Anne Condamines
email: anne.condamines@univ-tlse2.fr

Corpus analysis and conceptual relation patterns

Keywords: conceptual relation pattern, corpus analysis, corpus/pattern dependency, corpus genre, empirical approach

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the notion of "conceptual relation pattern" via corpus analysis experiments. On the basis of this bottom-up approach, three main points are discussed. First the degree of dependency between conceptual relation pattern and corpus is discussed. This dependency may range from insignificant to complete; it may also be linked to corpus genre. Then, the limits of purely binary conception of relations are examined through the description of patterns taking into account argument structure. Finally, an example in which application may influence patterns choice is presented. Some generally admitted classical assumptions are discussed and revisited by presenting empirical results.

1-Introduction

The problem of elaborating relational systems from corpora with a linguistic method poses questions about a three-way dependency existing between corpus, relations and patterns. In this paper, we explore the potential dependency between corpus and pattern; more precisely, conclusions and reflections about patterns from several experiments in building such a relational system from corpora are presented. These bottom-up studies throw a new light on a number of issues concerning mainly the link between corpus and conceptual patterns but also the problem of binarity and of the link between application and patterns.

The notion of "conceptual relation pattern" is used in a number of disciplines: linguistics, terminology, information retrieval, etc. In each case, the aim is to associate lexical structures with a conceptual relation (or "semantic" or "lexical", depending on the discipline) and to use these structures in order to spot these relations. This notion is based on assumptions which -while not always clear to the authors who use itnevertheless certainly influence their studies. Experiments in corpus analysis for identifying conceptual relations show that knowledge patterns are much more complex than is generally supposed and that many of the assumptions need to be reconsidered.

Corpus analysis currently claims to take into account three kinds of elements which affect the study of relations and their patterns. First, a corpus is not simply a set of utterances in a language. It has been created with a precise objective and contains texts written by authors with a well-defined aim, at a precise time and for a particular set of readers. In brief, a corpus is linked together by significant extra-linguistic characteristics (named genre by Biber [START_REF] Biber | Variation across speech and writing[END_REF]). Second, as a set of discursive realizations, a corpus appears in a linear form, as a set of linguistic elements entering into numerous and varied semantico-syntactic relations. Now, the notion of "relation" is generally considered allowed us to build a system with lexical units that do not have syntactic relations since they are no longer in discourse. This transition from discourse to model (or metalinguistic level as several authors call it), is the heart of the problem of identifying relations with patterns. But many studies address the issue the other way round. Their point is to see how the transition from the linguistic system to discourse manifestations is achieved using an introspective method. This results in many interesting questions being left unanswered. The third element to take into account when analyzing conceptual relation patterns in the corpus is the aim of the modeling which may vary according to the point of view adapted. Very often, different structures can be considered: " Dans la langue tout est mouvance, tout est flou. Et, du fait même les axiomatisations possibles sont en grand nombre -aussi artificielles les unes que les autres, ce qui ne signifie pas qu'elles soient dénuées d'intérêt, car chacune éclaire le réel sous un certain angle » (Martin 1983 : 86) [In language, all is moving, all is blurred. And so the possible axiomatizations are very numerous, all equally artificial, which does not mean that they are without interest since each of them gives a particular view of reality].

The transition from a textual form to a metalinguistic one is always the result of a particular interpretation, the latter often guided by an interpretational aim.

2-The notion of "conceptual relation pattern" and the assumptions it imposes.

The notion of "conceptual relation pattern" appears under different names in various studies, some of which are indicated in Section 2.1. In Section 2.2, the resulting assumptions are highlighted.

2-1 The notion of "conceptual relation pattern"

In linguistics, the notion of relation originates from the work of structuralists who consider the language as a system of signs (after Saussure). In fact, even more than signs, relations are fundamental in such a perspective: « Chacune des unités d'un système se définit ainsi par l'ensemble des relations qu'elle soutient avec les autres unités, et par les oppositions où elle entre » (Benveniste 1966 : 21) [All system units are defined by a set of relations in contact with others and by the oppositions in which they appear].

Relations operate at each level of the language (phonological, morphological, syntaxical and lexical) since they allow systems to be elaborated. The notion of "mark" also appears in the context of structuralism, firstly in phonology where it designates the feature allowing the distinction between two phonemes. In morphology, probably by analogy, the element bearing a formal trace distinguishing it from the non-marked one was named a marked element (lion/lioness, kitchen/kitchenette). Then the idea of a form appeared possibly with a content and allowing the differentiation of one element from another. By its regular use, this form may be considered as the mark of a distinctive phenomenon from which it is possible to build a system.

At semantico-syntaxic level, the notion of "conceptual relation patterns" may be considered as the equivalent of "marks" at morphological level. They are recurrent forms used to indicate differences between lexical units and to build a structure. In comparison with morphological marks, semantico-syntaxic forms may be various and non-predictable. This notion of "mark" or "pattern", used to identify distinctive elements (in the tradition of structural analysis), can also be used to spot similarities. Within a relational structure, there are not only differences but, above all, there are proximities which justify the relations. At morphological level, similarities themselves are formal (and thereby marked). Marked and unmarked elements have the same root and only the suffix varies. Things are different at the semantico-syntaxic level where similarities are semantic and therefore unmarked. Consequently, the "pattern" -the only formal trail of a semantic relation-is useful for identifying differences as similarities. This fact raises many questions and interpretational difficulties. It would be preferable if the pattern were stable, always referring to the same content. This would allow us to use it in a systematic way, to identify both proximity and difference. Indeed, many studies are based on just this assumption. Unfortunately, patterns do not always work in this way (cf below).

The idea of associating lexical elements with a semantic relation is found under different names in different disciplines: linguistics, terminology, computer science (within knowledge acquisition from texts). To give a few linguistics examples, Lyons [START_REF] Lyons | Eléments de sémantique[END_REF] was probably the first to evoke particular "formulae" used for fitting terms linked by a hyperonymic relation. Cruse [START_REF] Cruse | Lexical Semantics[END_REF]) speaks of "diagnostic frames".

In terminology, the use of particular linguistic patterns to identify relations between terms systematically is rather recent. It appeared when issues within textual terminology and knowledge acquisition from texts were identified as being similar.

This was done by creating the concept of a "terminological knowledge base" [START_REF] Meyer | Towards a new generation of terminological resources: An experiment in building a terminological knowledge base[END_REF]. Authors speak of "knowledge rich contexts" (Davidson and al 1998) or "connective phrases" [START_REF] Pearson | Terms in Context[END_REF]. We referred to "marqueurs de relation conceptuelle" ("conceptual relation patterns") or just "marqueurs" (patterns) (Condamines and Rebeyrolle 2000). In computer science, more specifically in works on knowledge acquisition from texts, expressions such "explicit relation marker" [START_REF] Bowden | Extracting Conceptual Knowledge From Text Using Explicit Relation Markers[END_REF] or "knowledge probes" (Ahmad 1992) is used. The labels used show two different points of view, one focusses on discourse, the other emphasizes the transition from discourse to a model (metalinguistic level). In the first case, patterns are considered in terms of discursive structures ("expressions", "formulae"). There is no intention of using these contexts for building an abstract model. In the other case, this idea is very important: "knowledge probes", "diagnostic frames". Whatever the name chosen, all the authors are aware that it is possible to build an abstract model from discursive tracks. The notion of "pattern" is then highlighted as an indication of the possible transition from discourse to meta-discourse. This elaboration supposes a reduction in the number of discursive structures, in order to preserve only a reduced set of relations. Patterns are not only clues to a potential structure with explicit relations, but they are also lead to the attribution of a meaning -that might be more or less obvious-to this relation. The nature of the interpretation is quite clear when the pattern is not very context-dependent (linguistic context, nature of the corpus and the aim of the modeling). On the other hand, the help provided for interpreting is unclear when the pattern is highly context-dependant, as will be demonstrated in the rest of this paper. Finally, for the purposes of corpus analysis, we can define conceptual relation patterns as follows:

Conceptual relation pattern: a discursive structure used as an indication of the possible transition from the discourse to a model, allowing, the more or less direct construction of a model in the form of a semantic relation depending on its relation with the context.

Assumptions made under the notion of "conceptual relation pattern"

The majority of authors, using a top-down view (from system to its discursive realization), associate the notion of "pattern" with assumptions which do not even cross the author's mind. These assumptions are:

1-There is one linguistic system and one pattern system. Most studies resorting to the notion of "patterns" are based on the idea that there is just one semantic system guaranteeing consistency. One of the main objectives of this article is to show that it is necessary to moderate this point of view when the study is conducted on real corpora.

2-Linguistic relations are predictable by introspection. Viewing language as a unified semantic system may lead to the idea that patterns (as well as relations) may be described in an introspective manner and so be predictable. But, as shown below, in some cases, elements which play the role of patterns are totally unpredictable (see also Meyer 2001).

3-Patterns allow access to explicit relations. The idea here is that the link between form and content is direct. However, there are cases in which a form is well linked to a relation even though this form does not express the sense of this relation.

4-

The relations concerned are binary in nature. Indeed, the binary nature of the relation underlies most studies of relations. What is considered interesting is the relations between two units and only between two units. An analysis of the context in which these units appear shows that their binary nature is often insufficient for taking into account the behavior of these units and their patterns into account. 5-Patterns are not linked to the application in mind. Since context is not taken into account in most of works about conceptual relation patterns, the aim of the modeling is not considered. Even at pattern level, this must be taken into account.

The rest of this paper aims to show that these hypotheses must be reexamined if, with a bottom up view, patterns are examined in real corpora in order to describe their function rather than being first described and then systematically searched within corpora and so considered as general.

