Transcript Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or

Gresham College
Lecture series: Look it up yourself! A History of the Dictionary
From dictionary user
to amateur lexicographer
Possibilities of on-line searches
Costas Gabrielatos
(Lancaster University)
23 March 2009
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
Do you know this word?
• What does ‘knowing’ a word involve?
To know a word:
Form
• Written form
– Spelling
• Spoken form
– Pronunciation
– Stress
– Symbols vs. audio
chagrin
‘sh’ or ‘tsh’
chagrin or chagrin
/ʃægrɪn / (BrE)
/ʃəgrɪn/ (AmE)
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)
To know a word:
Grammar (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
To know a word:
Meaning
• Sense(s)
• Connotations
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online
http://www.ldoceonline.com
• Image
reredos
To know a word:
Meaning: specialised words
collateralized debt obligation
InvestorWords, www.investorwords.com
To know a word:
The lexical company a word keeps
stale bread
rancid butter
sour milk
To know a word:
The lexical company a word keeps
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online
http://www.ldoceonline.com
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?
To know a word:
Meaning in relation to other words
• Synonyms / Antonyms
• expand
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com
To know a word:
Etymology (the history of a word)
Encarta
ahttp://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/dictionaryhome.aspx
World Wide Words (Michael Quinion), www.worldwidewords.org
To know a word:
A 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?
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
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
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 <egregious errors> <egregious padding of
the evidence — Christopher Hitchens>
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 <egregious errors> <egregious padding of
the evidence — Christopher Hitchens>
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 <egregious errors> <egregious padding of
the evidence — Christopher Hitchens>
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 <egregious errors> <egregious padding of
the evidence — Christopher Hitchens>
egregious in the BNC
• 36 instances
•
•
•
•
•
Action/behaviour/event/result etc. (15)
Person/organisation etc. (12)
Mistake/error etc. (6)
Object (2)
Other (1)
Types of dictionaries
• General - alphabetical
• General - thematic (concepts)
• Thesaurus
• Terminological
• Pronunciation
• Collocations (lexical patterns)
• Pictorial
• Encyclopaedic
Possibilities of online searches
• The ‘ultimate’ reference source (?)
• Free
• Quick and easy comparison of information
• ‘Lexical journeys’
• Primary research