Several types of duration measurement verbs (Vmtd) can be isolated in french as the result of the description of different types of constructions that can occur with temporal nouns (Ntps) and duration nouns (Ndur). A series of syntactic and semantic properties can be gathered concerning these constructions, leading to the constitution of four main categories, for which durer, prendre, passer, mettre are the best representative verbs. In this study, we try to show the difference that can be made between this specific verbal complementation and durative adverbial complementation in general.