Lexicon - Grarar~ar 
The Representation of Compound Words 
Maurice Gross 
University Paris 7 
I_aboratoire Documentaire ot Linguistigue 1 
2, place Jussieu 
1-"-75221 Paris CEDEX 05 
The essenti~d feature of a lexicon-grammar is that the elementary 
unit of computation and storage is the simple sentence: 
snbleet-verb-complement(s). -this type of representation is obviously 
needed for verbs: limiting a verb to its shape has no meaning other 
than typographic, ~ir\]ce a verb cannot be separated from its subject and 
essential coreplemenl(s) 2. We have shown (M, Gross 1975) that given a 
verb, Or equivalently a simple sentence, the set of syntactic properties 
that describes its variations is unique: in general, no ether verb has 
an identical syntactic paradigm 3. As a consequence, the properties of 
each verbal construction must be represented in a texicon--grammar. The 
lexicon has no significance taken as an isolated component and the 
gr~rnmar tempera:at, viewed as independent of the lexicon, will have to be 
limited to certain complex sentences, 
Since be-Adiective tetras are close to verbs, their 
description is quite similar, that is, they are considered as sentences. 
We have apl}lied lexicon-grammar representation not only to the two 
obvious predicative parts of speech, verb and adjective, but to nouns 
and adverbs a~; well. In the same way as one adjoins the verb to be 
tn adjectives, we have ~ystematically introduced support verbs 
(Vsup) for nouns and adverbs, as in the following examples 
(Z.S, Harris 1976, M. Gross 1982, 1986): 
Vsup ::: fO be Prep: 
The text ia in contradiction with the low 
VSUp =: to h~ve 
This text has a certain importance for Bob 4 
Vsup =: tO occur, etc. 
Accident8 occur at random 
The ~4ccident (was, happened, occurred, took place) late at 
night 
~.-'UA--8~I;'Ot-~I;RS.-This research has been partly financed by contract 
"P\[\]C Informatique LinggisUque" 1985-86 from the Ministry of Research. 
2. The notion of essential complement has been refined through the 
systematic study of 12,000 verbs of French (M. Gross 1975; J,-P. Boons, 
A. Gaillet, C. Locl~re 19YGa, 1976b, 1987) and a study of adverbials, 
that is, of nonessential complements (M. Gross 19~6). The subject 
arKI/or the con'lplements may be transformed and/or omitted through various 
syntactic operations, in particular, by nominalizing the verb (G. Gross, 
R. Vivbs 198E;), but the full information can be recovered 
(Z.S. Harris 1982). 
3. A line of '~+'" and ""'" marks in FiGure 1 is such a paradigm. 
4. Both examples are not isolated entries of the lexicon=grammar, but 
rather (Z,S, Harris 1964), transforms of other forms: 
fhJ~ text <::ontradi/.;ta the law 
This text is important for Bob 
$apport verbs are frequerd in technical texts, and may have stylistic 
variants, as in this last example, 
Grammatical elements such as determiners, prepositions and 
conjunctions, do not belong to the lexicon-grammar in the same sense as 
the four major parts of speech do, siece they are parts ot structures or 
rules. For example, prepositions appear in the columns ef the 
lexicon-grammar. 
An early representation of verbs in a lexicon-grammar of about 
12,000 verbs is ftiven in figure t. Each row of the matrix is an entry 
whose main construction is defined by a table or class code. In figure 
I, the code G corresponds to the class of constructions: 
subject-verb-direct sentential complement, noted: 
(1) N O V qee P 
(N O ts the subject and P stands for sentence). 
Each column is a syntactic property, and corresponds to a structure into 
which V may enter, roughly a syntactic transform of the main structure, 
~or example, in columns we have placed the Passive forms, Extraposed and 
renominal forms. Thus, the related structures are semantically close. 
