Les syntagmes nominaux complexes dans les textes juridiques français

Abstract

With its point of departure in the verb valency theory, the present article introduces a classification of complex NPs in French legal texts. The heads of the NPs are subdivided into predicative and non-predicative nouns: predicative when they show the same valency pattern as verbs and non-predicative when they do not. The two classes may have bound and free expansions in the form of both complements and modifiers. The final classification of the NPs thus consists of eight different categories. The syntactic distrinction between predicative and non-predicative nouns is supplemented, on the semantic level, by a gradable scale, ranging from the concrete to the abstract, along which the nouns are placed according to their degree of predication, i.e. according to the number of valents.