Grammatical Information in the New “ Bi-directional ” Polish-Dutch Dictionary : Some Problems and a Few ( Im ) practical Solutions (original) (raw)
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Anglia, 2017
In their Preface, Michael Klotz and Thomas Herbst neatly mount the main signposts guiding through the volume. The book is meant to provide a) a linguistic b) introduction to c) English lexicography. Thus, the reader will encounter many notions from linguistic theory, e.g. 'lexeme' (15), 'construction' (116) or 'meronymy' (231). Moreover, it serves as an introduction and as such, does not raise any claims to completeness, however that may be defined in such a vast field as lexicography. The book indeed represents an excellent selection of the classical, fundamental and essential issues in English lexicography, although some recent innovations, i.e. the e-dictionary (r)evolution, receive scant attention (see below). Lastly, and most importantly, the volume focuses on English, in its standard British English variety to be more precise. Given the growing importance of nonstandard and global varieties of English for the development and description of the English language, it is a pity that these aspects are missing, or only addressed marginally as in the case of American English (see below for examples). Nevertheless, the reader embarks on their journey into English lexicography with an informed and clear notion of the book's content and its primary focus as mentioned above. The book is divided into eight chapters, a substantial bibliographic section of the dictionaries and references used (almost 30 pages!), a list of the sources of the illustrations and a useful index. The first, and with seven pages shortest, chapter eases the reader into the field of lexicography by first explaining its often strained but mutually constitutive relationship to linguistics (14-16). The authors explain some fundamental differences in the treatment of language units between the two areas, but also argue in favour of a close connection of the two (14) before introducing the notions 'metalexicography' and 'practical lexicography' (16-17). The chapter concludes with an overview of the aims of the book (18) and remarks regarding the use of citations in the book (18-19). The second chapter continues with an explanation of some core lexicographic notions and concepts (e.g. mono-vs. bilingual dictionaries on pp. 23-24,
2016
Dictionaries are used by people of all types and all skills. The users consult them mainly for the meaning of words. In the case of bilingual and trilingual dictionaries, users search for both the meaning and equivalents in the target languages because they serve as learning tools. Therefore the entry definition in a bilingual dictionary should provide the equivalent, accompanied by grammatical information to provide credible meaning. Grammatical information is essential to learners of a foreign language. All dictionaries in Tshivenḓa are bilingual, except one monolingual dictionary and one trilingual dictionary. Users express concern that bilingual and trilingual dictionaries in Tshivenḓa do not provide enough information for the users. As a result, learners of Tshivenḓa struggle to learn the language due to the lack of the necessary information. This prompted the researcher to investigate the existence of grammatical information in some Tshivenḓa bilingual dictionaries. Three most...
Multilingualism and Dictionaries
COGNITIVE STUDIES | ÉTUDES COGNITIVES, 2015
The Russian-Bulgarian-Polish dictionary that we (Wojciech Sosnowski, Violetta Koseska-Toszewa and Anna Kisiel) are currently developing has no precedent as far as its theoretical foundations and its structure are concerned. The dictionary offers a unique combination of three Slavic languages that belong to three different groups: a West Slavic language (Polish), a South Slavic language (Bulgarian) and an East Slavic language (Russian). The dictionary describes semantic and syntactic equivalents of words between the languages. When completed, the dictionary will contain around 30,000 entries. The principle we build the dictionary on is that every language should be given equal status. Many of our data come from the Parallel Polish-Bulgarian-Russian corpus developed by us as part of the CLARIN-PL initiative. In the print version, the entries come in the order of the Cyrillic alphabet and they are not numbered (except for homonyms, which are disambiguated with Roman numbers). We selected the lemmas for the dictionary on the basis of their frequency in the corpus. Our dictionary is the first dictionary to include forms of address and most recent neologisms in the three languages. Faithful to the recent developments in contrastive linguistics, we begin with a form from the dictionary’s primary language and we define it in Polish. Subsequently, based on this definition, we try to find an equivalent in the second and the third language. Therefore, the meaning comes first and only then we look for the form (i.e. the equivalent) that corresponds to this meaning. This principle, outlined in Gramatyka konfrontatywna języków polskiego i bułgarskiego (GKBP), allows us to treat data from multiple languages as equal. In the dictionary, we draw attention to the correct choice of equivalents in translation; we also provide categorisers that indicate the meaning of verbal tenses and aspects. The definitions of states, events and their different configurations follow those outlined in the net model of verbal tense and aspect. The transitive vs. intransitive categorisers are vital for the languages in question, since they belong to two different types: synthetic (Bulgarian) and analytic (Polish and Russian). We predict that the equal status of every language in the dictionary will facilitate easier and faster development of an electronic version in the future.
