Calcul dynamique du sens lexical: étude du nom bonheur
Dynamic calculation of the lexical meaning: studying the noun happiness

Summary/Abstract: The article presents a structural model of the word happiness that cuts its meanings in a semantic space with a differentiable manifold structure. A method of automatic construction of semantic spaces based on the analysis of a synonymy graph explores happiness as a whole. Local semantic spaces represent a basis for a dynamic method of calculating meaning, taking into account the various factors of nominal polysemy. The use of global semantic spaces is very promising, both in calculating meaning as well as in exploring the small worlds graphs.It is the diversity of interpretive effects of happiness that concerns this study conducted as part of the process of construction the meaning of this word.The problem of meaning poses a greater number of questions than answers. Structuralism and generativism have lost their strength in giving answers, that's why we need to reconsider the conceptual tools for the analysis of linguistic meaning. For example, structuralism is silent on the more or less considerable overlap between the meanings of signs.This dynamic calculation of the lexical meaning of the word happiness shows that its different meanings influence one other. This dynamic process determines the meaning of each linguistic unit and the global meaning of the text.Ploux and Victorri decided to release the semantic characteristics of a unit from a synonym graph. They have developed Visusyn software to build a fully automatic semantic space corresponding to a given polysemous word. This software is based on the analysis of the graph of the electronic thesaurus (now DES) of CRISCO laboratory (www.unicaen.crisco.fr).De Vogüe (1999) asserts that we learn about the identity of a lexical item "through the variation to which it may be subject, from one statement to another and from one use to another" and supposes that identity "is conceived as characterized by the same variation".We will show that the semantics of happiness is much more complex than suggested by classical analyses. It is recognized that a noun like happiness has many "facettes" of meaning, for example it can express: good fortune, favorable luck, auspicious occasion; essentially moral state; complete happiness, domestic happiness, eternal happiness; family happiness; happiness to love, happiness to possess, happiness to see, etc.

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