[Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography) - "as many senses"

Thu Sep 9 13:58:35 UTC 2010

Hi Jim
Does your notion of lexeme include multi-word units of meaning?
If there are an infinite number of lexemes, aren't they capable of participating in an infinite number of combinations, each of which may constitute an additional 'sense'?
Best
Ramesh

Ramesh Krishnamurthy
Lecturer in English Studies, School of Languages and Social Sciences,
Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812 ; Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766 [Room NX08, 10th
Floor, North Wing of Main Building]
http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lss/staff/krishnamurthyr/
Director, ACORN (Aston Corpus Network project): http://acorn.aston.ac.uk/
From: Jim Fidelholtz [mailto:fidelholtz at gmail.com]
Sent: 09 September 2010 14:29
To: Krishnamurthy, Ramesh
Cc: Tad Piotr; corpora at uib.no
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography) - "as many senses"

Hi, all,

I think we can all agree that different lexicographical tasks or projects can put different subcategorizational demands on the lexicographer (perhaps we should call them 'artists', but that's a separate discussion), with various possible and acceptable results. Nevertheless, from a *lexicological* point of view, the approach, it seems to me, *has* to be that each lexeme (and abstracting away from the question of homonyms) has a *finite*, and, depending on the frequency, say, of the lexeme, even small, number of basic meanings. The submeanings of each basic meaning would then be *predictable* from the context, which, in the general case, would *not* produce a new sub-micro-mini-meaning. The lexicon (cf. Baayen 2001 or so) does indeed appear to be infinitely large, both theoretically (cf. 'institutionalizationalization...') and practically, in terms of lexemes   (perhaps not practically if we exclude proper nouns, this again being a separate discussion), but we should not assume that this statement includes the collective (or individual!) degree of polysemy of the lexicon; that is, there are apparently an infinite number of lexemes for any language, but each one has a finite number of discrete senses.

Jim
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 12:41 AM, Krishnamurthy, Ramesh <r.krishnamurthy at aston.ac.uk<mailto:r.krishnamurthy at aston.ac.uk>> wrote:
Hi Tadeusz!

I broadly agree with you. I was just reporting my findings. Hence my question mark...

If meaning arises from context (or text, to use your term),
each context is a potential 'sense'. Lexicographers/translators/corpus analysts,
depending on their purpose/skill/audience, try to pragmatically group similar contexts into 'senses'.

A corpus additionally allows a finite set of contexts and their analysis to be reviewed.

Best
Ramesh Krishnamurthy
Lecturer in English Studies, School of Languages and Social Sciences,
Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812 ; Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766 [Room NX08, 10th
Floor, North Wing of Main Building]
http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lss/staff/krishnamurthyr/
Director, ACORN (Aston Corpus Network project): http://acorn.aston.ac.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: Tad Piotr [mailto:tad46ster at gmail.com<mailto:tad46ster at gmail.com>]
Sent: 08 September 2010 17:43
To: Krishnamurthy, Ramesh
Cc: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography) - "as many senses"

Ramesh,
I do not think the statement "a word has as many senses as
translations" is true, because translation is dependent on the
language into which you translate. And you do not translate words but
texts with words, which means that the number of possible translations
is huge, perhaps even infinite.
Best wishes,
Tadeusz

