Abstract:
This text covers the thousands of idioms used in English and It includes full-sentence definitions to show the idiom in its correct grammatical and collocational sense.Cite
A new kind of frequency dictionary is a valuable reference for researchers and students of Russian. It shows the grammatical profiles of nouns, adjectives, and verbs, namely the distribution of grammatical forms in the inflectional paradigm. The dictionary is based on data from the Russian National Corpus (RNC) and covers a core vocabulary (5,000 most frequently used lexemes).
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Phrasal expressions can be a rich source of cultural information, so lexical treatment of idioms has long remained a hard work for bilingual dictionary compilers, Traditionally,they would watch their monolingual dictionary colleagues' steps in collecting and defining items, which can hardly satisfy the demand of second language learners and translators. This dissertation is meant to illustrate, with the latest development of phraseology, the significance of stylistic demonstration of idioms incognitive, pragmatic, and bilingual dictionaries.
Phraseology
Bilingual dictionary
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This paper deals with three problems about English collocation. Firstly, what is collocation? There are three different concepts about it and therefore three different approaches. The traditional one is based on semantic relation, that is, how words are used together. Collocates can be divided into open and sets, e.g. adjectives, like good and bad, that can modify almost any nouns belong to the open set, while verbs, such as neigh, that can only be used with fixed nouns are of the restricted set, and there are also selection restrictions, although there is no clear-up difference between collocation and free combination, between collocation and idiom. The second approach involves grammatical structures as well as lexical collocation, grammatical structures like that-clause, the infinitive, the gerund and so on. The third approach regards as collocation any words that, selected by frequency from the corpus, often occur together, without considering semantic relation. And each approach has its limitations. Secondly, what dictionaries specially deal with collocations? Several dictionaries are introduced for different approaches. Kenkyusha's New Dictionary of English Collocations (1st editin,1958) is the most famous for lexical collocation, rich in materials and good for improving writing. But the presentation leaves something to be desired. Its second edition (1995), though greatly enlarged and replaced with new materials, keeps the same layout. The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English (1986) is typical of the second approach. Not rich enough in collocates, it cannot meet the needs of those who want to find a suitable word in writing. With so many good ELT dictionaries available, its significance is greatly reduced. And its second edition (1997), though enlarged and updated, is not substantially improved. Cambridge International Dictionary of English and COBUILD English Collocations on CD-ROM are also mentioned for their use of computer in the selection of materials. Not based on semantic relation, many are just words that happen to appear together, and their inclusion is questionable. Thirdly, what presentations are used in the ELT dictionaries? Besides various ways of presenting grammatical structures, four ways are used for lexical collocates: collocates are (1) shown in the examples, as done in most ELT dictionaries, (2) included as entries, as is the case with Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English 3rd edition (1995), (3) presented in definitions, which, for monolingual dictionary, is typical of Collins COBUILD English Dictionary, for all the definitions in it are in whole sentences, and which is also used in bilingual dictionaries, especially English-Japanese ELT dictionaries, (4) given in special columns, as in some English-Japanese dictionaries. Also mentioned is Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English Vol.1 2, for its rich information about collocation and unique presentation. After reviewing various dictionaries and presentations, the author makes some suggestions for the compilation of ELT dictionaries, about the selection and presentation of collocates. They should be drawn from corpora, selected by the computer and experts as well. Different presentation should be adopted for different purposes, and common collocates should be marked for the user to make his decision.
Collocation (remote sensing)
Infinitive
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To compile a monolingual dictionary of Chinese idioms which helps those study Chinese as a second language master Chinese idioms, this paper suggests basing on second language learning and perfecting such parts as the object of using the dictionary, the feature of the dictionary, the choice and arrangement of entries, the number of examples and the function, etc.
Feature (linguistics)
Bilingual dictionary
Chinese language
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The paper identifies the major problems of the Chinese-English dictionary in representing collocational information after an extensive survey of nine dictionaries popular among Chinese users. It is found that the Chinese-English dictionary only provides the collocation types of v+n and v+n, but completely ignores those of v+adv, adj+n and adv+adj. And as a common practice, this kind of dictionary doesn’t give different collocates of synonymous equivalents. Besides, it provides collocational information on the basis of the headword, but not the equivalents. This leads to the suggestions for a new way of representing collocational information in Chinese-English dictionaries. The most important thing is that the Chinese-English dictionary should provide collocational information about the equivalents instead of the headword. All the five types of collocation are given the same status in a dictionary. Moreover, with corpus data, the selective restrictions of the English equivalents in meanings, frequency and semantic prosody should be explicitly represented to dictionary users by glosses, illustrative examples, collocation columns, etc. It is argued that by doing so, the dictionary will better meet the needs of the users.
