A Generative Lexicon Perspective for Adjectival Modification 
Patrick Saint-Dizier 
IRIT-CNRS, Universit6 Paul sabatier 
118 route de Narbonne F-31062 Toulouse Cedex France 
stdizier~irit, fr 
Abstract 
This paper presents a semantic interpretation of adjecti- 
val modification in terms of the Generative Lexicon. It 
highlights the elements which can be borrowed from the 
GL and develops limitations and extensions. We show 
how elements of the Qualia structure can be incorpo- 
rated into semantic composition rules to make explicit 
the semantics of the combination adjective + noun. 
1 Aims 
Investigations within the generative perspective aim 
at modelling, by means of a small number of rules, 
principles and constraints, linguistic phenomena at 
a high level of abstraction, level which seems to be 
appropriate for research on multi-linguism and lan- 
guage learning. 
Among works within the generative perspective, 
one of the most innovative is the Generative Lexi- 
con (GL) (Pustejovsky 91, 95) which introduces an 
abstract model opposed to sense enumeration lexi- 
cons. The GL is based (1) on the close cooperation 
of three lexical semantic structures: the argument 
structure, the aspectual structure and the Qualia 
structure (with four roles: Telic, Agentive, Consti- 
tutive and Formal), (2) on a detailed type theory and 
a type coercion inference rule and (3) on a refined 
theory of compositionality. The Generative Lexicon 
investigates the problem of polysemy and of the mul- 
tiplicity of usages from a core sense of a lexeme and 
shows how these usages can be analyzed in terms 
of possible type shiftings w.r.t, the type expected 
by the core usage. Type shifting is modelled by a 
specific inference mechanism: type coercion. 
In this paper, the following points are addressed: 
• Generative systems require a clear analysis of 
the notions of word-sense and of sense delimita- 
tion. Depending on the strategy adopted (e.g. 
large number of narrow senses for a lexeme as 
in WordNet, or very few but large senses as in 
many Al works), the nature and the scope of 
generative operations may be very different. 
• The Qualia structure is a complex structure, 
quite difficult to describe, in spite of evidence 
of its existence, in particular for the Telic role, 
(explored e.g. in the EuroWordNet project, the 
European WordNet). Qualias are well-designed 
and useful for nouns, but look more artificial for 
other lexical categories. We show that it is the 
telic role of nouns which is the most useful. We 
also show how the internal structure of this role 
can be made more precise and its use more re- 
liable and accurate by means of types and how 
it can be partitioned by means of types into on- 
tological domains for modelling some forms of 
metaphors. 
• Types are not sufficiently 'constrained' to ac- 
count for the constraints holding, for each 
predicate, on the different sense/usage varia- 
tions they may be subject to. We show that 
an underspecified Lexical Conceptual Structure 
(LCS) (Jackendoff 90) is more appropriate be- 
cause of its ability to represent underspecified 
meaning and therefore the polymorphism of 
senses in the GL, because of the relevance and 
low-granularity of its primitives (that we have 
slightly enhanced). 
• Elements of the Qualia structure can be in- 
corporated into semantic composition rules to 
make explicit the semantics of the combination 
predicate-argument, instead of developing lexi- 
cal redundancy rules. 
• A rule-based approach (also used by other 
authors such as (Copestake and Briscoe 95), 
(Ostler and Atkins 92), (Numberg and Zaenen 
79)) is contrasted with the Qualia-based ap- 
proach to deal with sense shiftings and in partic- 
ular selective binding, metaphors (that the GL 
cannot resolve a priori) and metonymies. An- 
other view is presented in (Jackendoff 97) with 
the principle of enriched composition, which is 
in fact quite close to our view, but restricted 
to a few specific coercion situations (aspectual, 
mass-count, picture, begin-enjoy). 
• The rules for type shifting we present here are 
not lexical rules, as in (Copestake and Briscoe 
95), but they are part of the seinantic composi- 
1143 
tion system, which makes them more general. 
