Pour un apprentissage/enseignement des collocations verbo-nominales d’existence en termes de ‘constructions’

Abstract

We present here a methodology for learning and teaching lexical knowledge based on the notion of “construction” and applied to French as a foreign language (university level). It is illustrated in a particular domain: that of verbo-nominal collocations allowing to express the beginning (appearance, birth, beginning), the continuation (persistence, continuation) and the end (disappearance, stop) of the existence of something; the verbs and nouns used come from the “transversal” lexicon of the human and social sciences in an academic context. It is shown that the (more or less strong) compatibilities and the incompatibilities between verbs and nouns can be explained to learners in terms of the ‘facet’ (i.e. point of view) that the verb imposes on the name, according to its meaning in the construction considered. It is also shown that the comparison of two constructions expressing the same main idea makes it possible to measure their degree of semantic proximity, on the basis of the (in)compatibilities of verbs with the major categories of nouns, and of their more or less strong affinity (or absolute incompatibility) with the types of names. The presentation of the structuring concepts (facet, category and type of nouns) is followed by a description of the didactic tools that they allow to design, and by the report of three didactic sequences set up as part of the training in academic writing.

Keywords

• academic French
• teaching of transversal lexicon
• constructions
• verb-noun collocations
• prototypy