How many conversions from verb to noun are there in French?

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss verb to noun conversion in French. The properties of the input verb and the output noun are presented and a formal representation is proposed using the SBCG framework. The use of such a formalism based on constraints and multiple inheritance highlights the difficulties in defining what exactly is a conversion rule. I propose that the different properties of the input verb and the output noun can be thought of as different dimensions of classification, which characterize the verb to noun conversion rule.