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The Dictionnaire explicatif et combinatoire du français contemporain (DECFC) is the first dictionary that provides the user with systematic and complete descriptions of each entry word. The DECFC endeavours to realize the age-old dream of all lexicographers and dictionary users, namely, to furnish explicit and unambiguous definitions, containing no circularities, and use them as a basis for an exhaustive description of the syntactic and lexical combinability of the entry word.

The DECFC differs from other monolingual dictionaries of French in the following five important respects: 1. It is a production-oriented dictionary: it is intended to aid the user in finding out “how to express X” rather than in understanding “what X means”. 2. It is a semantics-based dictionary: the definition serves as a basis for the description of the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of the entry word. 3. It is a combinatorial dictionary: it describes the syntactic and lexical collocations of the entry word (the latter type of combinability being described by means of the so-called lexical functions) in the greatest possible detail. 4. It is a dictionary in which each entry has the same rigid structure comprising a definition, a syntactic government pattern, a zone of lexical functions, and examples. 5. It is a dictionary in which all information is presented in an explicit, systematic and formal manner. The team involved in the research project “Lexico-Semantic Studies of Modern French” intends to publish a new volume every two years, until the entire lexis has been covered. The DECFC will serve as a useful tool for linguists, translators, terminologists, editors, journalists, computer scientists and teachers of French at all levels of language instruction.