[Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

Ron Moe ron_moe at SIL.ORG
Thu Mar 11 19:12:33 UTC 2004


I would agree with all Mike's points except the last. The recent discussion
of even such obvious nouns as 'bull' or 'dog' show a range of applicability
which is far from predictable. The metaphorical use of animal terms
indicates that our conception of an animal is far from trivial and goes far
beyond the scientific name. A dog is more than a member of the species canis
familiaris. We say, "He's as faithful as a dog," and "He's nothing but a
dirty dog." Or, "He's as strong as an ox," and "He's as dumb as an ox." In
fact these uses may be more common than literal references to oxen.

Even 'rock' needs to be carefully defined and illustrated. 'Rock' and
'stone' are not exact synonyms and the difference needs to be made explicit.
"We built our house on a rock." *"We built our house on a stone." "I cut my
hand on a sharp rock." *"I cut my hand on a sharp stone."

English has lots of verbal nouns that are noun in part of speech but whose
semantics refer to events, processes, and states. Most of us would agree
that these need to be illustrated as much as a verb. But there are other
nouns that are on the borderline between semantic "verbs" and semantic
"nouns" (if you will). For instance 'growth' in one of its senses refers to
a part of your body which is not normal. "The doctor removed a growth on my
back that proved to be benign." It is as much a thing as your nose, but is
called a 'growth' because it grows abnormally. The example sentence
illustrates several features of the semantics and usage. 1) It is external
to the skin or an internal organ (on something). 2) It is abnormal. 3) It is
feared to be cancerous. 4) Doctors often deal with them. 5) The verb used to
indicate surgically cutting it off is 'remove'.

So I would prefer the general rule: "Give an illustrative sentence for every
word unless you cannot find one that is non-trivial and informative. Of
course we have to be concerned about size restrictions, but I would prefer a
short illustrative phrase to nothing at all. I appreciate a fine tuned
definition, but I love a good illustration. When reading entries with
multiple senses in a monolingual English dictionary, I am sometimes unsure
what sense a definition is referring to until I read the example sentence.

Ron Moe
SIL, Uganda
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Mike Maxwell [mailto:maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu]
  Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 10:15 AM
  To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
  Subject: [Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences


  What criteria do y'all suggest for determining whether an entry (or
sub-entry) should include example sentences?

  I suspect the answer is the same for monolingual and bilingual
dictionaries, although I'm interested in the bilingual case.

  When I've reviewed bilingual dictionaries for publication, I have claimed
that every 'adverb', verb and adposition needs (at least one) example
sentence.  I have not pushed so hard for example sentences for adjectives
and nouns.  My reasoning is as follows:

  (1) Adverb is a catch-all category.  Even if it's broken down into verbal
adverbs vs. sentential adverbs, or locatives vs. temporals vs. manners...,
it's still going to be unclear to the user of the dictionary just what the
behavior of that word is (even if there is a good grammar of the language).
Same goes for minor POSs, like determiners, 'particles' etc., although most
of these should be reasonably well documented in the grammar.

  (2) Verbs tend to have complex argument structures, which vary across
languages even for similar meanings. (Cf. 'talk', 'say', 'ask', 'wonder'...
with their counterparts in any other language you may know.)  So again,
without example sentences, the user won't know how to use them.  (And it may
be necessary to have at least one example for each subcategorization frame.)

  (3) Adpositions usually have a more straightforward grammar, but their
meaning may be unclear (no matter how well you gloss them).  So they should
have several example sentences, to (partially) illustrate their range of
meaning.  (BTW, there's a fascinating article in the Sept. 2003 issue of
Language on the semantics of spatial adpositions across languages.  Should
be required reading for lexicographers.)

  (4) Nouns, and to a lesser extent adjectives, tend to have straightforward
grammars and meanings.  You don't need an example sentence to know how to
use 'dog' or 'rock'.  (Abstract nouns like the infamous 'destruction' are of
course exceptions to this.)

  This is an easy test to make in a computerized way, since it's easy to
pull out all the words of a given grammatical category which do not have at
least one example sentence (or one for every sense of those words).

  Comments?

      Mike Maxwell
      Linguistic Data Consortium
      maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu
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