The microstructure of "Isichazamazwi Sesindebele (original) (raw)
Related papers
Users, User-Friendliness and Projected Uses of Isichazamazwi
2016
Abstract: This article discusses the first-ever monolingual general Ndebele dictionary, Isicha-zamazwi SesiNdebele (henceforth the ISN) within the context of the history of lexicography and the compilation of dictionaries in Ndebele. It further assesses the scope of the dictionary with regard to its structure. It also discusses decisions taken by the editors during the writing of the ISN in an at-tempt to compile a user-friendly dictionary primarily aimed at secondary schools and the general Ndebele population. The assumptions of the editors, coming from a non-existing lexicographic tradition, were mainly based on their experiences and intuitions as Ndebele mother-tongue speak-ers, educators and language practitioners. The article also accounts for four major uses of the dic-tionary.
Users, user-friendliness and projected uses of isichazamazwi sesindebele: an analysis
Lexikos, 2009
This article discusses the first-ever monolingual general Ndebele dictionary, Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele (henceforth the ISN) within the context of the history of lexicography and the compilation of dictionaries in Ndebele. It further assesses the scope of the dictionary with regard to its structure. It also discusses decisions taken by the editors during the writing of the ISN in an attempt to compile a user-friendly dictionary primarily aimed at secondary schools and the general Ndebele population. The assumptions of the editors, coming from a non-existing lexicographic tradition, were mainly based on their experiences and intuitions as Ndebele mother-tongue speakers, educators and language practitioners. The article also accounts for four major uses of the dictionary.
2017
This article reports on the initial planning stages of a Namibian German dictionary project, i.e. a dictionary that would primarily provide semantic information in Standard German about Namibian German lexical items. The concept of Namibian German is explained, and existing dictionaries of Namibian German are briefly surveyed. The theoretical framework is that of a new lexicographic theory, i.e. the theory of lexicographical communication. Within this framework, a new classification of three types of dictionary purposes is introduced, i.e. macro-contextual purposes, meso-contextual purposes and micro-contextual purposes. The focus then shifts to the development of a basic microstructure for the dictionary, which refers to a set of lexicographic messages encoded in lexicographic utterances that would be included in a dictionary article in order to answer specific potential target user questions. Pertinent elements of the theory of lexicographical communication are worked out to devel...
Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in a Study on Dictionary Use
2018
Many studies on dictionary use presuppose that users do indeed consult lexicographic resources. However, little is known about what users actually do when they try to solve language problems on their own. We present an observation study where learners of German were allowed to browse the web freely while correcting erroneous German sentences. In this paper, we are focusing on the multi-methodological approach of the study, especially the interplay between quantitative and qualitative approaches. In one example study, we will show how the analysis of verbal protocols, the correction task and the screen recordings can reveal the effects of intuition, language (learning) awareness, and determination on the accuracy of the corrections. In another example study, we will show how preconceived hypotheses about the problem at hand might hinder participants from arriving at the correct solution.
The attitude of dictionary users towards automatically extracted collocation data: A user study
Slovenščina 2.0: empirical, applied and interdisciplinary research
The paper is based on a survey conducted within the framework of the basic research project Collocations as a Basis for Language Description: Semantic and Temporal Perspectives (KOLOS; J6-8255). It presents a qualitative analysis of a user evaluation of the interface of the Collocations Dictionary of Modern Slovene (CDS). It discusses an alternative perspective—the user's point of view—on problematic aspects of individual dictionary features, which require further lexicographic analysis and discussion. The collocations user study presents a model of the process of user evaluation; its findings are significant primarily for determining problems encountered by users. They also serve as a useful basis for methodology improvements in future, comparable lexicographic user studies and analyses.
Research into dictionary use by Polish learners of English: Some methodological considerations
2006
The call for research on dictionary use has been present in the literature on the subject for a few decades now. The user perspective in lexicography goes back to the early 1960s and Barnhart's (1962: 161) statement that “[i] t is the function of a popular dictionary to answer the questions that the user of the dictionary asks, and dictionaries on the commercial market will be successful in proportion to the extent to which they answer these questions to the buyer”.