3-Most extreme cases: Pattern/corpus dependency is insignificant or complete

Two cases can be used to set limits to the continuum existing within the dependency between the corpus and the patterns used in it: (1) cases where the corpus does not seem to have an influence on patterns and; (2) those where patterns are completely linked with the corpus.

3-1 When the dependency corpus/pattern is weak

Experiments in analyzing corpora within our group as well as results from experiments made by other groups tends to show that some patterns (of some relations) occur in most corpora. Thus, it is possible to deduce (with caution) that there is no dependency between corpus genre and these patterns. This conclusion is also similar to the assumption used a priori by authors who are not interested in this potential dependency. But moving from discourse to modeling is not achieved without difficulties.

For example -even if no systematic analysis has been performed using very large corpora-it seems that the definitional context in which hyperonymy appears between definiens and definiendum plus differentiae is explicited (following Aristotle's model), are very frequent within corpora [START_REF] Rebeyrolle | Forme et fonction de la définition en discours[END_REF]. Following this, it would be appropriate to analyze a corpus starting with this pattern, the most general for hyperonymy:

[N is a N + differences](in the form of an adjective, a relative clause, etc.).

This assertion has to be considered with caution and three comments must be added.

1-The hyperonymy relation is probably the most structuring. Therefore, the high number of occurrences of this relation in corpora is not surprising -even in corpora with no didactic content-simply because definition (which favors this relation), with its clear metalinguistic orientation, may be used each time it is necessary to clarify a subject and to improve the understanding of a concept. This explains why this relationship is encountered in many corpora, independently of genre.

2-The fact that a pattern (or a relation) is weakly linked to corpus genre does not mean that these patterns will be encountered in all corpora. In 1993, we [START_REF] Amsili | Terminology between Language and Knowledge: an example of Terminological Knowledge Base[END_REF] analyzed a corpus from Matra Marconi Space. From a set of requirements, written by domain experts for other experts, no known hyperonymic patterns were encountered. It is likely that the expert status meant that it was not necessary to use hyperonymy. However, it seems difficult to predict that this relation will never appear in a corpus written from expert to expert.

3-

The presence, in discourse, of elements with the form of a pattern is not sufficient to guarantee that they will be used to build a model. There are at least three reasons for this. First, some patterns are "polysemic", that is, they may refer to several relations. This is the case with the following: [We can understand that the professional lycées and general teaching, as well as the University, are little orientated to scientific and technological formations].

Secondly, the aim of modeling guides the interpretating process, which can at the same time result in choosing to retain a context or not and in choosing to model it according to one relation or another.

Thirdly, and this is perhaps the most difficult element to control, it may be difficult to determine if the speaker using conceptual relation patterns is expressing his (or her) own point of view or if he/she assumes the point of view of a group of speakers.

Generally, only the second case needs to be modeled because such models must be acceptable and reusable within collective tasks. However, it is not improper to imagine retaining these same contexts, even if they are used by an isolated speaker, if the objective is to identify the system within the corpus emanating from this speaker (for example, literary works). In this case, interpretation and modeling objectives are crucial.

Finally, apart from hyperonymic patterns in definitional contexts which occur very frequently, other patterns which a priori would appear to be common, occur very rarely in some corpora as Séguéla has demonstrated in his Ph.D. [START_REF] Séguéla | Construction de modèles de connaissances par analyse linguistique de relations lexicales dans les documents techniques[END_REF].

3-2 When the corpus/pattern dependency is complete

In some corpora, it is proven that very specific structures play the role of pattern for some relations. These structures are obviously unpredictable and only a fine-grained analysis brings them to light: "While certain patterns seem quite logical…others are extremely unpredictable" (Meyer 2001: 295). We found such a structure in a corpus from EDF (Electricity of France), concerning specifications and writing of documents in software. It is a corpus of approximately 350 pages, written by several experts but with the same purpose. The guide is also written with an obvious injunctive style. In this corpus, the pattern for the relation CONDITION (reorganized in conditionsthe-beginning-of and conditions-the-end-of) was finally:

[((phase, étape) ou déverbal) + (lorsque, dès que) + V au passif]

[((phasis, stage) or nominalization) + (when, as soon as) + passive V].

Examples:

(3) La phase d'intégration du composant peut commencer lorsque l'ensemble des éléments logiciels ont été codés.

[The component integration phase may begin when all the software elements have been written.]

(4) Cette transition est déclenchée par le responsable des développements dès lors que toutes les manifestations spécifiées sont implémentées.

[This transition is triggered by the development manager when all the specified achievements have been implemented.]

Note that this idea of condition is not present in each expression of succession in the corpus:

(5) V est incrémenté lorsque le logiciel subit une évolution ou une modification majeure [V is incremented when the software is subject to an evolution or major modification].

In such cases, a problem arises from the difficulty of identifying these patterns.

Concerning the example above, we explained in Condamines and Rebeyrolle (2000) how we succeeded in achieving this task. To summarize, we applied the following sequence:

-Use of succession patterns (allowing parts of a process to be rearranged (phase)),

-By results analysis, identification of an example clarifying the link between succession and condition:

(6) Conditions de passage à la phase suivante :

La phase d'intégration du produit est achevée lorsque tous les tests prévus au plan d'intégration ont été exécutés avec succès.

[Conditions for passing to the next stage:

The product integration phase has been reached when all the previous tests in the integration plan have been carried out successfully.]

-Finally, description of a "good" pattern, which generates neither noise nor silence.

A certain regularity in modes of expression, potentially seen as conceptual relation patterns, is probably created within groups of speakers, which can either be stable, or constituted for a purpose or for a determined period. These contexts can be identified in corpora only after a minute analysis. In such cases, it is very difficult to anticipate which regularities are going to emerge from a given corpus. It is therefore necessary to develop methods for identifying these regularities rather than proposing a description of patterns a priori.

4-When corpus/pattern dependency is linked to corpus genre

Sometimes, regularity in expression is not specific to a particular corpus but rather to a corpus insofar as it is representative of other corpus with identical characteristics. Then a corpus-based linguistic analysis becomes possible, with the aim of identifying links between the corpus genre and pattern. Two examples of this type will now be presented: the French preposition [chez] and the structure [N1 avec N2].

4-1 The case of [chez]

In some French contexts, chez is used to express a meronymic relation:

(7) Chez les colobinés, le nez fait saillie sur la lèvre supérieure.

[In the Colobinés the nose juts out over the upper lip.]

In a study presented in [START_REF] Condamines | Chez dans un corpus de sciences naturelles : un marqueur de méronymie ?[END_REF], a hypothesis was made to the effect that that the co-occurrence chez/meronymic expression is just possible in natural sciences corpora. In order to verify this hypothesis, a corpus containing examples with chez from texts of different types was built:

-First distinction: natural sciences domain vs ideas and creation domain as in About half of the examples will be directly usable.

Another conclusion was highlighted by this study, leading to a new view of the notion of "pattern". The analysis of real examples shows that meronymic relations in sentences with chez is not expressed (asserted) by this relation but, on the contrary, it is considered as known (presupposed). The relation between N1 and N2 in sentences exposing the structure [chez SN1,SN2] is not clarified by the presence of chez. In example (7), it is possible to say that there is a meronymic relation between nez and colobinés, because the relation is known, not because sentence makes explicit reference to it. Similarly, it is known that there is not a meronymic relation between préfloraison and fraisier in (9), even though the same structure can be found:

(9) Chez le fraisier, la préfloraison est calvaire pour le calice, quinconciale pour la corolle.

[In the strawberry plant, the pre-flowering is in calvary for the cup, and in staggered rows for the corolla].

It is thus possible to say that [chez] often indicates a meronymic relation, with conditions about the corpus in which it is used. While the relation is not clarified by

[chez], the preposition is not exclusively indicative of a pattern, as we described in Section 2 -that is, marking a possible modeling and guiding its interpretation.

Nevertheless, it may be used systematically to identify a meronymic relation.

Note that the potential of a pattern to guide interpretation remains an open question.

Even in staightforward patterns this is not so clear-cut. See examples (1) and ( 2) with

[comme] (as) in 2. Because we know that university is not a kind of lycées, it is possible to know that comme does not indicate a hyperonymic relation. That is to say that, in a new domain, it is far from certain that [comme] may be used for extracting hyperonymic relations. In some cases, this possibility is linked with corpus genre, as with [chez]. In others, this possibility may completely aleatory.

4-2 The case of [N1 avec N2] ([N1 with N2])

Even in paradigmatic relations such as hyperonymy and meronymy, considered to be the most frequent, it is possible to discover new patterns during corpora analysis, when the corpora are representative of different genres. This happens with the pattern [A modern kitchen with extractor fan, hotplate, breakfast bar, etc.]

[N1 avec N2],
Other meronymic patterns, well known, are also used occasionally: The study is still under way and a variety of aspects have not yet been examined, namely: the accurate description of the pattern, and the identification of corpora genre in which this pattern is relevant.

-Description of the pattern. Two aspects require particular attention:

-presence or not of a determiner before N2 and nature of the determiner (In 22 out of 63 examples there is a determiner, as in ( 14): appears directly after a period, while N1 is located higher in the sentence or text.

-Identification of corpus characteristics allowing the establishment of a correlation between the pattern and meronymic relation. It is very likely that this pattern remains valid for other corpora, especially in small ads such as "House with garden for sale". But it is difficult to find such corpora in electronic form, due firstly to the difficulty of delimiting relevant characteristics of corpora, and, secondly, to the scarceness of this type of corpora in electronic form.