Macro- and Microstructure Experiments in Minor Bilingual Dictionaries of XIX and XX century
2008
Two bilingual English and French and English and German dictionaries and two multilingual dictionaries dealing with English, French, German and Italian with a peculiar macro- and microstructure will be considered in order to highlight their efforts to spare space and to help foreign learners of such languages. The first dictionary-Williams Smith, A French Dictionary, on a plan entirely new (1814)-tried to help English learners to reproduce the pronunciation of French words, the second-A.F Inglott Bey, A dictionary of English Homonyms pronouncing and explanatory translated into Italian and French (1899)-arranged homonyms in three languages and explained them, the third-Neues Universal-Wortbuch der deutschen, englischen, franzosischen und italianischen Sprache (1856)-insisted on comparison among languages and the fourth-Max Bellows� Dictionary of German and English English and German (1912)-tried to have both sections English- German and German-English on the same page and to exploit ...
HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2017
The concept of dictionary vision is frequently used when we speak about lexicography. Since the late 1980s, we have been witnesses to the consolidation of lexicography as an academic discipline, which, fi rstly, has helped in compiling better dictionaries meant to fulfi l the needs of specifi c user groups, and, secondly, has focused its object of study on dictionaries. As always happens in any academic discipline, lexicography has also been subject to different controversies regarding its nature, methods of works, objectives, etc. The different theoretical approaches to dictionaries are usually present in any lexicography conference, symposium, workshop, etc. They are also found in this volume, a collection of papers discussed at the Twelfth International Symposium on Lexicography celebrated at the University of Copenhagen, April 29-May 1, 2004. The volume presents 19 selected papers covering a wide fi eld within lexicography: (i) online lexicography; (ii) dictionary structure; (iii) phraseology in dictionaries; (iv) LSP lexicography; (v) etymology, history and culture in lexicography. In the Preface, Gottlieb and Mogensen indicate that the 19 papers selected, 15 of which are in English, have been anonymously peer-reviewed and selected according to quality, relevance, and variety of approaches and topics. Among them are the three plenary lectures given by Arne Zettersten, founding father of the symposium, Henning Bergenholtz and Sven Tarp, and Herbert Ernst Wiegand, who have laid the foundations for drawing the line between lexicography and other disciplines, particularly linguistics, although maintaining between them deep differences on both theoretical and practical grounds (see Bergenholtz/ Tarp 2003 for an overview). Part 1 contains three chapters concerning Online Lexicography. In Chapter 1, "reliability of online bilingual dictionaries" (3-12), Cristina Gelpí proposes a selection of main features of online bilingual dictionaries, defends that online bilingual dictionaries are specifi c products, different from printed dictionaries, and illustrates her visions with examples from online specialized bilingual English-Spanish dictionaries. She concludes that in addition to coverage, online dictionary quality can be determined by factors such as web page origin, user type, adaptation to lexicographical functions, data-accessing system, lexicographical structures, usability, permanence and updating, degree of digitalization and hypertextuality, and permeability and interaction. Annette Klosa and Carolin Müller-Spitzer deal with grammatical data in "Grammatische Angaben in elexiko und ihre Modellierung" (13-37). The project Hermes-41-11-fuertes-rev.indd 197
Looking beyond Meaning in the Advanced Ndebele Dictionary 102-111
Lexikos, 2011
It is an established view in lexicography that the most important function of early dictionaries was to provide information on the meaning of words of a particular language. Over the years, tendencies have emerged with modern dictionaries providing detailed linguistic information resulting in more informative dictionaries. This article discusses the presentation of grammatical information, pronunciation, tone marking and usage labels and the structure and content of the back matter in the prospective Advanced Ndebele Dictionary (henceforth AND), which will be a successor to Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele (2001), the first-ever monolingual dictionary in Ndebele. 1 It is therefore the inclusion of this additional information that is examined in this article. The AND is still restricted to the planning stages. The work that has been done on the dictionary has been confined to academic articles about the dictionary's structure and content. The current article is a third instalment on the AND following on Khumalo 2003 and 2007.