[Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

Mike Maxwell maxwell at LDC.UPENN.EDU
Fri Mar 12 14:40:58 UTC 2004


Benjamin Barrett wrote:
> How about sentences with languages having declining nouns/adjectives?

Unless I'm missing s.t, this is the same as Mery Martinelli's earlier
question, to which I claimed not to see any need for example sentences to
illustrate inflectional forms.  Perhaps someone can set me right...

> Given that Korean adjectives are used in one basic form when acting as
> predicates and another basic form when modifying, I was thinking that
> I should come up with at least a sample phrase, though not
> necessarily a sample sentence for each.

Maybe, but an alternative would seem to be just to talk about this in your
grammar.  (Obviously ICO Korean, there are a bazillion grammars "out there",
and they probably already talk about this.  But for many of the readers of
this list, the grammar they write will be the onliest grammar of the
language.  Even if not, it is not uncommon to include a sketch grammar in
the dictionary, perhaps emphasizing the morphology.)  Again, while a couple
three example sentences would be appropriate in the grammar, I don't see the
need to have example sentences (or even example phrases) in the dictionary.
The one possible exception would be if the existence of distinct predicative
and modifying forms were a lexical matter (some adjectives had them, others
didn't.)  Even here, I'm not totally convinced, but I might be made to see
the light.

> I like the suggestion of using a sample sentence such as "the dog
> barks at X", "the telephone rang/I answered the telephone" to inform
> the user of commonly used verbs, though the danger of falling into
> cliches seems real.

My off-the-top reaction to this is that the example sentences here belong
with the verb, not the noun.  Seals bark, too, as do children with the croup
(and sometimes bosses).  (I'm talking here about printed dictionaries;
electronic dictionaries are an entirely different thing, since you can
basically stick a concordance tool in them.)

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



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