5-When the relation is not binary

This paragraph deals with cases where a binary character is insufficient to account for the real functioning of relations in corpora. This limit became obvious during a study of a corpus provided by different organizations in charge of traffic flow in Toulouse, France. Our work was to analyze terminological and discursive differences between the various partners. We chose a method allowing us to obtain results rapidly. Based on the examination of the list of nouns provided by the Nomino tool, we came to realize the importance of communication in the corpora of each partner and decided to analyze the following scheme:

X communicates Y to Z via W
The tool we used to manage terminological relations was unable to account for such a non-binary system of relations. So, we decided to consider the following relations:

-X émet Y (X transmits Y) -X médiatise Y (X mediates Y) -X envoie à Y (X transmits to Y) -X reçoit Y (X receives Y).
Patterns under the traditional form of lexical elements were highlighted for these relations. For example :

-[Y be dét. interlocutor of X] for relation : X transmits to Y as in : It is also possible to make use of this kind of pattern systematically (and even automatically). Verb role is then fundamental since the associated role of any argument can be used to identify relations between two of them. This kind of pattern requires the construction of lists corresponding to semantic classes. For example, <transmission predicates> or <humans>. Such a requirement is problematic since it relies on semantic knowledge which is not not necessarily stated in the corpus analyzed, and there is a risk that the semantic a priori knowledge does not correspond to real linguistic behavior in the corpus. But this problem cannot be dealt with here.

So, it appears clearly that binary relations are restrictive. In fact, in an argumentative scheme, all arguments are interdependent and it would be necessary to take them into account by using a n-ary scheme. These remarks again show that barriers between disciplines are not impenetrable. Indeed, such recurrent linguistic schemes are used systematically to identify information in a number of applications. Two examples may be given. Firstly, work carried out on man-machine dialogue is based on a semantic grammar approach which uses a predicate argument structure in order to identify information (for example). Another example is work on information retrieval. It does not completely use argument structure (since the analysis is rarely done with a labeled corpus) but predefined lexical structures in which each noun position corresponds to a semantic role (Gaizauskas and Wilks 1998). For naming and defining these structures in this discipline, authors use terms very close to that used to deal with pattern relations in other disciplines. Riloff speaks of "extraction patterns" [START_REF] Riloff | Automaticaly Generating Extraction Patterns from Untagged Text[END_REF].

Basili and Pazienza speak of "surface form", defined as: "Another valid and slightly more comprehensive definition describes the lexicon as an association between surface forms and linguistic information" (Basili and Pazienza 1997,44).

A common factor to all this work on links between discourse and information modeling is that it concerns very specific languages used for specific purposes.

6-When a pattern is linked to the purpose of modeling

Terminologists and especialy computer scientists who are required to model knowledge, know that the choice of one relational structure over another may be linked to the modeling economy or to its purpose. For example, in the senteces quoted above, we decided finally to subdivide the condition relation into two sub-relations:

condition the beginning of and condition the end of. An alternative would have been to retain a sigle relation and to specify for each node whether it is the beginning or the end of the given process. This would be much more costly than resorting to two different relations. For example, according to its purpose, the model may be built either to identify inconsistencies (in this case, the modelling must be very precise) or to index other corpora (then, the modeling is more flexible).

What has been much less studied is the fact that the patterns themselves may be differentiated according to the results they give and to their relevance to the modeling aim. Nevertheless, it seems that this dependency exists. Indeed. This occurred with a hyperonymic pattern, rarely mentionned in existing studies. The pattern in question consists of a definite or demonstrative determiner referring to a hyponym that appears earlier in the text. These cases are described in researches on reference (mostly not in the perspective of their use as patterns, which goes to show the importance for corpus linguists to take account of studies with an introspective approach), for example [START_REF] Milner | Réflexions sur la référence[END_REF]) and [START_REF] Lerat | Les noms de relation[END_REF]. Such a relation is found in the following real example (18) (EDF corpus):

(18) Préparation des activités de liaison.

Ce processus débute par la fourniture d'une copie de l'Etat de configuration du logiciel (processus is the hyperonym of préparation des activités de liaison)

[Preparation for delivery. This process starts with the supply of a copy of the Status of the software configuration (process is the hyperonym of Preparation for delivery)].

This pattern is difficult to describe and can hardly be applied in automatic analysis since the notion of "lack" plays an important part in it. It may be described as follows:

[Defined or demonstrative determiner + N], under the following conditions:

-N does not appear in preceding context, -the determiner does not have a deictic function, -the definite determiner does not precede a noun with unique meaning, supposed known by the two interlocutors.

As for the the third aspect, the most difficult to take into account, we were only interested in examples with demonstratives. We proceeded in the following manner:

-Deleting the predictable deictic, referring to the writing process or to work in progress (this book, this chapter, this part …) ;

-Deleting prepositional phrases that we consider as set (at this moment, with this aim, etc. 1 ) -Identifying sentences with a demonstrative followed by a noun under the condition that this noun does not appear in the preceding paragraph.

The results have not yet been thoroughly examined. Nevertheless, those we have already obtained are quite eloquent.

Tests have been performed on two corpora: a corpus supplied by the EDF, on the one hand, and a set of papers about knowledge engineering, on the other. In the EDF corpus, there are 78 cases did not contain a demonstrative with a deictic function or a demonstrative within a set of prepositional phrase. The distribution is as follows:

-44 examples contain a hyperonymic relation (between activité and archivage de l'état de configuration in ( 19)).

( A hypothesis, which is still under verification, is that hyperonyms found in the structure with a demonstrative correspond to a higher level than those used in definition contexts. In some way, they are more domain-independent and closer to common language. In this way, they may be linked to the application since some applications need high-level terms, for example, indexing.

So, it seems that relation patterns may also be dependent on the nature of the application.

7-Conclusion

The aim of this paper was to highlight the notion of conceptual relation pattern with corpus analysis experiments. Three main conclusions may be retained from these experiments. The first one concerns the role of nature of the corpus, the second one concerns the role of application and the third one concerns pattern functioning.

1-Corpus role

As shown above, three kinds of dependencies may exist between conceptual relation patterns and corpus nature. Firstly, dependencies may be total. Conceptual relation patterns may be identified for a corpus but only for that corpus alone. In this case, from a linguistic point of view, it is necessary to build methods for identifying patterns (cf Condamines and Rebeyrolle, 2000). Secondly, dependency may be established between patterns and corpus extra-linguistic characteristics, in other words genre. In this case, a veritable corpus linguistic may be developed in order to identify regular expressions playing the role of patterns in corpora with specific characteristics. The aim is then to use systematically (and even automatically) these patterns in order to spot important relations. Thirdly, dependency may be almost non-existent if a pattern appears in all corpora, independently of the genre. This seems very rare and more detailed studies should be carried out on varied corpora in order to prove this independence.

2-Application role

The last paragraph above describes an hyperonymic pattern used to identify very high level terms, or at the least, terms of different nature to those identified by other more traditional patterns. This observation opens reflections on the role of application on patterns. This role is well known for choosing relations but it would be necessary to examine it to describe patterns.

3-Pattern functioning

This paper describes several cases where relation is not expressed but presupposed.

However, an element in the context is clearly the sign of the possibility to pass from discourse to modeling. From this observation I conclude that conceptual relation patterns have two roles. The first one consists in indicating the possibility of a transition from discourse to modeling. This possibility may be linked to corpus genre.

The second role consists of helping relational interpretation. In this case, pattern meaning may be considered as bringing relation notion, on its own. This meaning may also be linked with corpus genre. In introspective studies, only this second role is indicated since it is the most obvious, but it is necessary to perform studies on the other role since it is as important as this one for identifying relations.

Numerous corpora, with different genres, are now available and it seems urgent to take them into account for all linguistic analysis. With examples on identifying relations, I hope I have showed here how such an approach can be fruitful and allow us to ask questions in an original way.

Note

1 Note that in these phrases, the noun still plays the role of hyperonym and it was sometimes difficult to distinguish set expressions from others.

Bibiography

Ahmad, K. and H. Fulford. 1992. Knowledge Processing : Semantic Relations and their Use in Elaborating Terminology. Computing Sciences report CS-92-Guildford :

University of Surrey.

  So, from a bottom-up point of view, the problem of conceptual relation patterns is influenced by three elements which characterize corpus analysis (extra-linguistic characteristics, discursive nature and aim of the analysis). With the help of examples, this paper tries to present how these characteristics play a role in the identification of conceptual relation patterns from corpus. Section 2 exposes the classical view on conceptual relation patterns and the assumptions it imposes. Section 3 deals with pattern/corpus dependency when it is insignificant or complete; in Section 4, two examples of dependency between patterns and corpus genre are presented. Section 5 poses the problem of a purely binary conception of relations and Section 6 shows how application may influence patterns choice.

[

  dét SN1 comme SN2] ([dét NP1 as dét NP2]) indicating a hyperonymy in example (1): (1) Un département comme la Seine bénéficie à la fois d'arrivées d'enfants et de scolaires (corpus: Atlas scolaire) [A department such as the Seine benefits both from the arrival of children and students]. The same pattern does not indicate the same relation in example (2): (2) On comprend que les lycées professionnels et d'enseignement général, comme l'université, soient très peu tournés vers les formations scientifiques et technologiques. (corpus: Atlas scolaire).

  les images des poètes ne roulent pas en torrents ou en avalanche, comme c'est souvent le cas chez Shakespeare [The images of the poets do not flow in torrents or avalanches, as is often the case in Shakespeare.] -Second distinction, within the natural sciences domain: didactic vs. nondidactic. When building the didactic corpus, we took into account all the examples containing chez extracted from a number of sections in the Encyclopaedia Universalis (1995) natural sciences domain, and all the examples with chez extracted from a textbook written by Bernard (1860). After this selection, the set studied comprised 692 examples. It is clear that the hypothesis concerning a relation between the corpus genre and the presence of a meronymic relation is confirmed. In fact, none of the examples from the "ideas and creation" corpus contains a meronymic relation. Within the natural sciences corpus, just a third of the examples express this relation in the non-didactic corpus and half in the didactic one. A fairly clear correlation appears between the natural sciences corpus with didactic genre, on the one hand and the expression of a meronymic relation, on the other. In other words, anyone interested in meronymy as it is expressed for living organisms, (chez was not used for minerals in the same kind of examples), and has access to a corpus with such characterisitics, should use examples with chez.

