Il Réseau Lexical du Français: una banca dati per l'apprendimento del lessico francese

In this paper, we explore the lexicon in terms of its importance for second language (L2) teaching. More specifically, we present the Réseau Lexical du Français (Polguère, 2014), in order to illustrate its possible applications for L2 learning and teaching. The Réseau Lexical du français (RLF) is a network of lexical units connected to each others by lexical links which encode semantic or combinatorial lexical relations. In order to understand and use this original lexical ressource, some metalinguistic notions must be mastered. The first part of the paper will introduce the RLF and the importance of dictionaries and lexical databases in L2 learning and teaching. We will then present metalinguistic notions, within our theoretical framework, the Meaning Text Theory and its lexical branch, the Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology. In the last part of the article, we propose pedagogical activities using adjectival lexical entries from the RLF and the related lexical networks in which they appear.