"+" sign at the intersection of a row and a column indicates that the 
ntry in the row is accepted in the structure associated to the column, 
"-" sign correspoeds to inacceptability. The process of accumulation 
that led to the formalized lexicon-grammar of 12,000 French verbs has 
run into what seemed to be at first a minor problem of representation of 
words: the difference between simple and compound words, On the one 
hand, there are simple words ~uch as the verb know and complex 
(idiomatic) forms such as keep in mind, Both forms play the same 
syetactic arid semantic role in sentences such as: 
Bob knows that Max ha~ moved to Tampa 
Bob keeps in mind that Max /)as moved to Tampa 
bat the lexical content (one word va three) requires different 
identification procedures (simple dictionary tooktJp vs a certain amount 
of syntactic analys}s). 
The representation of fiGUre 1 treats two forms such as to know 
(,~erneone, something) arid to keep (someone, something\] in mind m 
tf~ same way, thut~ emphasizing the semantic equivalence between simple 
and compound verbs, 
Bet compoged terms raise ~;i problem of representation. The unit of 
representation in a linear lexicon is roughly the word 5 as defined by 
its written form, that is, a .~equence of letters separated from 
ne~lhbOring sequences by boundary bionic. As a consequence, compound 
words cam|of be directly put into a dictionary the way simple words are. 
Aa idenUficatior| procedure i:~ needed for their occurrences in texts, 
and thi~ procedure will make use of the various simple parts of the 
compound utterance. Hence, the formal linguistic properties of con'lpouud 
terms will determine both the procedure of ideetifieaUon in text~ and 
the type of storage they require. 
observer 
obtenir 
-I- officialiser 
omettre 
ordlestrer 
oublier 
-- oui'r 
palper 
~arapher 
~asser sous silence 
~enser 
)ercevoir 
)erdre de vue 
perforer 
p~rorer 
\[ Compl~nt di:oc( 
Compl6tive$ 
- 
i 
i i ! 
-I -I -I i 
1 
_ -- + - 
+ -- + 4- 
_ -- + + 
TABLE 6 Verbs with Sentential Complements 
(From M. Gross 1975) 
i 
I_ 
Om 
+ - 
+ - 
+ 
+ 
+ - 
+ - 
+ 
+ 
+ .-. 
+ - 
-i - 
+ - 
+ i- I 
Figure I 
We thus have to discuss the main types of compounds and to single 
out those properties that bear on automatic parsing and dictionary 
lookup. 
1. Compound adverbs 
We call adverb any circumstancial complement, including sentent)al 
phrases, as in the following examples: 
(1) The show took place nighlly 
el night 
during a busy night 
the night Bob missed his plane 
By compound adverbs, or frozen or idiomatic adverbs, we mean adverbs 
that can be separated into several words, with some or all of their 
words frozen, that is, semantically and/or syntactically 
noncompositional. In (1), af night is a compound adverb, the lack 
of compositionality is apparent from lexical restrictions such as: 
*at day, *at afternoon, *at evening 
and by the impossibility of inserting material that is a priori 
plausible, syntactically and semantically: 
*at (coming. present) night 
*st (cold, dark) night 
during the (coming, present) night 
during s (cold, dark) night 
5. Note that words or roots are often considered as units in most 
attempts to devise semantic representations. 
Notice that nightly can also be considered as a frozen compound, 
though not constituted of words but Of a word and a suffix. Again, lack 
of compositionality stems from the observation that daily, 
weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. which are compounds of the 
same formal type have a regular formation, in the sense that their 
interpretation is homogeneous. Thus, nightly is an isolated case, 
as opposed to an open series of identical forms with a different 
interpretation. 
The two other adverbs of (1) are tree forms. Thus, the determiners 
Det and modifiers (Adl and Re/clause) of: 
during Det Adj night Relclauae 
can vary freely (within semantic constraints). In the same way, tfm 
event associated with the sentence 8 in the form: 
the night (E, that) 8 
can be expressed by a large variety of unconstrained forms. 
