Automated syntactic text description enhancement: The thematic structure of discourse utterances

Our work aims at the optimization of existing tools for computer-assisted description and analysis of textual data.2 More specifically, we want to proceed to the thematic description of clauses and clause complexes of Quebec Budget speeches from 1934 to 1960. Our main objective is to enhance the work already done in this direction (Bourque and Duchastel, 1988)3 by elaborating the analytic framework through a study of the thematic structure of these discourses. Having chosen a computerized lexicometric approach for content analysis, we believe that the relevance of lexical analysis can be greatly improved by means of syntactic and semantic description. Such description allows us to qualify lexical forms on the basis of morpho-syntactic and socio-semantic categories or even according to their position in the clause or clause complex. The data obtained from the material are what we call "qualified lexicons".