Lexikos, 2002
In this article the writer evaluates the defining formats that were used in defining headwords in the first monolingual General Ndebele Dictionary, Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele (ISN). The emphasis in the ISN was on the concept of user-friendliness. The article establishes that defining formats in the ISN are a judicious mixture mainly of the defining formats of the Collins Birmingham University International Language Database (COBUILD) and of what has been referred to as traditional formats. The first part of this article is an analysis of the decisions taken by the ISN editors in formulating their defining formats. It assesses the COBUILD defining principle vis-à-vis its application in defining headwords in the ISN and the impact of this principle on the userfriendliness of the dictionary. It further discusses other formats, including the decision to retain traditional defining formats for defining headwords. One of the traditional defining styles agreed upon was that the editors were to give the hypernym in the case of semantic sets, and then to identify the concept being defined by specifying aspects that distinguish it from others of its type. The second part of the article evaluates the importance and use of the corpus in providing both definitions and examples for the ISN. However, it is further argued that since a corpus has to be "representative" in terms of size in order to be appropriately used as basis for such corpus-based dictionaries, the ISN editors whose corpus was relatively small, could not avoid relying on intuitive knowledge in constructing some examples.
It is only recently that dictionary users have become a central consideration in the design of dictionaries, and this focus has both stimulated and benefited from research into dictionary use. The present contribution reviews the major issues in dictionary design from the user perspective, taking stock of the relevant findings from user research, insofar as such research can assist lexicographers in producing improved lexical tools.
AN ACTIVE DICTIONARY: USER NEEDS AND EXPECTATIONS
Збірник наукових праць «Нова філологія» № 80, 2020
This article focuses on user profiling in an active dictionary, i.e. outlining user needs and compiler's strategies of catering for them. Among the traditional alphabetical dictionaries designed for sporadic consultation in case of coming across an unfamiliar word, there is a growing demand for active dictionaries. The current research is conducted as a part of the PhD project on compiling an Active learner's construction-combinatory thesaurus (ALCCT) facilitating adult learners in L2 encoding activities. The aim of the present study is to identify the relevant user search questions and formulate the corresponding groups of user needs. The research procedure includes two online-lounged surveys with the participation of 53 and 115 respondents respectively, concerned with: i) most typical difficulties in L2 production and ii) most relevant search questions in a dictionary of L2 encoding tasks. The participants received two questionnaires designed in a simplified manner with no linguistic terminology. The first questionnaire focused on the respondents' self-assessment of their L2-production skills on the 5-point scale. The second questionnaire offered several blocks of questions, each being introduced with an example of the combinatory thesaurus "SCHOOL". The relevance of each of the questions was assessed by the subjects based on a gradual scale: from "Yes! Absolutely necessary!" to "No! It is not relevant!" The results of studying the ALCCT intended user expectations made it possible to design a user profile, i.e. identify user age, education, background knowledge and language expertise as well as formulate the three types of user needs: primary-occurring before the usage and concerned with the quantitative and qualitative constraints of the thesaurus registry, secondary-taking part in the process of the usage and tertiary-following from the systematic usage and fostering the development of L2 encoding skills. Concluding discussion calls for revision of the criteria of activeness of the dictionary as a more cognitively oriented learning tool and outlines the future research on the compiler's strategies of catering for the identified user needs.
Lexikos, 2001
Although recent dictionaries for the ESL market have been praised for their innovative design features, the prime concern of users, lexicographers and metalexicographers is the functional quality of the dictionary products provided for the market. The functional quality of dictionaries and the scientific assessment thereof forms the topic of this paper. The functional quality of dictionaries is defined in section 2. In section 3 the current methodological approach to assessing the functional quality of texts in the fields of web design, instructional design and document design is discussed and its relevance for dictionary design is indicated. Section 4 explicates in more detail how this methodology can be used to design functional dictionaries and to assess the functional quality of the design features of existing dictionaries.