Frozen or compound adverbs constitute the simplest case of compound 
forms because they do not allow variations of their components. As 
mentioned above, in at night no adjective is authorized. Moreover, 
one cannot insert a determiner: *at (a, this) night, the plural is 
forbidden: *at nights and no relative clause can be appended: 
*M night (that, which) was agreed on. 
Such observations are general, and apply to many adverbs of varied 
form and lexical content: 
It rained cats and dogs 
*many cats and dogs 
*big cats and dogs 
*cat and dog 
from time to tit~e 
~trorn timet~ to times 
*from a time to another time 
from long time to long time 
Consequently, these compound adverbs could be identified by a simple 
recognRiorr procedure, for they do not require any lei, amatization or 
syntactic analysis to be reduced to a dictionary form, as is the case 
with verb for)as for example. 
A lexieal study of compound adverbs has been performed in French 
and a systematic inventory has been compiled from various dictionaries. 
Runni,g texts have been examined as well. It is interesting to note 
that whereas in current dictionaries there are about 1,500 one word 
adverbs, most of them in -meat (-ly), we have found over 5,000 
compound adverbs, 
These compound adverbs have been classihed according to their 
sywtacltc shape. The syntactic forms are described at the elementary 
level ef sequences of fmrts of speech. We use symbols with obvious 
interpretations such as Prep, Dot, Adl, N, V, COOl 
(fay conjunction) and W for a variable ranging over verb complements, 
etc. We write: 
Prep N =: at night 
Prep Dot N =: in the end 
Prep Dot Adf N =: in the long rim 
Prop Oel, N el Dot N =: in every nonce of the word 
at the point of a gun 
Prop Def N Ceni Dot N =: time and again 
V W =: to begin with 
S =: all things being equal 
F gure 2 shows the classes that have been defined on this basis, 
together with examples and the number el, items in each (:lass; 
..... i PO PAD% Adv _ _ |~oad~,fin ..... | -.~ __ 
PC Ihap (" \] en bref 1 ,160 
P\[)l~q( Prep De~ C lco,m-e tome atzente 570 
/ ! 
PAC Prep adi ¢ +++e sa hel,h, mort 440 
/ 1 
pea P~+pCAdj ~ d ~o,'~e ~l+,l..+ t ~oo l 
PCDN Prap C de N \[,'hi maven tie N / 330 / 
PCP( i lhdp ( Pr~:p C \[de.~ plods d {a 1~1% 240 
- ' ..... T 170 ' 
pv l,,,pv, ....... i {,,o I 
PF P (phrase figae) Ipi ....... lie sail \] 230 i 
I I pl~co <Adi) 
.......... ( ~. .............. ,in,. \[ 200 
/ / 
PVCO (V) comme C ~comme un cheveu sar la soupe ~ 210 
/ / 
PPCO (V) ......... \]'r6p C J," ......... d ...... h, bellFr£ J 30 
t / F'JC ..... ('onj (" el out le tret~ hlet e.' t _1 100 
TOTAL ~,',4 190 
Frozen Adverbs (t4. (;ros;,s 19~6 ) 
Tableau 2 
The examples discussed an far are entirely frozen. Itence, as a 
i)vuctical matter, they can be located iu a text by using the search 
function available for strings in any text editor system. There are 
however more complex examples that require deeper analysis. Consider 
fay example the idiomatic adverb in the sentence: 
Max propoaed 8ohrtiena from l,he top of his hat 
It ic largely frozen: no other determiner is allowed, no adjectives can 
be appended to either noun, etc., but the person of the possessive 
adjective Pone, may vary. This possessive adjective must refer to 
the subject of the sentence, and varies accordingly: 
*Max propound ideas from the top el your hat 
*My staler proposed ideas from the top of his hat 
Bob and Max proposed ideas from the top of their hat(8) 
In this case. the recognition procedure is no longer a simple string 
matching operation, since a variable slot must be dealt with inside the 
fixed string. More general matching rules are required here 6. Once 
this compound adverb l,laa been identified in a text to be processed, it 
can be given an iaterpt~etation, for example in terms of a simple adverb 
such as teiaarely or lightly and the referential information 
carried by Pots can then be ignored. Itowever, one oar\] easily 
construct particular discourses where the obligatory cereference 
relation involved will (bsambiguate some analysis. Thus, not only the 
variatien of Poaa must be accounted l,or at the lexical level, but 
its referential infermatien has to be kept l,or possible use in a parser. 