This paper is devoted to adjectival modification 
(see also (Bouillon 97, 98)). The goal is to study 
the use and impact of the Qualia structure of the 
modified noun in the determination of the semantic 
representation of the association Noun + Adjective. 
To illustrate this study, we have chosen one of the 
most polysemic French adjectives: bon (good), which 
covers most of the main situations. Other adjectives, 
often cited in the GL literature, such as ~ad, fast, 
difficult or noisy have been studied and confirm this 
analysis. We observed also many similarities within 
semantic families of adjectives. 
2 Conceptual versus Lexicographic 
Analysis of Lexical Items 
In this section, we outline the differences but also the 
cooperation between conceptual and lexicographic 
analysis of the semantics of lexical items to build 
a lexicon suitable for the development of generative 
devices. 
2.1 Adjectives in technical texts 
We have considered a sample of technical texts in 
French from various origins and used a simple tag- 
ging and extraction system developed for our needs. 
We have considered a total of 386 pages of text, with 
a total of 193 146 word occurences, among which, 
we have 14 598 occurences of adjectives. These 
occurences correspond to 754 different adjectives, 
among which 720 are restrictive adjectives. We will 
only consider this latter set. 
A small number of adjectives appear frequently: 
Fig. 1 Adjective frequencies 
interval nb. of adjectives concerned 
> 300 5 
> 300 and --< 150 12 
> 150 and --< 50 81 
This means that 98 adjectives appear relatively 
frequently in texts, i.e. only about 13.6% of the to- 
tal. In terms of occurences, these adjectives cover 
11887 occurences, i.e. about 81% of the occurences. 
Adjectives from eight main 'semantic' families ap- 
pear frequently. These families do not correspond 
exactly to those defined by (Dixon 91) (see also an 
introduction in (Raskin et al. 95)), which look too 
vague (figures have been rounded up or down to the 
closest integer): 
Fig. 2 Adjective semantic families 
Name example freq. (%) 
temporal actuel, pass6 10 
evaluative bon, grand, cher 24 
locational central, externe 10 
aspectual courant, final 8 
technical chimique 17 
nationalities international 3 
shapes rond, rectangulaire 4 
society, culture economique, social 6 
others 18 
In terms of 'polysemic power', evaluative, loca- 
tional, and shapes are the families which are the 
most polysemic, with a ratio of an average of 3.8 
senses per adjective. Nationalities, technical and as- 
pectual adjectives are much less polysemic. 
2.2 A conceptual analysis of adjectives 
The GL approach requires a conceptual analysis of 
adjectives in order to focus oil a relatively small 
number of senses. The idea is to isolate generic con- 
ceptual 'behaviors', while taking also into account 
the constraints on linguistic realizations as in the 
lexicographic approach. 
The principle that we attempt at validating is to 
define a 'deep' LCS representation for each predica- 
tive lexical item, which is generic enough to accomo- 
date variations within a sense and precise enough to 
be meaningful and discriminatory w.r.t, other word- 
senses. To be able to represent sense variations in an 
efficient and reliable way, the variable or underspec- 
ified elements should be 'low level' elements such as 
functions or paths. Semantic fields may also be al- 
tered, e.g. going from location to psychological or 
to epistemological (Pinker 93). Such an approach is 
being validated on various semantic families of verbs. 
The variable elements seem to belong to various 
ontologies (a crucial topic under intense investiga- 
tion), such as the ontology of events (active, sleep- 
ing, terminated, etc.), of people's quilities, etc. 
2.3 Meanings of bon 
In this short document, for the purpose of illustra- 
tion, let us consider the adjective bon (corresponding 
quite well to good), which is one of the most pol- 
ysemic adjective: 25 senses identified in WordNet 
(e.g. (Fellbaum 93)). In fact, bon can be combined 
with almost any noun in French, and as (Katz 66) 
pointed out, 9ood would need as many different read° 
ings as there are functions for objects. 
