L'adjectif en français et sa définition lexicographique par Paolo Frassi (review)

The specialized reader adhering to the Théorie Sens-Texte (Meaning-Text Theory) school of linguistics, most closely associated with Igor Mel' uk since its founding in the early 1960s, will find much satisfaction in Frassi's lexicographic reexamination of the French adjective, using it as a kind of TST proving ground, resulting in a normalized and simplified presentation of the adjectival part of speech when reconceptualized in conformity with the TST framework. The challenge that Frassi has taken on as a test case is at hand because the definitional constraining of the adjective is less straightforward than that of the noun or the verb, owing to the fact that the adjective does not lend itself transparently to the Aristotelian model of organizing the observable and experiential parts of our world into discrete entities in a kind of hierarchy. Applying the model of genre prochain (closest genus) and différences spécifiques, the lexicographer arrives at a ready definition of the noun renard by positing the hyperonyme (the lexicographic equivalent of the genre prochain), in this instance mammifère carnivore (canidé), and then adding a sufficient number of différences spécifiques, in this instance aux oreilles droites, à la tête triangulaire assez effilée, à la queue touffue, au pelage fourni, in order to constrain the targeted entity and contrast it (in the Saussurean sense) visà-vis all other comparable entities. As Frassi explains, however, modern lexicographers have abandoned this definitional structure when it comes to the adjective, in recognition of the fact that it is a part of speech that functions differently than the noun. To exemplify, it would constitute a misconstrual to begin the definition for froid with the noun température as a hypernym. Although it can be substantivized, froid is fundamentally a part of speech functioning as a modifier and its primary definition must reflect this and give implicit recognition to the presence of the modified nom recteur (head noun). However, the nom recteur could be virtually anything and, consequently, must be left vacant in the ensuing definitional paraphrase: Qui est à une température sensiblement plus basse que celle du corps humain. For Frassi, such paraphrasing lacks formal rigor. Regardless of the category—adjectifs qualificatifs (froid), adjectifs de relation (présidentiel), adjectifs verbaux et déverbaux (effrayant, endormi)—by resorting to TST categories, he mirrors the hierarchical arrangement of the genre prochain and différences spécifiques by recasting all adjectival definitions as being composed of a composante centrale and a composante périphérique. Returning to the example of froid: CC = [X] qui a une température; CP (de polarité) = inférieure à la moyenne. For the lay reader, some of Frassi's argumentation may seem laborious and, at times, repetitive, but it is fascinating at the outset to learn that something that we now take for granted—namely that nouns and adjectives constitute two different parts of speech—was conceived of quite differently by our predecessors, for reasons alluded to above, and that the adjective was not fully emancipated from the category of the noun until the mid-eighteenth century.