{fiber compound adverbs oiler different degrees of variation. There 
m'e cases where one part of the adverb is frozen and another part is 
entirely free: 
Max organized a party in honor of Bob 
Max hid the car at the far end of the parking lot 
The parts in honor, al the far end are frozen. For example, 
they do not allow modil,iers. The parts of N are tree, for we 
observe variations such as: 
Max organized a party in hJa honor 
Max hid the car at the lar end, I think, of the parking lot 
Consider the adverbials: 
for the sake of ruining thinfjs 
for the sake of Bob 
for God's sake 
We (:all the combinatien for--cake frozen, since the noun 
sake does not occur elsewhere than in adverbial phrases with the 
preposition for: it cannot be the subject or object of any verb. 
On the other hand, the modifiers of sake are quite varied and 
regular from the point of view of the syntax of noun modifiers 7. 
There are also cases of seemingly free adverbs which require an ad 
hoc treatment. For example, dates such as: 
Monday March 13, 1968 at 9 pan. 
are described it) a natural way by a finite automaton. 
Tecl;nical or specialized families of adverbs come close to being 
frozeu adverbs: 
(2) They elected Bob on the (firsl, second) ballot 
(3) Max ate his noodles in a bow/ 
The special semantic relations that hold between the adverbial 
complement and the rest el, the sentence are lirmted. There are few 
verbs such as to eat which combine with in a bowl and which 
have the non locative interpretation of (3). The usual interpretation 
is thai found in: 
6. PRDLOG rules are particularly well adapted to recognizing such 
frozen forms (P. Sabatier 1980). 
7. There are nonetheless restrictions on them: 
~for a heavenly ,~oke 
Max puF hia noodle~ in a bowl 
Entering ITozen adverbs into a lexicon-grammar raises many r=ew 
questions, The bulk of adverbs can be described by means of the 
Following type of derivation (Z.S, Harris 197¢): 
Bob left; 7hat Bob left occurred at 9 
: Bob left, fhia occurred at 9 
:: Bob left at 9 
and sulaport verbs play a crucial role here. However, there are cases 
where no general support verb is found and where adverbs have to be 
considered as a part of the elementary sentence. Consider the adverb 
in: 
Bob sang at the top of hJ~ voice 
It is syntactically and semantically analogous to tree adverbs such as 
noisily, powerfelly. For these two free adverbs, a derivational 
source involving the adjective is available: 
The way Bob sang was (noiay, powertn/) 
This is not the case for at the top of his voice which is 
practically limited to modifying the verbs of saying. Moreover the 
obbgatory coreference link of hia leads to a representation where 
this adverb is not analyzed. Thus two semantically similar types of 
adverbs have to be represented quite differently in the lexicon-grammar. 
All the situations just exemplified with adverbs are quite common, cod 
are also encountered with nouns, adjectives and verbs. The paradox el ~ 
relaresentatJon they lead to can only be solved by introducing a complex 
level of semantic equivalence for the entries of the lexicon-grammar, 
2, Compound nouns 
C~n'npound nouns form the bulk of the lexicon of languages. Language 
creativity is largely associated with the growth of technical 
vocabularies which consist mainly of technical nouns. Compound nouns 
number in the millions for European laoguages. They are usually built 
rrem the vocabulary of simple words by means or grammatical rules which 
may involve grammatical words. By definition, their meaniog is 
nencompositional. The compound nouns can be described in terms of the 
sequence of their grammatical categories, in the same way as for adverbs 
(IA. Gross, D. Tremblay 1985). We have for example: 
Det N =: the moon 
Adl N =: crude oil, real ealaFe 
N of N =: elroke of luck, 
board of (governors, regenfa) 
Det N of Dot N =: the talk of the town 
N N =: lest lobe, color 7V 
Such nouns can become quite complex in various technical Fields. 
