This thesis proposes a contrastive analysis of causality in Arabic and French. The interest of such study is twofold. We present a linguistic framework for the analysis of different linguistic causal manifestations. Then, we establish linguistic resources of causality following the contextual exploration method (Desclés 1997) used in automatic processingfor information retrieval. We turn to the study of the verbal lexicon to organize a wide variety of existing indicators verbsof causality in Arabic, and to compile a fairly complete list of the meanings of verbs indicators listed and classify them into semantic categories. In order to develop a causal semantic map, we have been obliged to specify a network of theoretical concepts related to causality. Talmy model was our starting point; it allowed us to undertake a certain decomposition of the meaning of causal indicators verbs. The model of Applicative and Cognitive Grammar (Desclés 1990) provided us with a relevant theoretical framework to analyze this decomposition. Finally, we have developed semantic-cognitive patterns for the causal indicators verbs as well as aspectual-temporal patterns taking into account the arguments involved by in the causality.