[Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)

[Robert Parks]

Yorick,
Your "Electric Words" was indeed an enlightening 
work and a worthy read for lexicographers.  The 
practical work of analysis has been mostly 
enriched by corpus tools, but as you note could 
also benefit from a close reading of AI work (as 
well as other developments, such as cognitive 
linguistics).  Could you give an example of 
lexicographic work that might point the way 
toward exploiting those AI insights?
Thanks,
Bob

At 1:18 PM -0400 9/13/10, Yorick Wilks wrote:
>All true, but the notion was pretty well 
>explored by Ai work in the seventies, and has
>been missed by the lexicographic community (if 
>not by Hanks himself!)--it's all there really, 
>the norms, the extensions in context based on 
>what we know about the word and the world--all 
>that was missing was the hard work of the sort 
>lexicographers are said to be good at!
>Yorick
>
>On 12 Sep 2010, at 17:16, Adam Kilgarriff wrote:
>
>>Lothar,
>>
>>yes, I'm very happy to own that position!
>>
>>I'd add to it, the kind of thing that Ken 
>>Litkowski mentioned and Patrick Hanks has 
>>explored most deeply: that we make sense of 
>>unfamiliar uses of words by working out how 
>>what we already know of the word (its norms) 
>>can be made sense of in the context.  (My own 
>>enlightenment on this front came from Geoff 
>>Nunberg's thesis, see his 'Pragmatics of 
>>Reference').  That is the cognitive process of 
>>interpreting an exploitation of the word's 
>>norms.  A word's senses are then just those 
>>interpretations, which are commonly enough 
>>understood across a speech community, and over 
>>time.  What counts as 'common enough', and 'the 
>>speech community' and the timespan, depends on 
>>the purposes for which we want to catalogue them
>>
>>Adam
>>
>>On 7 September 2010 09:27, Lothar Lemnitzer 
>><<mailto:lemnitzer at bbaw.de>lemnitzer at bbaw.de> 
>>wrote:
>>
>>Dear Laura
>>
>>I do not think that this insight is so 
>>spectacular. Word senses are artifacts and 
>>lexicographers are the experts (and are 
>>perceived by society as such) in finding and 
>>defining these artifacts.
>>
>>If I am allowed to give a guess I would assign 
>>this position to Adam Kilgarriff (I don't 
>>believe in word senses).
>>
>>Adam, sue me if I am wrong.
>>
>>Regards
>>
>>Lothar Lemnitzer
>>
>>2010/9/7 Laura Lofberg <<mailto:Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi>Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi>
>>
>>Could someone with a better memory help me?
>>
>>If I remember correctly, someone has said 'a 
>>word has as many meanings as a lexicographer 
>>cares to perceive' or something like that. Does 
>>anyone remember the exact wording? And who has 
>>made this brilliant comment, where and when?
>>
>>Best,
>>
>>Laura Löfberg
>>University of Tampere
>>Finland
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>Lothar Lemnitzer
>>DWDS
>>Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
>>Jägerstr. 22/23
>>10117 Berlin
>>
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>>
>>
>>--
>>================================================
>>Adam Kilgarriff 
>><http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk/>http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk 
>> 
>>Lexical Computing Ltd 
>><http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/>http://www.sketchengine.co.uk
>>Lexicography MasterClass Ltd 
>><http://www.lexmasterclass.com/>http://www.lexmasterclass.com
>>Universities of Leeds and Sussex 
>><mailto:adam at lexmasterclass.com>adam at lexmasterclass.com
>>================================================
>>
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