Lexical functions to represent derivational relations in specialized dictionaries

We present in this paper a model of derivation encoded by means of Lexical Functions (Mel’č uk et al. 1984–1999, Mel’čuk et al. 1995, Wanner 1996). It is based on semantic derivation as in the Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology, but we examine the category of morphological derivatives in order to organize sets of derivatives around a key term. Lexical functions express linguistic relations between words and allow a rigorous encoding. We use Standard Lexical functions and also discuss the usefulness of non-standard Lexical Function such as {avant}, {à distance}, {réciprocité} for the specific needs of some derivatives found in the corpus. We describe the structuration of such a terminology for the purpose of a specialized dictionary.