( 12 )

 12 Coffret contenant 3 poupées, 1 jeu de société et de nombreux accessoires [Box containing three dolls, a card game and numerous accessories.] (13) DXGalaxy Megazord : composé de 5 zords représentant 5 animaux sauvages.[DXGalaxy Megazord, containing 5 zords representing 5 wild animals.] Thus, in a 5,000 word corpus, [N1 avec N2] referring to meronymy is used 63 times, verb [comprendre] 2 times and structure [être composé de] 3 times.

( 14 )

 14 Poussette d'hôpital avec tous les accessoires de l'infirmière [Hospital pushchair with all a nurse's accessories.]-closeness of N1 to the remainder of the structure. Actually, the paronymic style of these descriptions means that, in some examples,[Avec N2]

( 15 )

 15 La ville de Toulouse et les ASF sont les interlocuteurs principaux de la DDE (X = DDE, Y = Ville de Toulouse et ASF. [The city of Toulouse and the ASFs are the main interlocutors of the DDE (X = DDE, Y = town of Toulouse and ASF)]. -[Y be transfered via X] for relation X mediates Y (16)La nuit et le week-end, les appels sont transférés via des liaisons spécialisées. (X =liaisons spécialisées, Y = appels) [At night and at weekends, calls are transferred using dedicated links (X = dedicated links, Y = calls].) Beyond these "traditional" patterns, some other contexts use what could be called semantico-syntactic patterns withmore elaborate structures than simple lexical patterns. For example (17): (17)Chaque subdivision transmet au CIGT une fiche relative aux chantiers qui se terminent [Each subdivision transmits to CIGT a form related to completing sites]. may be organised according to two different relations: -Subdivision émet fiche relative aux chantiers qui se terminent (Subdvision transmits a form related to completing sites) -Subdivision envoie à CIGT (Subdivision transmits to CIGT). Then, the patterns may be the following: Relation Pattern X transmits Y [X is the subject of a transmitting verb, Y is the object of the same verb and X is [+ human]] X transmits to Y [X is subject of a transmitting verb, Y is the indirect object of the same verb and X is [+ human]].

  19) Archivage de l'Etat de Configuration logiciel. Cette activité est à la Most of possible cases described in[START_REF] Lerat | Les noms de relation[END_REF] are found but what is surprising is the frequency of hyperonymy: more than 56 %. So we can confer to this structure the role of pattern of hyperonymy anyway in this corpus and probably in others.

	available all the necessary Configuraed Units to the first team to be able to Composant (component) (2 terms),
	modify this software stump depending on the new fonctions to be developed.] Décomposition (decomposition) (2 terms),
	-1 example consists in a repetition of a noun phrase in acronym form. Espace (space) (3 terms),
	(23)Le Plan de Développement standard définit les mécanismes de vérification Phase (phasis) (2 terms),
	et de validation de ces produits… Liens de traçabilité entre ce PDL Processus (process) (3 terms),
	standard et les propositions du MAQL-ST DER. Revue (review) (1 term).
	charge du responsable de la gestion de configuration [The standard development plan defines mechanisms for verifying and
	[Archiving the software configuration status. The configuration manager validating these products. Traceable links between this standard PDL and the
	carries out this activity.] MAQL-ST DER proposals.].
	-27 consist of a repetition of a predicate in noun form:
	(20)Ce chapitre s'attache à décrire les différents processus de gestion de
	configuration. Cette description ne présume pas de la méthodologie de
	développement utilisée.
	[This chapter sets out to describe the various configuration management
	processes. This description does not presuppose the development methodology
	used.]
	-4 consist of a repetition of an expression in noun form,
	(21)Il se présente sous la forme d'un arbre dont les feuilles correspondent à structure:
	des produits ou composants à réaliser. Cette décomposition, qui suit -First observation, in contrast with terms, generally considered as containing
	l'arborescence des produits définie au paragraphe 4.1… more than one word (in 70 to 80 % of cases), hyperonyms found with this
	[It is presented in the form of a tree whose leaves correspond to products or pattern are simple terms in their majority. In EDF corpus, there are 12
	components to be carried out. This decomposition, which follows the tress polyterms on 44 hyperonyms (27 %). In Knowledge Engineering corpus, only
	structure shown in section 4.1 etc.] 74 of 376 hyperonyms are polyterms (19,7%).
	-2 corresponds to a synonymic relation, -Second observation: terms found in the structure with reference back are not of
	(22)Le produit développé par l'équipe projet peut s'appuyer sur un noyau the same kind than the ones found in definition structure, neither in position of
	logiciel développé par une autre équipe projet. Cette dernière livre alors definiens (hyponym) nor definiendum (hyperonym), what is more surprising.
	toutes les Unités de Configuration permettant à l'équipe projet de modifier In EDF corpus, no term found in the structure with a demonstrative is founded
	cette souche logiciel en fonction des nouvelles fonctionnalités à in position N1 or N2 in classical definition structure: [N1 être dét N2]. On the
	implémenter. contrary, 8 of these terms are founded as head of one or more term(s) in
	[The project developed by the project team may be based on a software kernel position N1 or N2:
	developed by another project team. In this case, this second team makes Acteur (actor) (1 term),
	Activité (activity) (2 terms),

Nevertheless, the same difficulty than with chez appears: relation is not posed, explained by the pattern, it is presupposed by it.

This study (still in progress) shows another kind of teaching concerning the link between pattern and aim of analyze. Actually, hyperonyms appearing in this structure are not at all the same than those appearing for example in a definition


Anne Condamines
email: anne.condamines@univ-tlse2.fr

Taking genre into account when analysing conceptual relation patterns

This paper uses a corpus study to investigate the influence of text genre on the frequency and semantic interpretation of certain pattern/concept relations. In linking pattern/concept relations to text genre, this study identifies three types of dependency: weak dependency, where the relation appears in almost any kind of text; complete dependency, where it is strongly linked to a particular text or group of related texts; and dependency in terms of text genre. The particular examples that form the basis of the study are meronymic chez, which is found to have a significant dependency in didactic texts in the natural sciences; comme as a marker of hypernymy and co-hyponymy, which has a weaker, but observable dependency in technical and didactic genres; nominal anaphora involving hypernyms, where no consistent conclusions can be reached; and meronymic avec, where the significant factor is shown to be communicative objective rather than domain (subject matter). I discuss the relevance of such studies to Natural Language Processing, and indicate the potential for further research.

Introduction

Within corpus linguistics, genre is one of the most crucial but also one of the most difficult problems to be tackled. Its importance derives from the possibility of categorising texts as a way of detecting and explaining variation in large corpora. Taking genre into account within corpus linguistics, therefore, mainly implies a quantitative approach that is intended to identify, rapidly, those linguistic regularities which, in turn, make it possible to place different texts within the same class. But genre may also be used to construct more detailed, qualitative descriptions. Such qualitative descriptions are particularly necessary when the aim is not only to categorise texts but also to identify those regularities which depend on a purpose that is clearly identified at the outset of the study. This is particularly true when one is elaborating terminologies or ontologies based on texts. The importance of the task of elaborating terminologies will be presented below but what should be kept in mind is that it is linked to the possibility of constructing a conceptual network from texts using conceptual relation patterns. Genre plays a role in this issue, but the way in which it does so depends on the pattern: sometimes what prevails is simply the quantitative point of view, when a particular pair of pattern and relation is more frequently found in texts belonging to a certain genre. Yet, sometimes, as shown by this study, understanding the mechanisms of a given pattern calls for a more fine-grained analysis -that is, a qualitative one.

In this paper, I present four conceptual relation patterns and emphasise the ways in which genre can be taken into account from both a quantitative and a qualitative point of view. At this stage in our thinking, the aim of the study is not to propose a complete method for taking genre into account in every analysis of a pattern, and even less a method for taking into account genre for learning ontology from texts. The aim of the paper is, rather, to show that, for some potential relational patterns, the nature of texts plays an important role in the possibility that the patterns are useful for identifying a certain relation. But the study has another ambition. Whenever possible, I try to give an explanation for the link between the possibility that the pattern identifies a relation, and the specificity of relevant texts, mainly in terms of the contextual features of the writing. Thus, I try to explain, at least partially, the semantics of patterns in terms of extra-linguistic elements. One of the extra-linguistic features examined concerns the specialised nature of texts. Such a feature seems relevant since terminologies as well as ontologies are more often built for specialised domains. Moreover, intuitively, we can perceive that, in specialised fields, conceptual relations are more present than in non specialised ones and, therefore, that patterns are more often used for marking conceptual relations than for other kinds of objectives. But it is well known that it may be very difficult to define what is a specialised domain. This paper presents some cases of patterns in which the role of domain is clear and other ones in which it is much more difficult to identify which extra-linguistic features are relevant.

Presentation of the problem

The results given in this paper concern both genre and conceptual relation patterns. I present the two phenomena in this section.

