[An-lang] 10-ICAL panel on dictionaries & dictionary-making

[Andrew Pawley]

PANEL ON DICTIONARIES, DICTIONARY-MAKING AND LEXICAL SEMANTICS AT 10-ICAL

I invite offers of papers for a panel at 10-ICAL devoted to
dictionaries, dictionary-making and lexical semantics.
The aim of the panel is to contribute in a small way to raising the
profile and standard of lexicography and semantic analysis in
Austronesian. Lexical analysis presents exciting intellectual
challenges but has long been the Cindarella of linguistics and has
not received the kind of attention given to phonology and grammar. It
is therefore not surprising that the quality of most dictionaries
leaves much to be desired, especially in regard to the handling of
definitions, sense discriminations, lexical relations and
completeness. Contributions to the panel should address issues of
analysis, method or theory, with reference to Austronesian languages.
If you are interested in presenting a paper let me know the topic you
have in mind and send an abstract of 100 words or so.

Please reply to <andrew.pawley at anu.edu.au>

Andrew Pawley
Department of Linguistics
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University


SOME POSSIBLE TOPICS
The following are some topics that might be addressed, either in
relation to particular Austronesian languages or to generalisations
across a group of languages. The list is not exhaustive.

Lexical semantics
1. Sense discriminations. (Polysemy is arguably the most difficult
aspect of lexical semantics and the weakest part of dictionary
entries in most dictionaries. The question arises whether there are
types of polysemies that are characteristic of Austronesian languages
in general or of particular regions or subgroups.)
2. The structure of folk taxonomies ('X is a kind of Y' relations),
e.g. in terminologies for fauna and flora, kinds of buildings, kind
of boats, etc.
3. The structure of partonymies  ('X is a part of Y' relations), e.g.
body-parts, house-arts, months of the year.
4. Gradience in lexical relations, as between partial synonyms, and
antonyms, or between senses in a sense spectrum.
5. Characteristics of classes that form a sequence or chain, e.g.
colour terms, hand, wrist, forearm, elbow, bicep, shoulder; or mound,
hillock, hill, mountain.
6. Converse relations: doctor-patient, husband-wife, precede-follow, buy-sell.
7. Types of selectional restrictions on verbs, e.g. semantic
constraints on subjects and direct objects.

Organising information in lexical entries and dictionaries
8. Grouping sense units (minimal lexical units) into lexemes
(families of lexical units).
9. Handling redundancies or generalisations in the lexicon, arising
e.g. from highly productive derivational patterns, or from productive
metaphors for creating new senses.
10. Escaping the tyranny of the alphabet, e.g. using semantic
features to order lexical units into thesauruses or for
cross-referencing.

Boundaries and completeness of the lexicon
11. Discovery procedures for collecting lexical units.
12. The boundary between dictionary and encyclopaedia or ethnography.
Principles for including or excluding particular kinds of semantic
and cultural information from definitions.
13. Criteria for including/omitting loanwords in dictionaries of
languages spoken by bilinguals.
14. The gradience between simple lexical units and constructions.

Usage and variation in the language community
15. Corpus-based analysis of expressions, frequency of usage,
frequency of senses, etc.
16. Writing lexical entries that reflect variation in the speech
community in e.g. what words mean or in their grammar.

Software
This panel is chiefly about the content of dictionaries, not about
mechanical aids to making them. However, modern technology is our
ally. It has made some aspects of lexicography much easier and made
it possible to improve the content of dictionaries. Contributors are
welcome to inform the panel about relevant innovations in
dictionary-making software and it may be possible to arrange
demonstrations.
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