From dictionary user to amateur lexicographer Possibilities of online searches

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From dictionary user to amateur
lexicographerPossibilities of on-line searches
Gresham College Lecture series Look it up
yourself! A History of the Dictionary
Costas Gabrielatos (Lancaster University)
23 March 2009
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Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject
ourselves, or we know where we can find
information upon it.
Samuel Johnson(Statement made April 18, 1775,
quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson)

• How will the information be used?
• Comprehension
• Production

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Do you know this word?

• What does knowing a word involve?

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To know a wordForm

• Written form
• Spelling chagrin
• Spoken form
• Pronunciation sh or tsh
• Stress chagrin or chagrin
• Symbols vs. audio /?ægr?n / (BrE)
  /??gr?n/ (AmE)

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To know a word Grammar (a)

• Part of speech
• Countable/uncountable (for nouns)
• Not independent of meaning
• experience LDOCE
• Derivatives
• extend (verb)
• extendability / extendibility / extensibility
  (noun)
• extendable / extendible / extensible (adjective)

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To know a wordGrammar (b)

• Transitivity (for verbs)
• She gave a concert / They gave her a present
• Prices have been rising
• Grammatical patterns help vs. facilitate
• policies that help/facilitate development
• help/facilitate a neighbour to move the sofa
• help/facilitate a student with an assignment

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To know a word Meaning

• Sense(s)
• Connotations

The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Online http//www.ldoceonline.com

• Image reredos

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To know a word Meaning specialised words
collateralized debt obligation
InvestorWords, www.investorwords.com
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To know a word The lexical company a word keeps
stale bread rancid butter sour milk
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To know a word The lexical company a word keeps
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Online http//www.ldoceonline.com
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To know a word Use

• Contexts of use
• general/specialised
• heart attack (acute) myocardial infarction
• archaic/formal/informal/colloquial/slang
• offspring - minor - child - kid - brat
• Frequency
• In what contexts?

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To know a word Meaning in relation to other
words

• Synonyms / Antonyms
• expand

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary http//www.merri
am-webster.com
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To know a wordEtymology (the history of a word)
Encarta ahttp//encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/di
ctionary/dictionaryhome.aspx
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World Wide Words (Michael Quinion),
www.worldwidewords.org
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To know a wordA holistic view examples

• Examples can demonstrate most of the aspects of
  knowing a word.
• What does this word mean?
• What does this word do?
• The more examples, the better our understanding
  patterns and frequency
• What kind of examples?
• Whose examples?

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Prescription or description?

• 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a
  rather scornful tone,' it means just what I
  choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
• 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can
  make words mean so many different things.'
• 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is
  to be master - that's all.'

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found
There, Lewis Carroll, 1871
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Sources of examples

• Corpora
• British National Corpus (BNC), 100 million words
• http//sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html
• The web as a corpus
• WebCorp
• http//www.webcorp.org.uk

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egregious

• Conspicuously bad or offensive.
• Often of mistakes, extremely and noticeably bad.
• An egregious mistake, failure, problem etc is
  extremely bad and noticeable.
• Extraordinary in some bad way glaring flagrant
  an egregious mistake an egregious liar.
• Conspicuous especially conspicuously bad
  flagrant ltegregious errorsgt ltegregious padding of
  the evidence Christopher Hitchensgt

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egregious

• Conspicuously bad or offensive.
• Often of mistakes, extremely and noticeably bad.
• An egregious mistake, failure, problem etc is
  extremely bad and noticeable.
• Extraordinary in some bad way glaring flagrant
  an egregious mistake an egregious liar.
• Conspicuous especially conspicuously bad
  flagrant ltegregious errorsgt ltegregious padding of
  the evidence Christopher Hitchensgt

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egregious

• Conspicuously bad or offensive.
• Often of mistakes, extremely and noticeably bad.
• An egregious mistake, failure, problem etc is
  extremely bad and noticeable.
• Extraordinary in some bad way glaring flagrant
  an egregious mistake an egregious liar.
• Conspicuous especially conspicuously bad
  flagrant ltegregious errorsgt ltegregious padding of
  the evidence Christopher Hitchensgt

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egregious

• Conspicuously bad or offensive.
• Often of mistakes, extremely and noticeably bad.
• An egregious mistake, failure, problem etc is
  extremely bad and noticeable.
• Extraordinary in some bad way glaring flagrant
  an egregious mistake an egregious liar.
• Conspicuous especially conspicuously bad
  flagrant ltegregious errorsgt ltegregious padding of
  the evidence Christopher Hitchensgt

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egregious in the BNC

• 36 instances
• Action/behaviour/event/result etc. (15)
• Person/organisation etc. (12)
• Mistake/error etc. (6)
• Object (2)
• Other (1)

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Types of dictionaries

• General - alphabetical
• General - thematic (concepts)
• Thesaurus
• Terminological
• Pronunciation
• Collocations (lexical patterns)
• Pictorial
• Encyclopaedic

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Possibilities of online searches

• The ultimate reference source (?)
• Free
• Quick and easy comparison of information
• Lexical journeys
• Primary research