Conceptual relation patterns

A conceptual relation pattern may be defined as any linguistic formwhether morphological, lexical or discursive -that can be used to identify a segment of text that can be understood as describing a relation between two nouns. For example, in:

(1) Tous les invertébrés sauf les insectes se rangent dans les vers.

[All invertebrates except insects are worms.] the pattern [tous les N1 sauf N2] ([all N1 except N2]) suggests that there is a hypernymic relation between vers ('worms') and invertébrés ('invertebrates').

Some patterns were studied by linguists twenty or thirty years ago. [START_REF] Lyons | Semantics[END_REF] spoke of 'formulae [START_REF] Cruse | Lexical Semantics[END_REF] of 'diagnostic frames'. More recently, several teams of linguists have tried to understand how these discourse structures may be used to identify conceptual relations. Meyer (2001: 290) believes that there are three kinds of conceptual relation patterns (which he calls 'knowledge patterns'). These are lexical patterns ('involving one or more specific lexical items'), grammatical patterns and paralinguistic patterns ('which include punctuation, as well as various elements of the general structure of a text'). He states that these patterns are, 'complex in their nature, and in the way they can be realised in text': they are sometimes unpredictable, polysemic, and/or domain-dependent. We will see these three features again in the description of patterns below.

These portions of text have become particularly interesting for computer scientists seeking to build ontologies from texts. [START_REF] Neches | Enabling technology for knowledge sharing[END_REF] define an ontology as, 'the basic terms and relations comprising the vocabulary of a topic area, as well as the rules for combining terms and relations to define extensions to the vocabulary'.

Since they are used for specific applications (information retrieval, information extraction, translation…), ontologies are now frequently 'learnt' from texts. It is very difficult in this linguistics-orientated paper to present all the work done in the domain of learning ontology from texts, which has proved to be very fruitful [START_REF] Aussenac-Gilles | Revisiting ontology design: a methodology based on corpus analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Cimiano | Learning taxonomic relations from heterogeneous evidence[END_REF][START_REF] Maedche | Ontology learning[END_REF]. Suffice it to say that the main purpose of such studies, therefore, is to build knowledge representations which are close to what occurs in discourse, since they are very often used for identifying information in texts. Elaborating an ontology from a corpus requires the construction of a knowledge model of this corpus in a relational form (a conceptual network). Such a network is made up of nodes joined by arcs, each of which is labelled by a term.

Such a conceptual network underlies several representational languages such as conceptual graphs and terminological logic. What is interesting about such a knowledge representation is that it makes it possible to evaluate consistency and so is useable for automatic reasoning.

Computer scientists are highly interested in conceptual relation patterns for designing tools for the automatic detection of conceptual relations in corpora; indeed, many descriptions of such patterns have been made by computer scientists, linguists and terminologists [START_REF] Green | The Semantics of Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Perspective[END_REF][START_REF] L'homme | A lexico-semantic approach to the structuring of terminology[END_REF][START_REF] Meyer | Extracting knowledge-rich contexts for terminography: a conceptual and methodological framework[END_REF][START_REF] Marshman | French patterns for expressing concept relations[END_REF][START_REF] Pearson | Terms in Context[END_REF]. Most often, the relations under investigation are hypernymy [START_REF] Hearst | Automatic acquisition of hyponyms from large text corpora[END_REF], meronymy and causality [START_REF] Cabré | Las relaciones conceptuales de tipo causal: un caso practico[END_REF].

However, most of these studies assume that language is homogeneous: what is investigated is how a certain relation is expressed within texts (the approach is thus an introspective, top-down one). Very few studies focus on bottom-up approaches -from texts to relations. Such approaches take into account variations between texts since relational patterns do not appear in all texts in the same way, and it is necessary to understand why. This paper deals with the following question: how can the nature of a corpus play a role within the conceptual relation/pattern pairin other words, what kind of link can there be between patterns and corpora?

What kinds of corpus/pattern dependencies can be identified?

Three kinds of dependencies between corpora and patterns may be identified [START_REF] Condamines | Corpus analysis and conceptual relation patterns[END_REF]: weak dependency, complete dependency and dependency in terms of text genre.

Weak dependency

Certain patterns are likely to appear in any text. This is the case for hypernymic or meronymic patterns such as:

(2) The house comprises a hall, two reception rooms, and a dining room.

[N1 comprises N2, (N3) and N4] or [all N1 except N2] (as in 1).

These patterns are the ones usually identified by introspection (a top-down approach). Even if the relation/pattern pair seems very strong, certain difficulties may arise. First of all, these patterns may be polysemic. For example, comme in French (see Section 3.1.2) may be associated either with a hypernymic relation or a comparison relation. In:

(3) Un département comme la Seine bénéficie à la fois d'arrivées d'enfants et de scolaires.

[A department such as the Seine benefits from the arrival of both children and students.] it is possible to identify a hypernymic relation between département and la Seine. But the same pattern is not used to express the same relation in:

(4)

Complete dependency

In some corpora, certain specific structures act as patterns for given relations. These structures are understandable as relational patterns, but they are unpredictable in terms of their structure [START_REF] Meyer | Extracting knowledge-rich contexts for terminography: a conceptual and methodological framework[END_REF]. I found such a structure in a corpus from Électricité de France (EDF) dealing with specifications and the writing of documents in computer science. It is a corpus of approximately 45,100 words, written by various experts but with the same purpose. In this corpus, the pattern for the relational condition was:

[(phase, étape) ou déverbal + … + (lorsque, dès que) + V au passif] [(phase, stage) or nominalisation) + … + (when, as soon as) + passive V]

(5) La phase d'intégration du composant peut commencer lorsque l'ensemble des éléments logiciels ont été codés.

[The component integration phase may begin when all the software elements have been coded.]

This example should be understood to mean that 'software elements' must first have been coded for the 'component integration phase' to begin.

Therefore, the relation expressed looks like a temporal one, but must be understood as a conditional one. These patterns are very difficult to identify; indeed, it may be that each case necessitates a new ad hoc method, since a fine-grained analysis is required [START_REF] Condamines | Searching for and identifying conceptual relationships via a corpus-based approach to a terminological knowledge base (CTKB): method and results[END_REF]. Thus, at present, these patterns cannot be identified automatically.

Dependency in terms of text genre

Sometimes regularities of expression are not specific to a corpus from a single source but, rather, to a corpus constituted of texts with similar extralinguistic and linguistic characteristics, (i.e., texts belonging to the same genre). In the rest of this paper I will examine specifically this kind of dependency. Bahtia (1993: 13) states that:

Taking genre, after Swales […] it is a recognizable communicative event characterised by a set of communicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the professional or academic community in which it regularly occurs. Most often it is highly structured and conventionalised with constraints on allowable contributions in terms of their intent, positioning, form and function value.

In other words, text genre takes into account both linguistic and extralinguistic elements in order to explain how members with the same communicative purpose may communicate. The use of such a notion supposes that there is a co-variance of both linguistic and extra-linguistic elements. This co-variance would be learnt during language acquisition and genre would constitute a kind of prescriptive frame for a reader/listener [START_REF] Todorov | Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle[END_REF]. Accordingly, a genre would be identified (newspaper article, scientific article, administrative letter, advertisements, etc.) and then the reader/listener would expect to observe certain linguistic features. But, from a descriptive perspective, the identification of all relevant linguistic features may be very difficult: more than one linguistic level may be concerned (lexical, syntactic, morphological) and speakers are not always aware of them. From a semantic point of view, some regularities concerning lexical variations are easy to see; for example, in the domain of medicine, nouns used in specialised handbooks are not the same as the ones used in popular journals (e.g., oncology versus cancer research), (see, for example, [START_REF] Rogers | Genre and terminology[END_REF]. However, such regularities are not as clear when, for instance, semantic variation concerns prepositions. Consequently, describing such variations requires the analysis of large numbers of occurrences from different corpora, as in this paper.

Numerous researchers have studied this notion of genre, such as Bakhtine in the Russian movement [START_REF] Todorov | Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle[END_REF], or [START_REF] Bahtia | Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings[END_REF], [START_REF] Biber | The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English[END_REF][START_REF] Firth | Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951[END_REF], Halliday and Hassan (1985) and [START_REF] Swales | Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings[END_REF] in the English-speaking tradition. Genre may be a means of explaining variation, and using it can be useful in evaluating and explaining variation even if certain problems may be encountered.

First, genre involves the variation of both linguistic and extralinguistic features. [START_REF] Biber | Variation Across Speech and Writing[END_REF] uses two words in order to distinguish these two kinds of features:

I use the term 'genre' to refer to text categorizations made on the basis of external criteria relating to author/speaker purpose (p. 68) I use the term 'text type' on the other hand, to refer to groupings of texts that are similar with respect to their linguistic form, irrespective of genre categories (p. 70) Generally, corpora are first constituted according to extra-linguistic criteria and then their linguistic features are observed. This method may be regarded as problematic when corpora are constituted on the basis of an intuitive categorisation of genre and then examined from a linguistic point of view. But it is very difficult to conceive of another method, specifically when the features that are examined belong to semantics. In fact, typically, the hypothesis concerning the link between linguistic and extra-linguistic features is refined during the study, and the initial hypothesis concerning the relevance of some genres may be re-evaluated. The same method is used in the studies presented in this paper.

Secondly, the point of view adopted may entail differences in the method of classifying a text into one genre or another. For example, if you want to study a particular preposition, you may identify a type of genre organisation relevant to your point of view, but it might not be relevant to another study. This is the true of the patterns studied below.

Thirdly, a text may belong to different genres. For example, a letter may be quoted within an article, thus raising the problem of embedded genres.