We have identified the following senses and sense 
variations (metaphors and metonymies in particular, 
expressed as in (Lakoff 80)): 
1. Idea of a good working of a concrete object 
w.r.t, what it has been designed for: un bon 
tournevis, de bons yeux (good screw-driver, good 
1144 
eyes). Metaphors abound: e.g.: 'communica- 
tion acts as tools': une bonne plaisanterie/mise 
au point (a good joke), 'function for tool' (un 
boa odorat), 'paths as tools' ( a good road). 1 
Metonymies are rather unusual since if X is a 
part of Y, a good X does not entail a good Y 2 
2. Positive evaluation of moral, psychological, 
physical or intellectual qualities in humans: 
bonne personne, boa musician, (good persoa, good 
musician). The basic sense concerns professions 
and related activites or humans as a whole: it 
is the ability of someone to realize something 
for professions, and, for humans, the high level 
of their moral qualities (an enumeration call be 
given or a kind of higher-order, typed expres- 
sion). 
This second sense could be viewed as a 
large metaphor of the first, with a structure- 
preserving transposition to a different ontology: 
from tools to professional or moral skills. 
There are some 'light' metaphors such as: 'so- 
cial positions or ranks as professions' (a good 
boss/father/friend / citizen), and a large num- 
ber of metonymies: 'image for person, image be- 
ing a part of a person' (a good reputation), 'tool 
for profession' (a good scalpel), 'place for pro- 
fession' ( a good restaurant). These metaphors 
have a good degree of systematicity. 
3. Intensifier of one or more properties of the noun, 
producing an idea of pleasure and satisfaction 
(this is different for sense 5) 3: 
noun(+edible): good meal/dish/taste = tasty, 
with metonymies such as 'container tbr con- 
tainee' ( a good bottle/glass), 
noun(+fine-art): good film/book/painting = 
valuable, with metonymies such as 'physical 
support for contents' (good CD), 
noun(+smelling): good odor, 
noun(+psycho): good relation/experience 
noun(+human relations): good neighbours. 
Note that bon can only be used with neutral or 
positive nouns, we indeed do not have in French 
*good ennemies, *good humidity with the sense 
outlined here. 
4. Quantification applied to measures or to quan- 
tities: o good meter, a good liter, o good 
lIn the combination noun + adjective," the norm is the 
element that undergo the metaphor. The adjective being a 
predicate, it is its relation to the noun it modifies which is 
metaphorical, similarly to the relation verb-noun. The se- 
mantics of the noun remains a priori unaltered. 
2This needs refinements: there are some weak forms of 
upward inheritance in the part-of relation: e.g. if the body of 
a car is red, then the car is said to be red. 
3Norms are being defined for about 600 top-most nodes of 
a general purpose ontology in different projects and research 
groups (e.g. NMSU, ISI, Eagles EEC project), they will be 
used as soon as available. 
amount/salary, a good wind. In this case, good 
means a slightly more than the unit/measure 
indicated or above the average (for terms which 
are not measure units such as wind or salary). 
This sense being quite different since it is basi- 
cally a quantifier, it won't be studied hereafter. 
5. Idea of exactness, accuracy, correctness, 
validity, freshness, etc.: un bon raison- 
nement/calcul = exact, accurate (a good deduc- 
tion/computation), good note~ticket = valid, a 
good meat = fresh or eatable, a good use = ap- 
propriate, good knowledge = efficient, large and 
of good quality. The meaning of bon is there- 
fore underdetermined. Depending on the noun, 
the semantics of bon is slightly different, this is 
not really a case of co-composition. It is the se- 
mantic type of the noun and that of the selected 
predicate in the telic role of the noun which de- 
termine the meaning of the adjective in this par- 
ticular NP. We call this phenomenon, by com- 
parison with selective binding, selective pro- 
jection, because the meaning is projected from 
the noun's telic role. Sense 5 is substantially dif- 
ferent from sense 1: it is basically boolean (e.g. 
exact or not), there is no idea of tool, function 
or even activity. 
