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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>What criteria do y'all suggest for determining
whether an entry (or sub-entry) should include example sentences?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I suspect the answer is the same for monolingual
and bilingual dictionaries, although I'm interested in the bilingual
case.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(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.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(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.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>(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.)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Comments?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2> Mike
Maxwell<BR> Linguistic Data Consortium<BR>
<A href="mailto:maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu">maxwell@ldc.upenn.edu</A></FONT></DIV><!-- |**|end egp html banner|**| -->
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