Inspirations drawn from COBUILD for compiling an active English-Chinese learner's dictionary
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Collins COBUILD English Dictionary has been hailed as a revolutionary dictionary.In compiling an active English-Chinese learner's dictionary,Chinese compilers can draw inspirations from it in building up corpora,providing more collocational information,setting up all kinds of usage notes,arranging senses of polysemous words according to frequency of use,marking frequency of core words,providing real-life examples,and providing pragmatic and cultural information,thus making the Chinese-English learner's dictionary an ideal tool for learning English.Keywords:
Bilingual dictionary
Machine-readable dictionary
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In our software demonstration, we describe a web-based English for Academic Purposes dictionary-cumwriting aid tool, the Louvain EAP Dictionary (LEAD). The dictionary is based on the analysis of c. 900 academic words and phrases in a large corpus of academic texts and EFL learner corpora representing a wide range of L1 populations. The dictionary contains a rich description of non-technical academic words, with particular focus on their phraseology (collocations and recurrent phrases). Its main originality is its customisability: the content is automatically adapted to users’ needs in terms of discipline and mother tongue background. Another key feature of the LEAD is that is makes full use of the capabilities afforded by the electronic medium in terms of multiplicity of access modes (Tarp 2009). The dictionary can be used as both a semasiological dictionary (from lexeme to meaning) and an onomasiological dictionary (from meaning/concept to lexeme) via a list of typical rhetorical or organisational functions in academic discourse (cf. Pecman 2008). It is also a semi-bilingual dictionary (cf. Laufer & Levitzky-Aviad 2006) as users who have selected a particular mother tongue background can search lexical entries via their translations into that language. The LEAD is designed as an integrated tool where the actual dictionary part is linked up to other language resources and learning tools. It is a hybrid dictionary (cf. Hartman 2005) that includes both a dictionary-cum-corpus and a dictionary-cum-CALL component. As regards direct corpus access, the LEAD innovates by giving access to discipline-specific corpora rather than generic corpora. While the current version of the tool is restricted to some disciplines and mother tongue backgrounds, its flexible architecture allows for further customisation (other L1 background populations, other disciplines, other languages).
Bilingual dictionary
Lexeme
Phraseology
Machine-readable dictionary
Lexical Database
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This thesis is aimed to get the knowledge which will be used as a base for creating a dictionary for an English language textbook. The theoretical part deals with specifications and problems which appear when creating a dictionary. It describes types of dictionaries, ways of choosing lexis and their setting in a lexicon. Moreover, it deals with other features of a dictionary. The second part is devoted to the analysis of dictionary-making procedure and problems which appeared during the lexicon creation. The analytical part is followed by the English-Czech version of the vocabulary, unified dictionary with words in alphabetical order and CD with the audio recording of English-Czech vocabulary.
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Machine-readable dictionary
Word formation
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Collins COBUILD English Dictionary has been hailed as a revolutionary dictionary. In compiling an active English-Chinese learner's dictionary, Chinese compilers can draw inspirations from it in building up corpora, providing more collocational information, setting up all kinds of usage notes, arranging senses of polysemous words according to frequency of use, marking frequency of core words, providing real-life examples, and providing pragmatic and cultural information, thus making the Chinese-English learner's dictionary an ideal tool for learning English.