Bon appears in a large number of fixed or semi-fixed 
forms such as: le boa godt, le bon sans, le boa temps, 
une bonne giffle. 
Almost the same behavior is observed for all eval- 
uative adjectives such as excellent, terrific, bad or 
lousy in French. For example, for mauvais (bad), 
senses 1, 2 and 3 are identical, sense 4 is only ap- 
plicable to amounts (mauvais salaire), not to units 
and sense 5 is almost identical, it conveys the idea 
of erroneous deduction, invalid ticket, bad use and 
rotting meat. Note that in WordNet, bad has only 
14 senses, whereas good has 25 senses, with no clear 
justification. 
2.4 A comparison with WordNet 
We have carried out a comparison of our conceptual 
analysis with the lexicographic analysis in ~VordNet. 
We have compared manually a subset of 54 adjec- 
tives among the above mentioned frequently used 
adjectives. Among these adjectives, 30 are poly- 
senfic in our approach while 44 belong to several 
synsets in WordNet: 
Fig. 3 A comparison with WordNet \] 
criterion (1) (2) 
total number of senses found 114 256 
average nb. of senses/item 2.11 4.9 
(1): Conceptual approach, (2) WordNet 1.6. 22 
of our descriptions are close to WordNet (for adjec- 
tives which are not much polysemic) while 32 differ 
1145 
largely (for highly polysemic adjectives), for which 
our approach identifies much less senses. 
2.5 Underspecificatlon versus polysemy 
Each of the senses of bon has many facets and inter- 
pretations depending on the noun it modifies. As 
for verbs or nouns (Busa 97), polymorphic types 
are used to represent the semantics of the expected 
nouns, viewed as arguments of the adjective predi- 
cate. The semantic representation associated with 
a sense is therefore underspecified and tuned to re- 
flect this polymorphism. The scope of underspec- 
ified elements must however be bounded and pre- 
cisely defined by 'lexical' types and by additional 
constraints. The generative expansion of underspec- 
ified fields can be defined from lexical items using a 
fix-point semantics approach (Saint-Dizier 96). 
2.6 Towards an automatic acquisition of 
conceptual descriptions 
Some on-line resources and dictionaries may effi- 
ciently contribute to this task. We have consid- 
ered several mono- and bi-lingual dictionaries in or- 
der to evaluate convergences. Only those struc- 
tured on a conceptual basis are worth considering. 
Among them, the Harrap's German-French dictio- 
nary is very nicely structured in a conceptual per- 
spective, providing translations on an accurate se- 
mantic basis. Senses are slightly more expanded 
than in the GL approach to account for translation 
variations, but closely related senses can be grouped 
to form the senses defined above. 
Another source of knowledge for English is 
Corelex 4 which is just being made accessible. It 
contains word definitions specifically designed for 
the GL. Its evaluation is about to start. 
3 Generative Devices and Semantic 
Composition 
Let us now analyze from a GL point of view the 
meanings of the adjective bon. 
In (Pustejovsky 95), to deal with the compound 
adjective+noun, a predicate in the telic of the noun 
is considered. For example, fast, modifying a noun 
such as typist, is represented as follows: 
Ae \[type'(e,x) A fast(e)\] 
where e denotes an event. This formula says that the 
event of typing is fa~t. A similar representation is 
given for long, in a long record. This approach is ap- 
propriate to represent temporal notions in a coarse- 
grained way, i.e. the event is said to be fast (with 
e.g. potential inferences on its expected duration) 
or long. But this approach is not viable for both, and 
many other adjectives with little or no temporal di- 
mension. In: 
4 available at: 
www.cs.brandeis.edu/paulb/CoreLex/corelex.|atnd 
)~e \[type'(e, x) A good(e)\] 
it is not the typing event which is 'good' but the 
way the typing has been performed (certainly fast, 
but also with no typos, good layout, etc.). A precise 
event should not be considered in isolation, but the 
representation should express that, in general, some- 
one types well, allowing exceptions (some average or 
bad typing events). This involves a quantification, 
more or less explicit, over typing events of x. Finally, 
bon being polysemous, a single representation is not 
sufficient to accomodate all the senses. 