In general, compound nouns allow variations of determiners and 
modifiers, but many situations are encountered: 
the moon is a frozen combination, -- definite article-noun 
-- which behaves like a proper name, because ot its unicity of 
reference. It cannot be modified by adjectives without losing its 
reference: *the (big, yellow) moon; 
crude oil takes restricted determiners. Since it is a mass noun, 
there are difficulties in accepting its plural, It can be modified by 
adjectives and nouns as in (cheap, high quality) crude oH, but 
these cannot modify el/: *crude, (cheap, high quality) oil; 
stroke of luck has unrestricted determiners and modifiers, bat no 
iosertion is allowed immediately before or next to of, in particular 
luck cannot be modified: *stroke of gor~ luckS; 
8. ~,lrnko of bad luck would be a different compound word, whose 
relation to afroke of luck is only etymological. 
- board of governors one be modified in several ways: board 
a~ld governora ta.ke separate determiners and modifiers: ~he 
powerful boarda of the twelve governora of my bank, Such a compound 
noun comes close to being a free Form. It is the liruited number of 
second aeons such as director, governor or regent that 
suggests we are dealing with a compound noun. Also, the meameg of 
these phrases is nonoompoaitional in the sense that they have a legal or 
institutional meaoing that their components do not have clearly. 
The variations of lurer we have enumerated can be partly hal'=died bit 
atlcachiag a finite automaton to a given entry, and this automaton will 
describe the main grammatical changes allowed The adjunction o~ free 
relative clauses to compound nouns may require a different treatment 
"l~)e kiads of variation of compound nouns are aO numereu,~ that 
cletermieing whether a given nomit)al coostruction is a compouod noun or 
nol: almost requires c~. original demonstratiou. Titus, aotontatizirlg~ the 
co,infraction of a leKicoa is a,'l activity that will preseot severe 
Ibnitatioas. 
Determining the sup~mrt verbs for compound nouns does )tot seem to 
raise other probletes than those encountered with simple nouns. 
R~MAIrlK 
Conrlpound aeons raise other questions in some language : 
- in Gerraan. whore rio blacks occur between component¢, segmentation is ~\[ 
prebleltn; 
- in French (G. Gross '1985), where the spelling of the plural is ht 
general not standardized, extra variations have to be expecte(I. 
Compound modifielFs 
Adjectives, noun complements and relative clauses carl be cemplex 
and yet apply to free nouns. From the point ot view developped here, 
that is, the representation in terms of sequences of grammatical 
categories allowing for efficient matching procedures witt) texts, th~.,y 
do not differ from adverbs and nouns. 
Examples are: 
The table is as clean as a new pin 
The book is up to dale 
Bob is the world's (beat, worat) teacher 
They discussed it, on a take it or leave it basis 
3. Compound verbs 
Compound verbs or frozerl sentences as we have termed them 
(M. Gross 1982), can be described as sequences of categories. We write 
N i for variable noun phrases and C i for frozen noun phrases. For 
subjects; i = 0, for complements: i = I, 2. Examples are: 
(I) N O V C t =: Bob hit the /ackpot 
(2) N 0 V N 1 Prep C 2 =: Bob took your project into account 
(3) N 0 V CI Prep C 2 =: Bob look the bull by Ihe heron 
(4) N°~ C 0 V C t =: Bob'a dream came true 
We outlined in I the description ot a lexicon-grammar of French 
v~bs and the reasons why compound verbs had to be separated from simple 
On~S. 
~;ystematic search through dictionaries (monolingaal, bilingual, and 
specialized) has yielded close to 20,000 compound verbs belonging to the 
same level of language as the 12,000 simple verbs. A syntactic 
classification has been built for them (Figure 3). 
