My thesis deals with the morphology of French deadjectival nouns. It aims at contributing to a better understanding of the criteria of identification of Word Formation Rules (WFR) in the lexematic framework. I present in-depth examination of six suffixes used as rule exponents of deadjectival nouns WFR: -ité (BANALITÉ 'banality'), -eur (BLANCHEUR 'whiteness'), -esse (TENDRESSE 'tenderness'), -itude (AMPLITUDE 'amplitude'), -ise (GOURMANDISE 'greed') and -erie (COCHONNERIE 'mess, junk'). This study was conducted on deadjectival nouns from the Trésor de la langue française Dictionary (TLF), the electronic newspaper Le Monde and the Internet. A general assumption about WFR is that one given formal exponent matches with one WFR. In contrast, others assume that one WFR can involve several exponents. My goal is to determine the influence of the value of the exponents in WFR counting. I also explore the factors influencing the creation and interpretation of novel deadjectival nouns in French. This entails an examination of the constraints weighing on base selection and a study of the criteria enabling distinct forms of French deadjectival nouns to appear. The first point is based on a rationale linked to conditions in which rules apply. The second point results from the speaker motivations involved in concurrency conditions between suffixes. For each suffixation the availability of the suffix is studied by comparing nouns from TLF and new creations. This dissertation also investigates whether WFR are influenced by other factors by analyzing contexts where doublets of nouns derived from a same adjective appear (e.g. TENDRESSE 'affection'/ TENDRETÉ 'tenderness (e.g. of a meat)').