As introduced in section 1, the semantic represen- 
tation framework we consider here is the LCS. The 
nature of its primitives and its low-level granularity 
seem to be appropriate for our current purpose. Un- 
derdetermined structures are represented by a typed 
,k-calculus. 
3.1 sense 1: Bon = that works well 
This first sense applies to any noun of type tool, 
machine or technique: a good car, a good screw- 
driver. The semantic representation of bon requires 
a predicate from the telic role of the Qualia struc- 
ture of the noun. It is the set (potentially infinite) 
of those predicates that characterizes the polymor= 
phism. We have here a typical situation of selective 
binding (Pustejovsky 91), where the representation 
of the adjective is a priori largely underspecified. Let 
us assume that any noun which can be modified by 
bon has a telic role in which the main function(s) of 
the object is described (e.g. execute programmes for 
a computer, run for a car 5), then the semantics of 
the compound adjective + noun can be defined as 
follows: 
Let N be a noun of semantic type a., and of Qualia: 
\[..., Telic: T, ...\] 
where T denotes the set of predicates associated with 
the telic role of the noun N. Let Y the variable as- 
sociated with N and let us assume that T is a list of 
predicates of the form Fi(_,-). Then the LCS-based 
representation of bon is: 
A Y : a, )~ Fi, \[~tate BE+cm, r,+,dent(\[thin9 Y \], 
\[+p~op ABILITY - TO(Fi(Y, _)) = high \])\] . 
which means that the entity denoted by the noun 
works well, expressed by the evaluation function 
ABILITY-TO and the value 'high'. This type of 
low-level function abounds in the LCS, this princi- 
ple is introduced in (Jackendoff 97). Note that tile 
second argument of the predicate Fi does not need to 
be explicit (we use the Prolog notation '_' for these 
positions). 
The Qualia allows us to introduce in a direct way 
a pragmatic or interpretative dimension via 
the instanciation of Fi (_, _). 
5Less prototypical predicates can also be considered, e.g. 
comfort or security for a car, which are properties probably 
described in the constitutive role of the Qualia of car. 
1146 
The constant 'high' can be replaced by a more 
accurate representation, e.g. 'above average', but 
the problem of evaluating a functionality remains 
open. More generally, the introduction of low level 
functions, such as ABILITY-TO, and specific values, 
such as 'low', should be introduced in a principled 
way, following the definition of ontologies of different 
domains, e.g. action, intensities, etc. This is quite 
challenging, but necessary for any accurate semantic 
framework. 
Note finally that instead of quantifying over 
events, bon is described as a state: the function- 
alities of the object remain good, even when it is 
not used effectively. If several functionalities are at 
stake, we may have a conjunction or a more complex 
combination of functions Fi. 
From a compositional point of view, the combina- 
tion Adjective + Noun is treated as follows, where 
R is the semantic representation of the adjective, T, 
the contents of the telic role of the Qualia of the 
noun N of type o, r, a particular element of T, and 
Y, the variable associated with the noun: 
sem-composition (Adj (R),Noun (Qualia(T)) = 
)~Y : c~, 3F/(Y, _) E T, 
(N(Y) A R(Y)(Fi(Y,_))). 
The open position in R(Y) is instanciated by ~3- 
reduction. The selection of Fi is simple: for basic 
tools, there is probably only one predicate in the 
Qualia (screw-driver -+ screw), for more complex 
nouns, there is a,, ambiguity which is reflected by 
the non-deterruilfistic choice of Fi, but probably or- 
ganized with preferences, which should be added in 
the Qualia. \[t is the constraint on the type of Y 
that restricts the application of that semantic com- 
position rule. This notation is particularly simple 
and convenient. 