Collocation (remote sensing)
Bilingual dictionary
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A lexicon providing subsystems, that produces text-specific lexicons from selected machine readable dictionary definitions from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE; Procter, 1978) has been developed. Although designed as part of a larger system for Preference Semantics (Wilks; 1972, 1975a, 1975b, 1978) and knowledge-based parsing, the resulting lexicons are in a very general predicate and frame representation that would have utility as part of a variety of differing systems of language analysis. The input to this subsystem is unconstrained text; the database is LDOCE (a machine-readable dictionary which is, itself, simply a special purpose text); the output is a collection of lexical semantic objects, one for every word sense, of every part of speech, of every word in the text. Each lexical semantic object in this lexicon contains grammatical and sub-categorization information, often with general (and sometimes specific) grammatical predictions; most of these objects also have semantic selection codes; and many have contextual (pragmatic, LDOCE subject code) knowledge as well.
Lexical Semantics
Machine-readable dictionary
Lexical Database
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French expressions like FRUIT DE MER 'seafood', MONTER UN BATEAU [a qqn] 'to fool
someone' and A PROPOS [de qqch] 'about something' are idioms. Set phrases like these are
considered in Meaning-Text Theory (MTT) as lexical units and are therefore described by an
autonomous lexical entry in the dictionary. However, since each phrase consists of more than
one word-form, these lexical units display complex behavior which has not yet been
rigorously described in the Meaning-Text lexicography. In this paper, we present a MTT
treatment of idioms focusing on their presentation in the dictionary, and propose tools for
constructing a lexical database of idioms, which can efficiently represent form flexibility and
combinatorial particularities of French idioms.
Lexical Database
Phrase
Lexical density
Lexicography
Lexical Semantics
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In this article an Afrikaans collocation and phrase dictionary for mother-tongue speakers (primary target group) as well as advanced learners (secondary target group) is discussed. The position which such a dictionary occupies among other dictionary types is pointed out. A motivation is also given for the inclusion of idioms and other fixed phrases in the proposed dictionary. The three key approaches with regard to the interpretation of the term collocation are examined, i.e. the text-oriented approach of Halliday and Hasan (1976), the statistically-oriented approach of Sinclair (Collins Cobuild) and the significance-oriented approach of Hausmann (1984). The arguments in this article favour Benson et al.’s (1986) implementation of the significance-oriented approach. Statistical evidence could be used to examine the usage frequency of collocations and phrases. The advantages and/or disadvantages of these approaches are considered. Three types of words and their treatment in the dictionary are discussed: those which have a very wide range of combination, those which have selectional restrictions imposed by general semantic features, and those of which the range of combination is restricted by certain other words. It is argued that only the last two types should be included in this dictionary. As one of the target groups is unsophisticated learners with a limited grammatical background, the ideal would be to enter lexical collocations both at their bases and at the collocators. To save space however, more information such as examples could then be provided at the bases only. Grammatical collocations should be entered at the bases, i.e. nouns, verbs and adjectives. The division of the dictionary articles into two components to meet the needs of both intended target groups, is discussed.
Collocation (remote sensing)
Phrase
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The publication of the first volume of “The Dictionary of the Russian Language of the 21st Century” marks a specific stage in the development of traditional lexicography of the modern Russian language. This dictionary represents a model of the lexical system, built on a large volume of words with detailed and comprehensive analysis of semantic structures — the full dictionary will contain more than 200 000 units (compared with over than 12 000 words, idioms and collocations included in the first volume). Systemic links, connecting entries throughout the alphabet (hypero-hyponymic relations, synonyms, antonyms, thematic clusters and so on), are included in semantic explanations whenever possible, although beyond the context of entire the dictionary some definitions illustrating lexical consistency may remain incomplete. These systemic links could be demonstrated in the electronic version of the dictionary by means of balloon tips or hyperlinks, before all the alphabetic parts of the dictionary are ready for print. Each entry field in the dictionary is specifically marked, which provides for the delivery of the results in different searches in the electronic version and, furthermore, presupposes the use of the dictionary as a foundation of the lexicographical system of modern Russian. This lexicographical marking was approbated in a wide range of specific and explanatory dictionaries, which can be used as additional blocks or modules in such a lexicographical system. In addition, this universal marking system can be applied to the majority of other dictionaries and lexicographic materials. Such detailed lexicographical marking can serve as a basis for linking information from different lexicographical resources not only based on vocabulary matches, but also including account collocations, idiomatic meanings and other specific parameters of the dictionary entry. The foundation of a lexicographical system should meet the requirements of scientific validity, contemporaniety, normativity, be explicitly structured and cover a significant amount of data, and the materials of “The Dictionary of the Russian Language of the 21st century” correspond to all these requirements.
Lexicographical order
Machine-readable dictionary
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