<em>Graphist</em>: Logiciel de lemmatisation, indexation et modernisation automatique de textes anciens

Abstract

Graphist is a microcomputer program for lemmatizing, indexing and modernizing documents written in Renaissance, Classical or Modern French. It is intended for academics, researchers, students, teachers and publishers, giving them a unified environment for the processing of this type of language, whose variant spellings have traditionally caused problems of interpretation. It should also be of great value to all who manage or use bases of French textual data from this period.The program, developed and tested at the CNRS French orthography research centre (HESO), integrates a number of 'expert' modules. It uses a reference dictionary, DAC, containing the 18,000 words of the first edition of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (1694) and their graphical evolution up to the present. Its main features are: ¤ automatic lemmatization: morphological analysis and identification of forms; partial disambiguation through immediate context analysis; automatic analysis of archaic spellings; grouping by lemma; fully user-driven; ¤ consultation of lemmatized index: frequency, spelling, type and part-of-speech filters; descriptive word 'index cards'; variety of formats for saving and exporting; ¤ indexing: textual structuring by sections and sentences; context display for form or lemma; automatic concordancing; ¤ modernization of texts with automatic count of modernized forms; ¤ consultation of DAC historical dictionary: by form or lemma; expansion of the dictionary or creation of personal dictionaries; use with another reference dictionary.