news from parisian shelves (oak & pine)

a non-linguist conlanger idling through linguistics shelves of department=20
stores
in Paris, i noticed the following :

more than 50% of the lingbooks displayed on shelves now regard semantics.
notably one best-seller titles "from semantics to syntax" - NOT reversely. ;=
-)
"grammaire" is also heading back.
a very complete and clever one book i bought - "la s=E9mantique" (1998)
(vincent nyckees) - goes on on syntax as well... in its very last chapter !
i could understand from my various, lengthy "tachiyomi"
- a japanese handy term for conlangers i guess : it means
"staying standing up reading books picked on shelves" -
that "co-reference" has become the main concern of french linguists
still interested in syntax, which leads them to plundge into semantics'
depth :-). whole books on "co-reference" available - oye, oye !

my old-fashionned 70's favourite author Pottier is referenced
everywhere in these books as the old Wise so i don't feel alienated -
and every doobidoo i committed on this list i consider it still valid ;-).
almost no "f(x) =3D 3x=B2 +2(t=B0)"-kind of literature available anymore :
apparently "=E9quations du second degr=E9" don't inspire french linguists
anymore. maybe still a good niche ?

i'm no linguist so i really don't care myself , but i dare suggest
that foreign linguists may have a look at what is done in Nancy
and Grenoble regarding "lexies" (short for "links between aspect and role
in all kinds of experience fields") because it really seems to be
changing french linguistics books as a whole.
as you may know the french government has laid out HUGE funds
to finance the "automatic translation programme" to back the
"francophonie" project, hiring philosophers like Claude Hag=E8ge.
it's quite a desperate attempt to save french influence abroad and as
such it might be a fierce struggle as history teaches it :
it smells like when "tgv" was about to oversmart airplane in domestic
transport in the "hexagone" and rescue french exportations -
"plan quinqu=E9nal =E9tatique" not dead. ;-)

regarding "s=E9mantique"-al content :

- HEAVY =A7s on "antonymes" : lists of them mapped in various books
with quite detailed "explanations" i unfortunately can't understand.
apparently considered a very big clue to how (french ;-) human beings
process concepts.

- big deal made of concepts vs. lexies. unfortunately i can't get what
the heck the point is about all that either.=20

- repeated hints to "Pierce". don't know who is that guy, but apparently
trendy by now over here.

- lists of "pro-co-references". aha ! i know that ! - at least.
so tunu is likely to head that way as much as before.
classical tunu and its "preverbs" is back. ;-)

- a few stupid fashionable items culminating with :
"sumerians could not tell PoS from concepts" :
er. well. obviously english is not the only language we french
have problem mastering ;-)

mathias
i like cooking.