[Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

[John Roberts]

Mike Maxwell said:

(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.)

Hm, maybe, but Collins COBUILD has the illustrative sentence 'Their dog started barking at me.' to illustrate that dogs are typically owned by someone and that 'dog' collocates with 'bark'. I should imagine that dogs don't 'bark' in all languages. The same dictionary also has a range of illustrative sentences to show how to use 'rock' as a mass noun and 'rock' as a count noun in English. And a common adjective like 'new' has a range of meanings depending on what it is modifying,

new (adj.)  (1) a new house ('not existing before')
                (2) a new member ('additional')
                (3) new potatoes ('recently grown')
                (4) new clothes ('recently acquired')
                (5) new ways of approaching a problem ('not known before')
                (6) .

John Roberts
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