In the studies I present here, another difficulty has appeared, as signalled in the introduction: it is sometimes difficult to define the relevant level of categorisation for the pattern identified. Only fine analysis may allow us to say if taking domain into account is sufficient for explaining the meaning of patterns or if it is necessary to delineate in more detail the features of the situation (see below). In spite of these difficulties, the notion of genre may be very useful in describing linguistic phenomena and this is particularly true with certain conceptual relation patterns. The effect of genre on patterns can be examined from two points of view: a quantitative and a qualitative one.

The quantitative point of view is generally the most commonly used in corpus linguistics. The reason for this is rather obvious: it is easy to compare the distribution of forms between various parts of a corpus or between various corpora.

Furthermore, this approach has recently benefitted from natural language processing, see, for example, Biber's studies (e.g., [START_REF] Biber | The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English[END_REF]. On the other hand, the qualitative perspective is more difficult to envisage because it is necessary to take not only the forms into account, but also the meaning of these forms [START_REF] Mcenery | Corpus Linguistics[END_REF].

Concerning relational patterns, what is important is not simply that such-and-such a pattern occurs, but that it occurs with a certain meaning, (i.e., it can be used to detect a specific relation). For example, comme will be treated as a productive pattern for the hypernymic relation in connection with a given text genre only if it is possible to prove that, in texts of this genre, the pattern is used much more frequently in the hypernymic relation than in other kinds of roles. In other words, what is studied is the relation/pattern/genre triplet and not only the pattern/genre pair. Thus, in order to study the role of genre in the relation/pattern pair, it is necessary to examine all the occurrences of a putative pattern within a corpus and to interpret them in terms of whether they belong to a certain relation or not. And even when the study is completed, it is obvious that some cases must be examined in more detail and that certain variations occur according to the genre. Thus, three kinds of situations may be identified concerning the role of genre in the relation/pattern pair:

-in some cases, genre influences the relation/pattern pair only in terms of quantitative results; -in other cases, it influences the pair in terms of qualitative results; and, -in still other cases, it influences the pair in terms of both quantitative and qualitative results.

In the next section I will explain and exemplify these three situations.

Case studies

I shall describe four examples of patterns associated with a relation and variations according to genre: three French prepositions (avec, comme and chez) and a discourse structure (the demonstrative nominal anaphor). For each pattern, a contrastive corpus has been constructed and each occurrence of the pattern identified, quantified and analysed. It is important to note that, at this first stage of the study, the component texts of the corpora are chosen without a very precise initial hypothesis (and also according to the availability of texts in our bank of texts base or on the web). The real hypothesis concerning the way patterns are linked both to a relation and to a text (belonging to a genre) may only be built when the first results are obtained. In such semantic studies, the aim of the first study is to experiment with an imprecise semantic hypothesis in order to build a solid hypothesis.

3.1 Quantitative differences in terms of genre: the case of chez and comme

The case of chez and the meronymic relation

In some cases, the preposition chez occurs in sentences where a meronymic relation can be identified:

(6) Chez les colobinés, le nez fait saillie sur la lèvre supérieure.

[Among the colobines, the nose juts out over the upper lip.] (there is a meronymic relation here between 'nose' and 'colobines')

I have tried to identify whether some kinds of texts (i.e., texts belonging to a certain genre) are more susceptible to this interpretation [START_REF] Condamines | Chez dans un corpus de sciences naturelles: un marqueur de méronymie?[END_REF]. It seems that this is the case with texts of didactic origin dealing with natural science.

A corpus was constructed with four categories of texts:

• A set of articles from the Encyclopaedia Universalis2 dealing with natural science, more precisely, Bacteria, Algae, Fruit flies and Insects (selected at random from the classification proposed by the EU). This corpus contains 24,770 words and is called EUbio. The results of this quantitative study are presented in Table 2 andFigure 1. This table and diagram show that there is a clear difference between EUbio and Manuelsbio on the one hand, and EUculture and LMbio on the other. For EUbio and Manuelsbio, the meronymic relation is relevant for around half of the occurrences, while in the case of EUculture and LMbio, only a few occurrences may be interpreted as involving a meronymic relation. I have also analysed the results of Table 2 from a statistical point of view by calculating chi square in order to examine whether the factor corpus has an influence on the factor type of chez (meronymic versus non meronymic). It reveals that corpus influences significantly the use of meronymic chez: ! 2 = 62.74, p < .005). These results confirm the initial hypothesis: the association chez/meronymy depends on the nature of the text in which chez appears; more precisely, in texts belonging to the natural science and didactic genres, chez can be used as a means of identifying a meronymic relation. But it is important to understand how this 'pattern' is indicative of such a relation. As a matter of fact, it is not true to say that chez elicits a meronymic interpretation: nobody spontaneously produces this preposition in a meronymic pattern, and its etymology (from the Latin casa, 'house') is in no way linked to such an interpretation. A detailed analysis shows that this preposition occurs in structures in topic position (at the beginning, the middle or the end of the sentence), that is, in structures that introduce a new referent into the discourse. 4 In didactic natural science texts, what is often said about these new referents (animals or plants) has to do with their anatomy or composition. It is interesting to note that this meronymic information frequently appears at the beginning of the articles in the Encyclopaedia Universalis and that all of them follow the same model: they first present the anatomy and then the life cycle (living conditions, feeding, etc.) as in:

(7) Chez les Algues unicellulaires mobiles, la motilité est due à un appareil cinétique comportant des flagelles.

[In mobile unicellular algae, motivity is due to a kinetic system comprising flagellae.]

Quantitative results show that, within didactic natural science texts, anatomy-linked information is found more often than other kinds of information.

In the other texts, things are of course very different. As in the natural science corpus, chez is used to focus on an object, but the rest of the sentence never involves meronymy:

(8) Chez Toulouse-Lautrec se profilent toutes les possibilités expressives de la ligne.

[With Toulouse-Lautrec, all the expressive possibilities of the line can be detected.] So, in discourse, a meronymic relation may appear in certain texts but, from a linguistic point of view, it is not really true that chez is a diagnostic marker for this relation. On the other hand, from a computational point of view, chez may be used to identify structures where a meronymic relation occurs in didactic natural science texts. In about half of the occurrences, there is a meronymic relation because this kind of information is essential within natural science. Consequently, chez can be used as a clue to detect a meronymic relation, but it does not necessarily provide an interpretation for this relation. This case is very interesting because it shows that linguistic and computational approaches are not always equivalent.

Finally, it should be noted that the identification of the specialised domain (in this case, a precise domain: natural science) is not sufficient to characterise relevant texts. It is also necessary to take into account the didactic perspective, namely, that texts are written for non-specialist readers and with the aim of giving explanations about the domain.

The case of comme as marker of a relational pattern

Comme is sometimes proposed as a marker of a potential hypernymic pattern, as in:

(9) Une fleur comme la rose se vend particulièrement bien.

[A flower such as the rose sells very well.] ('flower' is a hypernym of 'rose')

Our study of comme is still in progress, but I can present the first results. First of all, two important points should be noted concerning the way the hypernymy operates:

(i) In some cases, the direction of the relation is inverted: it is not the first noun which is hypernymic but the second one:

(10) La rose comme fleur de décoration est très appréciée.

[The rose, as a decorative flower, is very much appreciated.] ('decorative flower' is a hypernym of 'rose') (ii) In some other cases, the relation between the two nouns is not hypernymy but rather co-hyponymy as in:

(11) La rose comme l'orchidée sont très appréciées des clients.

[The rose as well as the orchid are very much appreciated by customers.] ('rose' and 'orchid' are both hyponyms of flower, so they are cohyponyms)

In the study, I have not tried to take into account the precise nature of the relation but to distinguish sentences in which comme may be considered as marking a relational pattern (cases of hypernymy or co-hyponymy, these two cases being both interesting for us) from the ones in which it plays another role. These other potential roles are well known and well described [START_REF] Fuchs | La polysémie de comme[END_REF]: comme may introduce an exclamation (comme elle est belle! [how beautiful she is!]), or a subordinate clause (elle entra comme le rideau se levait [she came in as the curtain was rising]) or an adverb (comme souvent, Paul est en retard, [as often, Paul is late]) etc. When comme plays a relational role, the presence of two nouns is necessary, one in the context to the right and one to the left. However, in this study, what I wish to analyse is how the nature of texts intervenes in the interpretation of the preposition, even in precedence to the nature of the syntactic context in which it appears. Several factors justify this perspective.

From a Natural Language Processing point of view, it is sometimes very difficult to identify automatically the correct nouns linked by a preposition: the two closest nouns are not always the ones concerned. Furthermore, what the study shows is that in some cases, comme has to be preceded by a verb in order to mark a relational pattern:

(12) Le faisceau se comporte comme un conducteur unique de rayon équivalent.

[The cluster behaves like a single conductor of equivalent radius.] Like many linguists (e.g., [START_REF] Biber | Variation Across Speech and Writing[END_REF][START_REF] Todorov | Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle[END_REF], I think that text genre constitutes a way of comprehending the world. Thus, some particular situations may contribute to preparing speakers to select particular meanings even before taking into account the syntactic context. For example, we can easily imagine that comme as an introducer of an exclamation would not be very frequent in technical documents. But it is much more difficult to decide a priori if the preposition will be frequent or not in a relational pattern.

The hypothesis with comme is that it marks a relational pattern (hypernymic or co-hyponymic) more frequently in specialised texts than in other genres (here, journalistic ones).

As for the other studies, a corpus was constituted with two categories of texts:

(i) specialised texts

• a mechanics' textbook, (Mécanique): 105,700 words; • a technical handbook, Guide de Planification, issued by EDF, (GDP): 165,700 words; and, • an atlas -Atlas de la France scolaire, (Atlas): 60,000 words.