Metaphors are treated in a direct way: the con- 
straint on the type of Y can be enlarged to: 
)~Y : ~ A o' , metaphor(13, ~) 
and the remainder of the semantic composition rule 
and semantic formula remains unchanged. We have, 
for example: 
metaphor(communication - act, tool) (joke). 
metaphor(communication - path, tool) (road). 
which is paraphrased as 'communication path 
viewed as a tool'. 
We have evaluated that, in French, there are about 
12 frequent forms of metaphors for this sense. The 
study of this first sense suggests that the introduc- 
tion of a hierarchy of preferences would be a useful 
extension to the Telic role, reflecting forms of proto- 
typicality among predicates. 
3.2 Sense 2: Bon restricted to cognitive or 
moral qualities 
Another seuse o\[' bon modifies nouns of type pro- 
fession or human. The treatment is the same as 
in the above section, but the selection of the pred- 
icate(s) r = Fi(X,Y) in the telic of the noun's 
qualia must be restricted to properties related to 
the moral behavior (makes-charity, has-compassion, 
has-integrity) when the noun is a person; and to 
some psychological attitudes and cognitive capabil- 
ities when the noun denotes a profession (e.g. a 
good composer). Alternatively, some of these prop- 
erties could be found in the constitutive role (ap- 
proximately the part-of relation), if properties can 
be parts of entities. 
The typing of the predicates in the Qualia roles 
can be done in two ways, (1) by means of labels iden- 
tifying the different facets of a role, as in (Bergler 
91) for report verbs, but these facets are often quite 
ad'hoc and hard to define, or (2) by means of types 
directly associated with each predicate. These types 
can, for example, directly reflect different verb se- 
mantic classes as those defined in (Levin 93) or 
(Saint-Dizier 96) on a syntactic basis, or the ma- 
jor ontological classes of WordNet or EuroWordNet 
and their respective subdivisions. This solution is 
preferable, since it does not involve ally additional 
development of the Telic role, but simply the adjunc- 
tion of types from a separate, pre-defined ontology. 
The WordNet or EuroWordNet types also seem to 
be quite easy to handle and well-adapted to the phe- 
nomena we model. This remains to be validated on 
a large scale. 
An LCS representation for this sense of bon is, as- 
suming the following types for Fi: 
)~ Y : human, F, : action - related- to- 
profession v moral - behavior, Y : a. 
\[..,a,¢ BE+char,+ia~,,(\[,h,,,9 Y \], 
\[+prop ABILITY - TO{F~(Y, _)) = high \])\] . 
When several predicates are at stake, a set of 
Fi(Y,-) can be considered in the representation, or 
the statement is ambiguous. 
Metonymies such as a good scalpel are resolved by 
the general rule: 'tools for professions'. This infor- 
mation could be in a knowledge base or, alterna- 
tively, it can be infered from the Telic role of the 
tool: any instrument has a predicate in its telic role 
that describes its use: the type of the first argument 
of the predicate is directly related to the profession 
that uses it. For example, scalpel has ill its telic role: 
cut(X : surgeon V biologist, Y : body). 
When the profession is identified, the standard pro- 
cedure for determining the meaning of the com- 
pound can be applied. Metonymies using the part-of 
relation are quite simple to resolve using the consti- 
tutive role, as in the GL. 
3.3 Sense 3: Bon as all intensifier 
Another main role of bon is to emphasize a quality of 
the object denoted by the noun. As shown in section 
2, there is a certain action associated with the telic of 
the modified noun that produces a certain pleasure. 
1147 
For example, watching a good film entails a certain 
pleasure. 