Bilingual dictionary
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In this presentation, we will introduce the Louvain English for Academic Purposes dictionary (LEAD), viz. a customisable web-based dictionary-cum-writing-aid tool. The LEAD aims to meet the growing needs of non-native speakers, be they students of English or researchers, who have to write academic texts that conform to the established conventions of the genre (more particularly its phraseology). The dictionary contains a rich corpus-based description of c. 900 academic words from the Academic Keyword List (Paquot, 2010) that express key functions in academic discourse. The list contains nouns (e.g. issue, contrast, parallel), verbs (argue, discuss, emerge), adjectives (differing, opposite), adverbs (namely, notably, however), prepositions (despite, such as) and conjunctions (while, albeit). To extract the phraseology (collocations and recurrent phrases) of these words, we made use of large corpora of academic texts, in particular the academic component of the British National Corpus which we supplemented with a number of home-made discipline-specific corpora. We also made use of the International Corpus of Learner English (Granger et al., 2009) to identify EFL learners’ difficulties in using these particular words. The main originality of the LEAD is its customisability: the content is automatically adapted to users’ needs in terms of discipline and mother tongue background. Before using the dictionary, users have to select a domain (currently business, medicine, linguistics) and specify their L1 background (currently French and Dutch). Domain selection makes it possible to customise the output and illustrate the phraseological environment of a search word by means of example sentences automatically extracted from a corpus of either business, medicine or linguistics texts. One of the purposes of L1-background identification is to give feedback on errors and problems that a specific L1 population typically encounters. The dictionary is not only corpus-informed but can also be described as a dictionary-cum-corpus as users have direct access to discipline-specific corpora. We make use of a new open source web-based corpus analysis system, viz. CQPweb, developed by A. Hardie (Hardie, 2009) for two main purposes: - give access to concordances of academic words and their collocations to provide users with more examples and make it possible for them to check whether a collocation or phrase that is not in the LEAD is correct or not; - query words that are not in the LEAD so that users can check how to use a word even though it is not in the dictionary. As we are focusing on a very specific and quite limited vocabulary, we want to be able to provide another kind of feedback than the very frustrating “No match found!” when the search word is not in the dictionary. The automatic customisation of the dictionary to users’ discipline and L1 coupled with direct corpus access makes it a particularly dynamic tool. The inclusion of error warnings and targeted exercises gives it the status of a hybrid tool, i.e. both a dictionary and a learning resource. The LEAD is also a highly flexible tool, which could easily be customised to other L1 background populations, other disciplines, and other languages. References Granger, S., Dagneaux, E., Meunier, F. & Paquot, M. (2009). The International Corpus of Learner English. Handbook and CD-ROM. Version 2. Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain. Hardie, A. (2009). ‘CQPweb – combining power, flexibility and usability in a corpus analysis tool’. Paper presented at the 30th ICAME conference, Lancaster, 27-31 May 2009. Paquot, M. (2010). Academic Vocabulary in Learner Writing: From Extraction to Analysis. London & New-York: Continuum
Phraseology
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Corpus Linguistics
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Since firstly published in 1948,Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary has been modified six times and each edition has its own characteristics with some renovations based on the previous ones,which has a profound influence on the development of the world's dictionary compilation.This paper mainly comments on its grammatical labels according to their significance for the compiling of dictionary from the perspective of dictionary users and points out the trend of grammatical labels' development in English learner's dictionaries.
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Grammatical category
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The present paper attempts to investigate and evaluate structure of verb codes in selected pedagogical dictionaries as well as assess usefulness of encoded syntactic information to learner. The collection of primary sources chosen for analysis comprises editions of Oxford advanced learner's dictionary published since 1974, i.e. OALDCE3 (1974), OALDCE4 (1989), OALDCE5 (1995) and OALDCE6 (2000), all editions of Longman dictionary of contemporary English, i.e. LDOCE1 (1978), LDOCE2 (1987) and LDOCE3 (1995), Collins COBUILD English language dictionary (1987, henceforward COBUILD 1), Collins COBUILD English dictionary (1995, henceforth COBUILD2) and Cambridge international dictionary of English (1995, hereafter CIDE). The first two editions of Oxford advanced learner's dictionary, i.e. OALDCE1 (1942) and OALDCE2 (1963), have not been taken into consideration since coding systems employed there hardly differ from that in 1974 edition. The paper consists of nine parts. The rationale for encoding syntactic information on verbs in pedagogical dictionary is discussed in first one. Proposals for a user-friendly form of verb codes are dealt with in part two. The third section presents a brief diachronic account of introduction of verb codes into pedagogical lexicography. Section four is concerned with coding system employed in OALDCE3. Then, constituent parts of verb codes in remaining dictionaries are subjected to scrutiny. Specifically, section five is concerned with symbols for verb, and section six -- with symbols for components of complementation structure. The main types of coding system are identified and assessed from vantage point of learner in seventh part of paper. Results of selected pieces of research on dictionary use and tenets of relevant theories of language teaching are subsequently referred to with a view to throwing light on students' attitudes to verb codes. Concluding rema rks, offered in final part of article, complete study. 