Adjectival networks. On the grammar of French denominal adjectives

in English This dissertation studies su xal derivation of adjectives from nouns in French. It is based on a lexicon of about 15, 000 adjectives, 40% of which may be considered deno- minal. I rst present the data under investigation. I describe the Dénom database, which was derived from large scale lexica. In order to assess the position of denominal adjectives in the more general adjectival system, I present a classi cation of French adjectives on the basis of their morphological properties. In the process, I spot cases where the fringes of the class of denominals are unclear, and question the distributional and semantic co- hesion of the class. I nally review di erent types of formal or semantic mismatches between the adjective and its base noun. In a second step, I present a study of the formal and semantic properties of a subset of denominal adjectives where the morphological relation between base and derivative is regular. This subset is selected on the basis of the type frequency of formal patterns of alternation between base and derivative. I describe the phonological and morpholo- gical properties of base nouns, with the aim of uncovering factors that play a role in the formation of adjectives. This leads to the observation of morphological niches, that is, cases where the presence of a..