Let us consider again a noun N of type a (e.g. 
edible object) associated with the variable Y. The 
entity (human) undergoing the pleasure is not ex- 
plicit in the NP, it is represented by X, and included 
in the scope of a A-abstraction. Let Fi(X, Y) be the 
predicate selected in the telic role of N. The LCS 
representation is then: 
AX : human, Y: a, Fi(X,Y) 
\[e,~¢,u CAUSE(\[ .... , F,(X, Y)\], 
\[state BE+p~u(\[th,n9 X \], 
L~t,ee AT+,su(\[+pt,c¢ pleasure 1)1)1)\]. 
We have here another form of representation for bon, 
where Fi is a CAUSE. 
The term 'pleasure' is an element of an ontology 
describing e.g. mental attitudes and feelings. It is 
relatively generic and can be replaced by a more pre- 
cise term, via selective projection (see below for sense 
5), depending on the nature of the pleasure. 
An alternative representation describes a path to- 
wards the value 'pleasure', giving an idea of progres- 
sion: 
XX :human, Y :a, Fi(X,Y) 
\[ .... , CAUSE(\[ ..... t F,(X, Y)\], 
\[ .... , GO+~..~(\[,~,.9 X \], 
\[p~th TOW ARDS+p~u (\[+,,l~ pleasure \])\])\])\]. 
Notice that this sense of bon does not imply an 
idea of quantity: a good meal does not entail that 
the meal is big, a good temperature does not entail 
that the temperature is high, but rather mikl. The 
semantic composition rule is similar as in 3.1. 
The metonymy 'container for containee" (a good 
bottle) is resolved by a type shifting on Y. Y lnay be 
of type fl iff: 
3 Z : a, Y : container A container- for(Y, Z). 
Inferences are identical for e.g. a good CD. 
3,4 Sense 5: Bon = exact or eorreet 
We have here a situation of selective projection: the 
exact meaning of bon is projected from the type of 
the modified noun and the type of the predicate se- 
lected in the noun's Telic role. 
For example, if the noun is of type bank - note V 
ticket and the type of the predicate selected in the 
noun's Telic role is pay V give - access - to, then 
the meaning of bon is 'valid': 
XX : bank -- note V ticket, 
\[,t~t¢ BE+¢ha~,+,a,,t(\[,hina X 1, 
L~,o- AT+~h.r,+,a~,. (\[+.~o~vaUd(X)\])\])\]. 
The constraint, on the type of the telic role is stated 
in the semantic composition rule: 
sea-composition (Adj (R),Noun(X,Qualia(T))) = 
AX : bank - note v ticket, 
3Fi(_,_) : pay v give - access - to E T, 
(N(X) ^ n(x)). 
It is necessary to have both a constraint on the 
noun and on the predicate(s) in the telic role: (1) 
the type of the predicate in the telic role is certainly 
not a sufficient constraint , e.g. every noun's telic 
role in which there is the predicate pay cannot be 
combined with bon with sense 5; (2) the constraint 
on the type of the noun is also not sufficient, e.g. a 
medecine is a kind of food, but we don't eat it. 
4 Representing the core meaning of 
a word-sense 
The work presented here has shown the necessity of 
describing the semantics of a lexical item at a rel- 
atively 'deep' level, ill order to make explicit the 
meaning elements subject to alterations in the sense. 
variations shown above. It turns out, so far, that 
these elements can be represented by LCS primitives 
and a few functions and values, assumed to belong 
to general-purpose, and often commonly-admitted, 
ontologies. This remains an assumption since this 
type of ontological knowledge is still under devel- 
opment, but the elements used are relatively simple 
and standard. Besides ontologies, and not very far 
from them, we also find information contained in the 
noun's Qualias, but in a less structured way, making 
selection more difficult. 
Core meaning definition requires a good analysis 
of a word-sense and of its behavior in different con- 
texts. This is however not so difficult to elaborate 
once the formalism is stabilized. Also, we noted that 
semantically close words share a lot, making descrip- 
tions easier. This is in particular true for verbs. 
