the lexicon. Paraphrasing a term gives it a meaning reduced to a small number of appropriate operators. A true semantic definition is significant only when we take into account all the predicates that characterize it. This is what we will highlight studying the combinatorics of the substantive débat with the set of verbs where it can appear in the position of subject or complement. A study in extension of the elements of the lexicon reveals an unsuspected complexity of the lexicon. The definitions found in dictionaries, necessarily reduced, give a simplified idea of lexemes. These are often “conceptual” definitions that are not supported by the presence of appropriate operators. Indeed, the definition of a substantive is the set of appropriate predicates that can be applied to it. Who could intuitively imagine that in French there are more than 800 appropriate verbs that co-occur with the substantive débat, and that there are almost as many appropriate adjectives as well. These observations emphasize the fact that the description of words must be internal to the system and not fall within “conceptual” definitions.

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