(ii) non-specialised texts

• a journalistic corpus: some articles from Le Monde Diplomatique, selected at random, from 1989 (Monde Diplo.): 170,200 words.

All 573 occurrences of comme have been studied and their potential for use in a relational pattern has been examined. As suggested by several authors, including Fuchs and Le Goffic (2005), the main meaning of comme is a comparative one. Thus, when comme is used for linking two nouns, we can suppose that these two nouns are compared in one way or another. The notion of comparison may perhaps explain how comme can play the role either of a hyponymic pattern or a co-hyponymic one. Indeed, one might say that there is a kind of analogy between a hypernym and its hyponyms on the one hand, and between a hyponym and its co-hyponyms on the other, since it is generally considered that, in the two cases, there is just a single feature which distinguish the nouns. In the case of hypernymy, a feature is added to the hyponym and in case of co-hyponymy, there is one feature which distinguishes it from all the siblings (co-hyponyms).

However, where a difficulty can arise is in differentiating cases in which comme expresses merely a comparison, that is, a point of view of the author, as in:

(13) D'autres machine pneumatiques, tenues en main comme un gros crayon. (Mécanique)

[Other pneumatic machines, held in the hand like a large pencil.] ('pneumatic machines' is compared to 'large pencil') from the ones where the comparison corresponds to a hypernym or a cohyponym (as in ( 14)), that is, a piece of well-established knowledge: [Care should be taken that the metal is not covered by an oxidised layer acting as an insulant.] ('insulant' is a hypernym of 'oxidised layer') Table 3 and Figure 2 show the first results of the study. Comme appears more frequently within specialised corpora than within journalistic ones, and relational comme is more frequent within specialised corpora than within journalistic ones. From a statistical point of view, ! 2 built from Table 3 shows that the influence of the factor corpus on the factor type of comme (relational versus non relational) was on the threshold of significance in the chi square analysis (! 2 = 6.64, .10 < p < .05).

=Insert Table 3 about here= =Insert Figure 2 about here= Thus, the initial hypothesis seems to be confirmed: comme is more often used in a relational pattern in specialised corpora than in journalistic ones, even if the hypothesis, from a statistical point of view, is not very strongly confirmed. Two points should be noted. First, there is a strong case for analysing whether or not specialised texts have other common features: there are two technical manuals and an atlas -that is, three types of texts with a high degree of didacticity. It is possible that this feature plays a central role in the meaning of comme. Secondly, it could be considered that Le Monde Diplomatique belongs to a specialised genre: that of geopolitics. So the problem of delimiting domains appears as a difficulty when considering domain as a sufficient feature for characterising relevant texts.

Qualitative differences according to genre: the case of nominal anaphora with the hypernymic relation

It is well known that, in some cases, there is a hypernymic relation between a head noun within a nominal anaphor and its antecedent [START_REF] Cornish | Anaphoric Relations in English and French: A Discourse Perspective[END_REF]):

(15) A bomb exploded yesterday in a car belonging to a well-known magistrate. No-one was hurt, but the vehicle was completely destroyed.

(example (24b) in Cornish, (1986: 20))

However, the relation may also be of a different nature. For example, the anaphoric noun may be the nominalised form of a verb [START_REF] Cornish | Anaphoric Relations in English and French: A Discourse Perspective[END_REF] [This guide proposes models for documenting the development of scientific or technical software. Each project can then adapt this proposal (…) . ]

At the beginning of my study of nominal anaphora, my hypothesis was that this hypernymic relation would be very frequent in specialised handbooks [START_REF] Condamines | Anaphore nominale infidèle et hyperonymie: le rôle du genre textuel[END_REF]. Therefore, as with the other studies, I have constructed a corpus of texts belonging to five genres:5 Only demonstrative anaphoric nouns were examined (although the most frequent determiner was the definite article); this was a means of reducing the number of sentences to be analysed [START_REF] Apothéloz | Interpretations and functions of demonstrative NPs in indirect anaphora[END_REF].

First, it should be noted that it is not easy to identify what kind of relation is involved between an anaphoric noun and its antecedent, especially within specialised corpora. Secondly, and this is a very important point, for many anaphora, it is impossible to identify an antecedent noun phrase. This is what I have called 'cases of substitution':

(17) La pression atmosphérique avait été évaluée il y a une trentaine d'années à 1.12 de celle de l'atmosphère terrestre. On a réduit cette appréciation car Mariner 4 a trouvé qu'elle équivalait à 6 millibars […] . (GEO)

[Around thirty years ago the atmospheric pressure was evaluated at 1.12 of that of the Earth. This estimate has been reduced as Mariner 4 found it to be 6 millibars (…) .]

It is not easy to identify an antecedent noun phrase for estimate: the antecedent may be the first sentence taken as a whole. Table 4 and Figure 3 present the results concerning the distribution of the 1,339 demonstrative anaphora between hypernymic and non-hypernymic relations.

=Insert Table 4 about here= =Insert Figure 3 about here=

The results are very clear: the frequency of hypernymic relations within handbooks compared with other genres is not very high, with the exception of Mouglis (at 60 percent). The statistical analysis shows that the factor corpus has a significant influence on the factor type of anaphora (hypernymic versus non-hypernymic) (! 2 = 63.025, p < .005). From this it may be deduced that the nature of corpora plays a role in the type of anaphora observed (specialised texts favour hypernymic anaphora), but it is difficult to conclude that anaphora is a useful pattern for identifying hypernymic relations since hypernymic anaphora are not very frequent whatever the text genre may be.

In the case of the Mouglis data, a more detailed analysis would be required. Mouglis seems to comprise the more technical texts among the five constitutive genres. But it is not certain that this is the only feature that would explain this result. It will be necessary to continue the analysis by studying other technical texts and to compare the results. This is one of our perspectives.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to continue the analysis, particularly by examining instances of substitution. In these occurrences, head nouns can be interpreted either as classifiers (i.e., they may constitute a head for a taxonomy) or non-classifiers. Several characteristics allow us to suggest that these head nouns are more often classifiers in handbooks (technical handbooks at least) than in texts of a different genre.

First of all, certain nouns which look like non-classifiers -when taken out of context -must be interpreted as classifiers within the discourse, as in:

(18) Quatre types de [The configuration units to be modified must be identified in order to sequentialise the modifications to be applied to a single component. The result of this activity is the drawing up of the modifications file.]

There is no example of this phenomenon in the other corpora under investigation.

Thirdly, most of the head nouns which are either hypernyms or substitutes in technical handbooks occur as heads of several compound nouns. This is the case with activity: Activité de conception (design activity) de codage (coding activity) de vérification (verification activity) …

There are, therefore, several factors in favour of considering substitute nouns in technical handbooks (perhaps in handbooks in general) as hypernyms for the field covered by the corpus. This means that, even if the nominal anaphor cannot be considered to involve a hypernymic pattern, it can be considered as a hypernym marker: it is not the relation itself which is identified, but only one element of this relation -hence the hypernym.

Consequently, other patterns have to be used in order to identify hyponyms as being related to hypernyms, which are highlighted by the nominal anaphora pattern.

Quantitative and qualitative differences according to genre: the case of avec and the meronymic relation

All the authors who have analysed the functioning of avec [START_REF] Cadiot | Avec, ou le déploiement de l'éventail[END_REF][START_REF] Mari | Principes d'Identification et de Catégorisation du Sens: Le Cas de avec ou l'Association par les Canaux[END_REF] have noticed that, in certain sentences, the preposition may be associated with a meronymic relation: une robe avec des dentelles (a dress with lace). I tried to evaluate the influence of certain text genres on such an interpretation. The corpus was constructed using texts belonging to five genres: Table 5 details the results of this quantitative study.

• A Zola novel,
=Insert Table 5 about here= From a statistical point of view, results obtained by calculating chi square show that the factor corpus has a significant influence on the factor type of avec, meronymic versus non-meronymic, (! 2 = 100.87, p < .005). On the basis of frequencies alone, two groups of corpora can be identified. In the first one (Germinal and GEO) the number of occurrences of meronymic avec is very low. On the other hand, in the second (toy catalogue, property adverts, itineraries), the number of occurrences of meronymic avec is very high. This observation warrants the claim that avec (or more exactly, 'déterminant nom avec déterminant nom' [determiner Noun with determiner Noun]) may be considered to involve a meronymic pattern within these corpora.

It is important to analyse the nature of this meronymic relation in greater detail. In all the corpora studied, one particular phenomenon stands out. What is marked by many occurrences of the meronymic avec pattern in these corpora is more than merely information about a part of the whole. More pertinently, the part mentioned is used in order to indicate a particularly salient feature -a salient commercial feature in the adverts and the catalogue, and a perceivable salient feature in the itineraries. For example, when an advert indicates: what is understood is that this fireplace constitutes a special feature of the accommodation, and is, thus, a way of justifying the price.

In the case of itineraries, in Example ( 23), what is important is not (or not only) that the dome is a part of the church, but that it is a distinctive, unusual part of it. In view of its peculiarity, this part may be an element used to locate the main object (in fact, the holonym).

In the toy catalogue corpus the problem is different. Indeed, some occurrences of avec do not correspond at all to standard descriptions of this preposition. Traditionally, avec introduces a non-essential part and this is the case in all the examples quoted above. However, some occurrences of examples from the toy catalogue seem to be exceptions to this rule: they present expected parts of the object usually intended for adults. What is important here is that the object intended for children looks like the one intended for adults. The identification of the object is reinforced by the use of words such as réel ('real'), vraiment ('truly'):

(26) Cuisine avec plaque de cuisson qui rougit vraiment. (Petites annonces)

[Kitchen with hotplate that really glows red.]

