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Language teaching is searching its way. With the advent of the electronic language learning environment (ELLE), the stakes are today far greater than in the past and also without precedent. ELLE presents the challenge of a comprehensive thought-out and concerted application of the new modes of solitary discovery the cybernaut is first of all an explorer and cooperative interaction. By redefining the very nature of the three poles of the learning situation the teacher, the learner and knowledge (in the present case the mastery of a language) the cybernautical approach fundamentally changes our way of conceiving teaching and learning.

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The assertion made by N. Catach (CHWP B.21), that the various editions of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française constitute a single, essentially unchanging lexicographical base, is tested on a sample corpus of computerized entries from the point of view of text forms, headwords, examples, semantic description and lexicographical discourse. Indeed, from the first edition to the eighth, the stock of lexical items changes little, the metalanguage scarcely evolves, and only in the ninth (in progress) is a seriously revised description of the lexical material — much of it still dating back to 1694 — being undertaken. The eight complete editions, each in two volumes, form a remarkably homogeneous, and eminently computerizable, corpus.

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The dictionary, a reference work, has a conventional structure which makes it an information retrieval instrument. It functions at two levels: that of headwords, generally ordered from A to Z (macrostructure); and that of entries or articles, giving a set of linguistic information for each headword (microstructure). A dictionary's consultability is measured in terms of the rapidity with which the user is able to find the correct headword in the macrostructure and then the required information in the microstructure. In a modern dictionary the consultability of the microstructure is assisted by a recurrent structure in which, in principle, each headword is always followed by the same types of information, given in the same order and in the same typeface; in which the most frequent pieces of information (";masculine noun";, ";transitive verb";, ";from the Latin";, etc.) are presented in the form of conventional abbreviations (";m.";, ";tr.";, ";Lat.";). Older dictionaries had a less rigorous microstructure and a less predictable content.The aim of the Copulex Project is to analyze in French lexicography the history and evolution (progressive codification) of the systems of copulas giving access to the microstructure by connecting the headword to the different pieces of information (orthography, pronunciation, grammatical category, meaning, use, etymology, etc.)This paper deals with the question of the user's linguistic and dictionary competence, which has to make up for the deficiencies or the implicitness of the system offered by the lexicographer, and examines two specific cases, one from an early dictionary (Trévoux 1743), the other from a modern one (Lexis 1975).

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