1. Introduction Coding systems in pedagogical dictionaries have been invented in response to need to provide learner with adequate syntactic information on verbs in an appropriate form. As Cowie (1983a: 100) points out, devising a system of grammatical labeling which properly reflects syntactic complexities, and is thus reliable, but remains lucid and usable calls for great ingenuity. Elsewhere he emphasizes that considerable weight of syntactic information on verbs needs to be presented in a form which is both economical and maximally explicit (Cowie 1978: 260-261). Accuracy of description and ease of accessibility are two main aims any dictionary is likely to pursue (Herbst 1999: 229). Unfortunately, it is difficult to satisfy both criteria concurrently. On one hand, as Jackson (1985: 58) observes, more detailed syntactic information, more elaborate and often impenetrable system of presentation becomes. Conversely, information about how to incorporate a newly learnt word into phrases and sentences is essential to learner, hence need for easily understood mechanisms for providing such information. Accuracy and user-friendliness should thus, in Herbst's (1999: 229) view, be seen as poles between which design of a dictionary has to find its place. Striking a balance between accuracy on one hand and intelligibility and accessibility of syntactic information on other is of paramount importance especially in dictionaries designed for foreign learners, whose reference skills are necessarily limited (Bejoint 1981: 211). Cowie (1983b: 136) defines reference skills as the skills which user is assumed to possess, or can be expected to acquire, in handling a dictionary and making effective use of information it contains. He also remarks that not only reference skills but also reference habits associated with content of dictionary and its organization are slow to change. …
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Lexicography
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Corpus use has become a standard practice in lexicography, most particularly English lexicography. Lexicographers make use of corpus data to select the words they include in a dictionary, describe their meaning and use and illustrate their preferred environment in context (Atkins and Rundell, 2008). With the advent of electronic dictionaries, corpus data is making its way into the dictionary via new components such as example banks or corpus-query systems. In the 'Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English' (5th edition, DVD-ROM, 2009), a sample of 1 million sentences taken from the 'Longman Corpus Network' is used to provide additional examples (via the Example Bank frame of the right menu) and collocations (via the Collocations frame of the right menu) for each lexical entry. In the 'Collins COBUILD Advanced Learners’ English Dictionary' on CD-ROM (2006), users can search a five million sample from the Bank of English Corpus via the WordBank tool. In my presentation I will first investigate the role of corpus-query-tools in pedagogical lexicography. I will focus on electronic learner dictionaries and online tools such as the 'Base Lexicale du Francais' (Verlinde et al, 2009). I will argue that, to be useful (and used!), a corpus-query-tool needs to be fully integrated into the dictionary: it has to be available from each lexical entry and point straight at concordance lines for the relevant item. The corpora should also be user-oriented so as to allow learners to visualise senses in a context close to their own working environment (Granger & Paquot, 2010 and in preparation). By way of illustration, I will then introduce the 'Louvain English for Academic purposes Dictionary' (LEAD) (Granger & Paquot, 2010), a dictionary which contains a rich description of academic words (Paquot, 2010), with particular focus on their phraseology (collocations and recurrent phrases). It is a web-based integrated tool where the actual dictionary is linked up to an open-source corpus-query system, viz. CQPweb (Hardie, 2009). The LEAD innovates by automatically adapting the content to users' needs in terms of discipline and mother tongue background and by giving access to discipline-specific corpora rather than generic corpora. With the example of the LEAD dictionary, I will also argue that the future of specialised pedagogical lexicography lies in more customisation.
Lexicography
Corpus Linguistics
Lexical Database
Text corpus
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Prescriptivism and descriptivism are two principles of lexicography,and different dictionary chooses different principles.This present paper is mainly on the use of the two principles in Chinese-English Dictionary for foreigners,and gives detailed explanation when taking The New Chinese-English Dictionary and A Comprehensive Chinese-English Dictionary as examples.The conclusion of the paper is that different dictionary is guided by different principles,however,the combination of both should be advocated.
Lexicography
Bilingual dictionary
Machine-readable dictionary
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The past two decades have witnessed the continuous development of English Stylistics as a course for English majors,the pedagogical system of which has not been well established,though.In the process of English Stylistics teaching,the dictionary plays an essential role whereas the dictionary function has not been fully utilized.The main stylistic forms,such as phonology,graphology,morphology,syntax,pragmatics,etc.,are also the key features presented in the dictionary.On the other hand,much attention has been given in lexicographical studies to the stylistic features of the word;various approaches have been employed by dictionary compilers to present the stylistic features of the word.The present paper analyzes the role of the dictionary in the teaching of English Stylistics,and explores the dictionary using strategy in English Stylistics teaching,in terms of dictionary choosing and dictionary consultation.In the former aspect,the paper introduces the relevant dictionary types applicable to English Stylistics learning.In the latter,the major ways of presenting the stylistic features of a word are discussed from both the macrostructural and microstructural perspectives.The sensible and exhaustive using of the dictionary is deemed to facilitate the effective teaching of English Stylistics.
Stylistics
Lexicographical order
Feature (linguistics)
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The role played by the pragmatic information in acquiring a foreign language has received more and more attention.This paper illustrates the type of pragmatic information in English and classifies it into semantic-pragmatic information and cultural-pragmatic information.Then an English dictionary that sets a good example in terms of pragmatic information-Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English(1987)is introduced.
Information Structure
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