Compound verbs are the most complex Forms that have to be entered 
into a lexicon £t. The compounds discussed previously were simple 
9. There are however a limited number of frozen discourses such as: 
If wa,s for all Ihe world aa it S 
Which need an extra level of complexity (L. Danlos 19B5). 
because by and large they wore topologically connc% that is, either 
their I'mrts could not be separated by any extraneous linguistic material 
or else the+ inso~ted material could be easily described (i.e. by moans 
of a finite automaton). 
++'+ \]+ - I " '"+ ..... ! l.o ii, +, ..... h.. / 
CAN |NoV (C i~ de N), Col ..... leli~ la \[antuc d~. Max (hd) 50(! \[ 
!;!_iN NoV (C d,: N), \[\] hat le rappcl d ........... h; 5_00 
(.~PI NoV Pr+p Ci 11 clmr=ie dam; los b+gonia+; i 300 + 
CPN NoV I:'rap (t C de N), II abondc ,Jam; Ic sens de Max 25(! 
C:!Pi"J N0V (',2\[r~p N2 .}la d6charg6 sa bit ..... "Max t 750 
CNF'2 NoV Iql })'cp C'~ lls out pass/: Max par tes altucs I 350 \] 
!CIP2 N,. V (;i I'rb.l+ C2 It tact de l'cau dans sen vin 800 
C5 Quc P V PI6p Ci Quc Max rcstc inilhe l!ti ~i;t favour 150 
1(7 NoV Ct flce ()n P II a dit IlOIl ~'l CC que Max testc r ,50 
cP, NoV (~l ,:1..' ce Qu P I1 se tiler (t lop; ¢loigts dc cc qu'il egt / 
i'Cst(~ I 
CAI)V NoV Adv Cola nc pisse pas loin , Z!} ! _ \] 200 
c× INoV N li est palti sans laisscl (l+adrcsse \] 30() 
(\]O CoV %/ \]AI nloll\[indc nlOll\[C all ILCI tic Max \[ I 300 
AU'N ._INepv,}+ ~:~ l...)v 0 i+ ~).,,¢ ~., M.= l E°~ / 
ANP2 / No i veil N I )).(~p ('2 Ill \[' MilX CO hoti'ctll L \]00 
A'?+ "- No ave-h (£i A(+il- - II t, la v\le\[ ........ IO0-} 
A-I-i'2 No avoir C I'l',r~ I) (+ II a mat aux chcvcux 250 i 
EOi-i(°:ii-N~'!!i"!:~!! ) i / ;'imhe;i~M ..... , "leo,lie 350 
Eel'\[ C0 6trc lh61> Cl l.cs ~ieuts sont du c6t(" dc Max 2(10 
Fr(3zen Verbs 
(hi. Cz'os;.~ 19112) 
Tableau 3 
In the case of compound verbs, the various ports of each utterance 
remain syntactically independent, Thus, the verbs of (1)-.(4) can take 
any tensed form, as ill: 
At tbaf time. Bob will be hitting the lackpat 
Sentential inserts (:an separate a verb from its coruplemonts: 
Bob hit, if seems to me, the jackpot 
In example (2). the direct complement N t is Ifee and general. 
heoce, se+ltenti~d structures can separate the verb from its second 
(frezed=} complement: 
Bob took the tact lhat Jo was absent yesterday into account 
Notice that parts of compound verbs may be recognized directly, for 
example the iackpof, or into account, but these parts may be 
ambiguous, whereas the full utterances can rarely be confused with free 
for~,ns 10. 
10+ As a matter of fact, when an utterance is found to be ambiguous, 
with one analysis as a frozen form and the other as a free form, 
ignoring competing free forms altogether is a good parsing strategy, 
4. SoFno (;oncIusions 
Ilew to organize the lexicon of compound utterances is an gloom 
question, From a computational point ef view, many solutions use 
available for the lookup of a (:emDound term: 
(i) Io classical algorithms m which left-to-right analysis is 
ess~,ntird+ the compound teraq could I.)e viewed as an extension of the 
first Ina)ot element met while scanning the sentence. Vor eXSOlplo, the 
adiectiw'~ long is the first such element of the cotopoond adverb 
m the toJ~g rim. Among mmw other possibilities, the program, 
pausing ,:nJ the word long would test the occurrence of the and 
in to the loft of long, snd the occurrence of run to the 
right. Notice that the left-to-right constraint has to be somewhat 
relaxed iu order to test both left and right contexts of long. 