From these observations, we can conclude that when avec is frequently used in a corpus, it is likely that the main interpretation of the occurrences concerns the salient nature of the referent introduced by avec. But that which supports this salient element is definitely a part of the main object. So it is true to say that [det N1 avec det N2] may be used as a pattern of meronymy in certain corpora.

Concerning the characterisation of textual features, the case of avec is quite interesting since domain does not constitute a relevant feature. For example, meronymic avec is not very frequent in the geomorphology handbook and, by contrast, very frequent in an oral corpus, such as the itinerary descriptions. Toy catalogues may be seen to belong to the toy domain, but it is not this feature that determines the frequent presence of meronymic avec. Hence, in this case, relevant features concern mainly communicative objectives, either persuasive or 'informative'.

The study of these four patterns shows that their behaviour is quite different. The link with text genre is obvious from a quantitative point of view. However, a fine-grained (qualitative) analysis of text genre roleeven though it is time consuming -is also necessary.

Conclusion

Corpus linguistics is extremely useful in specifying the description of conceptual relation patterns. We have seen that genre can influence the pattern/relation pair from a quantitative point of view or from a qualitative one, or from both.

Even when it is mainly quantitative, an analysis requires that all the occurrences be examined, since what is sought is the frequent association of a pattern with a relation in certain specific texts. A suitably high frequency (more than half of the occurrences) allows us to claim that there is some relevance in using these patterns to identify relations from a computational viewpoint: when analysing all occurrences which correspond to those patterns, the 'noise' will not be too high. From this point of view, only the three prepositions may be considered to mark relational patterns. But, from the statistical point of view, we can say that for all the patterns studied, the factor corpus has (or is on the threshold of reaching) a significant influence on the factor type of patterns. Another major contribution of such a fine-grained analysis is that it often makes it possible to understand why there is such a frequent link between a pattern and a relation in texts belonging to a certain genre.

The main purpose of the study is a crucial determinant in categorising text genres. If the purpose is to identify relations, then that may result in a certain type of text classification. For example, concerning the use of the meronymic avec, property adverts are closer to toy catalogues than to car adverts, because there is no use of the meronymic avec in car adverts. 6 One of the issues addressed by this paper is the role of domain in the potential for a pattern to be used to identify a conceptual relation. For some patterns, the fact that a text belongs to a specialised domain is a sufficient reason to say that this pattern may be used as a relational marker (as for comme). But it is not always the case: some patterns (such as nominal anaphora) cannot be treated as relational markers even in specialised texts; in some other cases, it is necessary to determine relevant features more precisely (as in the case of chez, for which just one domain (natural science, with a didactic perspective) is relevant).

These observations are important in determining which text features (and, specifically, extra-linguistic text features) are relevant to establishing that a given pattern is a relational marker. A very important issue underlying this study concerns what genre is -specifically the link between genre and domain. Generally, in terminology, domain plays a very important role; but what this study shows is that in the case of relational markers, domain is not always crucial for explaining why some patterns may have the role of relational markers. In some cases, it is not at all the domain that comes into play, but the communicative objectives (see for example the case of avec). So, explaining variation in terminology requires us to take both domain and communicative objectives into account.

In other words, it would be necessary to ponder the definition of genre and, more specifically, its link with the notion of domain. Two kinds of perspectives open up as possibilities for systematising the study of the link between patterns and text genre and, subsequently, making the hypothesis relevant for Natural Language Processing and ontology learning. The first one is to verify on other texts the hypothesis proposed in this paper concerning the semantics of the four patterns and the way they can express conceptual relations through text features, especially hypernymic anaphora in technical texts. It would be necessary to analyse the patterns in texts having the same extra-linguistic features. For instance, the salience value associated with meronymic avec can be used to select other corpus genres in which the pattern/relation pair (avec/meronymy) will be frequent. This could be the case, for example, with travel guides. For comme, it would be necessary to select texts belonging to other specialised domains than the ones examined.

The second perspective concerns the possibility of characterising linguistic features of relevant texts (which arises from the potential for a linguistic pattern to be used in order to identify a semantic relation). This could be achieved by Natural Language Processing methods such as the ones proposed by [START_REF] Biber | Variation Across Speech and Writing[END_REF].

Such methods aim to identify automatically the most similar features among different texts in an annotated corpus. But the annotation concerns only syntax. On this basis it might be possible to combine the two kinds of approaches: the ones based on extra-linguistic features and the ones based on linguistic features.

Finally, I hope that this paper makes clear that elaborating a hypothesis about the role of genre in determining the meaning of a potential relation pattern necessitates preliminary studies that may be very lengthy but are, nonetheless, indispensable.

EUbio

( 14 )

 14 On doit veiller à ce que le métal ne soit pas recouvert par une couche d'oxydation agissant comme un isolant. (Mécanique)

( 22 )

 22 A l'étage: 3 chambres avec placards. (Petites annonces) [First floor: 3 bedrooms with wardrobes.] (23) Vous la repérerez grâce à une église avec une coupole.(Itinéraires)[You will find it thanks to a church with a dome.]And an example of a non-meronymic occurrence:(24) Maison rénovée avec soin. (Petites annonces)[House renovated with care.]

( 25 )

 25 Salon avec cheminée. (Petites annonces)[Living-room with fireplace.]

Figure 4 :

 4 Figure 4: Proportion of meronymic avec relative to non-meronymic avec according to their corpus origin

  Ce guide propose des plans types pour la documentation de la réalisation des logiciels scientifiques et techniques. Il appartient ensuite à chaque projet d'adapter cette proposition […] .

	(16)
	27-
	8):

  Some articles from the newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique, from 1989 (LMD): 110,700 words; and, • A novel by Maupassant, Bel Ami. (Bel A.): 170,200 words.

	• A	scientific	handbook:	Précis	de	Géomorphologie
	(Geomorphology Handbook), written by various authors (GEO):
	206,700 words;
	• A technical handbook: Guide de Planification (Handbook for
	Planning), written by various authors (GDP): 148,100 words;
	• Another technical handbook: Méthodes et Outils de Génie Logiciel
	pour l'Informatique Scientifique (Software Engineering Methods
	and Tools for Scientific Computing), written by various authors
	(Mouglis): 45,100 words;
	•

  Taken out of context, responsibility looks like a non-classifier, but within this particular example and, more generally within this corpus, it is a classifier.Secondly, in handbooks, several nouns are used sometimes as substitutes and sometimes as hypernyms. For example, activity is a hypernym in Example (19), where 'software test' is the hyponym, and a substitute inExample (20), where no noun can be regarded a hypernym of activity).

	(19) Test du logiciel. Cette activité consiste à exécuter les procédures
	de tests spécifiées pour qualifier le logiciel. (Mouglis)
	[Software test. This activity consists in carrying out the test
	procedures specified in order to qualify the software.]
	(20) Les unités de configuration à modifier doivent être identifiées
	afin de pouvoir séquentialiser les modifications à apporter à un
	même composant. Le résultat de cette activité est la constitution
	du dossier de modifications. (Mouglis)
	responsabilités sont associés au Plan de Gestion
	de Configuration:
	La rédaction et l'évolution du PGC.
	Cette responsabilité incombe au Responsable Assurance Qualité
	de niveau 1 en collaboration avec le Chef de projet. (Mouglis)
	[Four kinds of responsibilities are associated with
	the Configuration Management Plan: The writing and evolution
	of the CMP.
	This responsibility falls to the Level 1 Quality Insurance
	Manager in collaboration with the Project Leader.]

Table 1 :

 1 Detail of the corpus constructed for the study of chez

		+	+
	Manuelsbio	+	+
	LMbio	+	-
	EUculture	-	+

Table 2 :

 2 Quantitative Results for chez Figure 1: Proportion of meronymic chez relative to non-meronymic chez according to their corpus origin

		Specialised corpus		Journalistic corpus
		Mécanique	GDP	Atlas	Monde Diplo.
		105,700	165,700	60,000	170,200
	Comme	98 (0.09 %)	87 (0.05 %)	46 (0.08 %)	342 (0.2 %)
	Relational comme	53 (54.08 %)	44 (50.57 %)	36 (78.26 %)	101 (29.53 %)

Table 3 :

 3 Distribution of comme in each corpusFigure 2: Proportion of relational comme relative to non relational comme according to their corpus origin

		GEO	GDP	Mouglis	LMD	Bel Ami
	Number of	206,000	148,000	45,100	110,700	170,200
	words
	Demonstrative	266	246	122	415	305
	anaphora
	Hypernymic	69	79	79	79	47
	anaphora	(26 %)	(32 %)	(60 %)	(19 %)	(15.5 %)

Table 4 :

 4 Quantitative results for anaphoraFigure 3: Proportion of hypernymic anaphora relative to nonanaphoric anaphora according to their corpus origin

		Germinal	GEO	Toy catalogue	Small-ads Itineraries
	Number of Words	206,700	230,000	93,000	22,600	48,000
	Avec	667	432	236	185	114
	Meronymic	43	55	161	141	75
	avec	(3%)	(12.7%)	(68.2 %)	(76.2 %)	(64.6 %)

Table 5 :

 5 Quantitative Results for avec

See: http://www.universalis-edu.com

See: http://atilf.atilf.fr/frantext.hym

Note that for the same topic position, it is not chez but dans that is used for minerals; chez is exclusively used for living entities.

Note that my aim is not to study, from an NLP perspective, how anaphora may be resolved automatically, but to analyse whether genre plays a role in the kind of anaphora which are present in the text.

This may appear strange, but in car adverts, parts of the vehicle are just listed without a marker, for example BMW525 TDS pack, clim, ABS, cuir, an 94.