Besides adjectives, we have also studied a number 
of different types of verbs, as e.g. the verb couper 
(cut), often used as an example in the literature. Its 
core representation would be the following: 
A I, J \[ .... , CAUSE(\[th,,,9 1 \], 
\[ .... , aoA(x, L.o,~ Y \])\])\]. 
with the following values for the core sense: 
A = +loc ; X : \[thi,o PART- OT(J) \] 
Y = AWAY - FRO~lA(\[ptace LOCATION - OF(J)\]) 
For the metaphor: 'to cut a conversation/ a film, 
etc...', the values for the above variables become: 
A -= +char, +ident, X= \[ .... t/state J \] 
Y = AWAY - FROMA(\[prop ACTIVE(J)\]) 
where ACTIVE(J) is an elementary property of an 
ontology describing the status of events. A conver- 
sation is viewed as a flow which becomes non-active. 
A similar treatment is observed for other types of 
metaphors, with elliptic forms, such as couper l'eau/ 
l'dlectricitd/les crddits, also viewed as flows. The 
property AVAILABLE(J) will then be used, which 
is at a comparable abstract level in an ontology than 
ACTIVE(J). 
5 Long-distance COlnpositionality 
The NP a good meat is related to senses 2 or 5, it 
therefore includes in its domain of meanings struc- 
tures presented in sections 3.2 and 3.4. Instead of 
1148 
choosing one solution solution (a generate and test 
strategy), a set can be provided (as in constraint 
programming). Now, if we have an NP of the form: 
une viande bonne d consommer, then the parsing 
of consommer will provoque the selection of sense 5 
(and subsense 'fresh/consumable' via selective pro- 
jection) because of the type of consommer. If, con- 
versely, we have une viande bonne d, ddguster, then, 
since d~guster is of type 'eat.enjoy' (a dotted type in 
the GL), sense 2 is selected. The space of meanings 
is restricted when additional information is found. 
A second case involves default reasoning (as in 
(Pernelle 98)). In un bon couteau pour sculpter (a 
good knife to carve), by default, the action that the 
knife performs well is that protypically found in its 
telic role. But, if a less prototypical action is found 
explicitly in thesentence, then this latter is prefered 
and incorporated into the semantic representation 
instead of the default case. Indeed, the telic role 
describes prototypical actions, since the others are 
often unpredictable. The default meaning of bon is 
kept and 'frozen' until the whole sentence has been 
parsed. If there is no contracdiction with that sense, 
then it is assigned to the adjective, otherwise, it is 
discarded in favor of the sense explicitly found in the 
sentence. 
Finally, we consider the expressions Y makes a 
good X, Y is a good X as collocations where good is 
not fully treated compositionally. 
6 Conclusion 
In this paper, we have presented an analysis of ad- 
jectival modification within the GL perspective, with 
the illustration of the French adjective bon. We have 
proposed several extensions to the Telic role to be 
able to account for the representation of the differ- 
ent forms of sense variations. In particular, we have 
shown how types can be added, and how predicates 
from the telic participate to the construction of the 
semantic representation of the compound noun + 
adjective. 
Coercions and the treatment of metaphors and 
metonymies are generally assumed to be general 
principles, however, they are in fact more specialized 
than they seem at first glance (e.g. une bonne toque/ 
plume = a good cook/ writer is quite specific, or 
very constrained). It is then necessary to introduce 
narrow selectional restrictions on their use. Also, 
the similarities, quite important, outlined between 
the different cases presented here and observed for 
other families of adjectives suggest that there is a 
common typology for adjectival modification. What 
then would be a general formalism ? How much are 
these rules stlbject to linguistic variation ? 
Acknowledgements I thank James Pustejovsky, 
Federica Busa and Franqoise Gayral for discussions 
which helped improving this work. 
I don't thank my university administration, in par- 
ticular the accounting dept., who made every possi- 
ble effort to make this research more difficult. 

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