(ii) In a futuristic view Of parsing involving parallel computing, one 
might envision several levels of lexicon. At the firat level, lon(j 
on the one hand ~md run, on the othe~, would to two sots of 
cov=structions whose intersection would contain tfJu~ compouiKI ilt I'ilo 
/oJJfl run; the lattc, r can then be searched N)r in the input text. V(u 
con'ffJo,ond verbs, one wonh'l have to synthesize a matchinfl utterance, 
rather than .girn\[dy looking it up. Such a procedure car, always fm 
sln+utat ed s(tqueutJally. 
I. all cost-.,';, the representatio, el utterances which we have used. 
flamen the Se(luer.cos of syntactic categories, agow.~; for the separation 
of the lexi(:on of con'lpeund \[ornl!~: into classes for which direct access 
can be provided. In this way, dictionary Iooliup can Lie stied u|l 1i 
ftEMAIH< 
In laver el leflqo-right aualysit; one could point to the loci that 
complex terms can ellen be abbreviated and that abbreviations are nlostty 
rHfht truncations. In seth situations the remaining part (the tellmast 
p~rt) af the truocated term must carry the in|ormation that describers 
the rgtht context m order to allow reconstruction of the reducncl part. 
Iherc are however examples where abbreviations are carried out on the 
left part el a term. (e g. a progral~mlng language a 
larp.quagc). 
Preliminary figures have shown that conl\[~und terms form thP. 
essential \[.art of a lexicon-grammar. It is also interesting to observe 
that they Iorce both the linguist and the computer specialist to adopt a 
me(;h voore abstract view of language; 
- ~;emantically, tw defied)on, compoond utterances cannot be decomposed 
into simple utterances', in other terms, meaning is not compositional fer 
c(a'npoends, fleece, in a certain sense, one has to recognize that meaning 
has not nuJch to do with words; 
- syntactically, it has become a rather general hatlit to attach 
properties 1o individual words, In the case of compounds this mode of 
representation is no longer possible: Why privilege one part of a 
compound with marks rather than some other part? For example, there is 
no reason to attach the Passive marking to the verb rather than to 
either of the complements of the utterance to put the cart before the 
horse, Lexicon-grammar representations eliminate such questions by 
dolocalizing the syntactic information and by attaching it to the full 
sentence, In this sense, compound expressions provide a powerful 
n\]etivation for representing lexical and syntactic phenomena in the form 
of a lexicon-grammar. 
11. The saree use of se(luences of syntactic categories is found in n 
string grammar (Z.S+ Harris 1961), which has proven to be quite 
efficient in syntactic recognition (N, Sager 1981, M. Salkoff 1973, 
1979). 

REFERENCES 

Boeas, Jean-Paul,, Guillet, Alain. and LeclSre, C-hristian. 197Ga, 
La slruclure des phrases simples en lran~aia, I Constr~/ctions 
intransitives, Geneva: Droz, 37zp. 

Boons, Jean-PauL, Guillet, Alain. and Lecl~re, Christian, 197Gb, 
ta structure (tea phrases simple8 en fran,~iais. III Clasae,~ de 
constructions transitives, Rapport de recherches No 6, Paris: 
University Paris 7, L,A,D,L., 143p, 

Boons, Jean-Paul., Guillet, Alain. and t.ecl~'re, Christian. 1987. La 
sfrucltn'e des phrases simplea en fran~ais. II Classes de 
constructions locatives, Paris: Cantil~ae. 

Danlos, Laurence. 1985, G#n~ration automatique de textes en langues 
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