Tadeusz Piotrowski

On 8 September 2010 16:51, Krishnamurthy, Ramesh
<r.krishnamurthy at aston.ac.uk<mailto:r.krishnamurthy at aston.ac.uk>> wrote:
> Oh dear, too late - as usual...  I just tried a Google search for "as many
> senses" and added 'words' and 'lexicographers' (neither in quotes)
> afterwards, to reduce hits (ended up with 5000+)
>
> and came across:
>
> ---
>
> [PDF] Meaning as Use: a communication-centered approach to lexical meanings
>
> File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
> by S Sharoff - 2004 - Related articles
> lexicographer. Some words are more polysemous than others. Some lexi-
> cographers are 'splitters': they tend to analyse words in as many senses as
> ...
> corpus.leeds.ac.uk/serge/book.pdf<http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk/serge/book.pdf>
>
>
>
> The length of the list of senses of a word depends on the word and the
>
> lexicographer. Some words are more polysemous than others. Some
> lexicographers
>
> are 'splitters': they tend to analyse words in as many senses as
>
> possible to classify different examples of uses, while others are 'lumpers':
>
> they tend to provide more broad definitions covering a variety of uses.
>
> ---
>
>
>
> Could this be an alternative solution to Laura's quest?
>
>
>
> I also noticed many references to translation:  a word has as many senses as
> it has translation equivalents...?
>
>
>
> Ramesh Krishnamurthy
> Lecturer in English Studies, School of Languages and Social Sciences,
> Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK
> Tel: +44 (0)121-204-3812 ; Fax: +44 (0)121-204-3766 [Room NX08, 10th
> Floor, North Wing of Main Building]
> http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lss/staff/krishnamurthyr/
> Director, ACORN (Aston Corpus Network project): http://acorn.aston.ac.uk/
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 1:31 PM, Laura Lofberg <Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi<mailto:Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi>> wrote:
>
>
>
> Could someone with a better memory help me?
>
>
>
> If I remember correctly, someone has said 'a word has as many meanings as a
> lexicographer cares to perceive' or something like that. Does anyone
> remember the exact wording? And who has made this brilliant comment, where
> and when?
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
>
> Laura Löfberg
>
> University of Tampere
>
> Finland
>
> ------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
>
> Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:04:45 +0100
>
> From: Geoffrey Sampson <grs2 at sussex.ac.uk<mailto:grs2 at sussex.ac.uk>>
>
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)
>
> To: Laura Lofberg <Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi<mailto:Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi>>
>
> Cc: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>
>
>
>
> I'm wondering whether you might be thinking about some of Adam Kilgarriff's
> writings, e.g. "I don't believe in word senses", _Computers and the
> Humanities_ vol. 31, 1997, and available online.  His overall message could
> be paraphrased broadly the way you suggest, though I don't remember whether
> he actually uses a similar form of words anywhere.
>
>
>
> Geoffrey Sampson
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
>
> Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:49:51 -0400
>
> From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa at bestweb.net<mailto:sowa at bestweb.net>>
>
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)
>
> To: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>
>
>
>
> Alan Cruse coined a good word for the phenomenon:  microsense.
>
>
>
>  From his _Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics_, p. 108:
>
>
>
>    "The microsenses of a word are distinct readings that behave in some
>
>    respects like ambiguous readings, but which, unlike the latter, can
>
>    be subsumed under an inclusive reading.  An example of a word with
>
>    microsenses is _ball_.  There are different sorts of ball, but in
>
>    normal use, only one of these is intended..."
>
>
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=v72E26s6JTkC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=cruse+microsense&source=bl&ots=WHH9WQDxIR&sig=8yLs84qg4DO01sPNqe82BtZkS48&hl=en&ei=fz-GTLzSKIKBlAfw3uCyDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=true
>
>
>
> John Sowa
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 09:36:07 -0500
>
> From: Jim Fidelholtz <fidelholtz at gmail.com<mailto:fidelholtz at gmail.com>>
>
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)
>
> To: "John F. Sowa" <sowa at bestweb.net<mailto:sowa at bestweb.net>>
>
> Cc: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>
>
>
>
> Hi, All,
>
>
>
> Laura's comment (quote) is no doubt true. Nevertheless, I have no doubt
> that, if we examine the particular practice of each lexicographer (or, say,
> the OED) and rank all their headwords from the largest number of numbered
> 'senses' down to 1, that this will correlate (p <  .0...01 or, colloquially,
>
> '*very* significantly'), whatever test you use, with the order
> most-to-least-frequent. I haven't actually done this bit of research, but if
> it turns out this way (as I'm sure it will, or, perhaps, as has been shown
> by someone, at least for some lexicographers), then *this* is an important
> fact that must be explained by lexicologists. My personal favorite for the
> principal explanation is metaphor, but it will not be easy to make a
> convincing case for that.
>
>
>
> Jim
>
>
>
> --
>
> James L. Fidelholtz
>
> Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje
>
> Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades Benemérita Universidad Autónoma
> de Puebla, MÉXICO
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 07:48:11 -0700 (PDT)
>
> From: Bill Louw <louwfirth at yahoo.com<mailto:louwfirth at yahoo.com>>
>
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)
>
> To: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>, Laura Lofberg <Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi<mailto:Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi>>
>
>
>
> Hello. The Cobuilders are curiously silent. Old-style lexicographers may
> have behaved in this way, but modern lexicographers would leave the number
> of senses to the software to determine, largely through collocation.
>
>
>
> The line you quote offers only one match via the limited search techniques
> offered to the general public. It is as follows:
>
>
>
> testable concept, and has almost as many meanings as it has advocates.
>
>
>
> Corpus BoE: Strathy
>
> Canadian journal: 1987
>
> document 24
>
> Match number 1
>
>
>
> A wildcard or skip search would reveal the subtext. This is only available
> via a Cobuild log-in. I can only guess that the variables of such a search
> would reveal more of a sense of causality. Cobuilders are having their
> logins revoked at this time, I am reliably informed. Mine was removed
> on December 31 2003, a fortnight after I falsified The Truth and
> Reconciliation Commission using the Bank of English.
>
>
>
> Jeremy Pope of Transparency International wrote:'A country will be as
> corrupt as its institutions will allow.'
>
>
>
> Bill Louw
>
> University of Zimbabwe
>
> ____________________________________________
>
> Message: 8
>
> Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:14:44 -0400
>
> From: maxwell <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu<mailto:maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu>>
>
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)
>
> To: Bill Louw <louwfirth at yahoo.com<mailto:louwfirth at yahoo.com>>
>
> Cc: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>
>
>
>
> On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 07:48:11 -0700 (PDT), Bill Louw <louwfirth at yahoo.com<mailto:louwfirth at yahoo.com>>
>
> wrote:
>
>> ...modern lexicographers would leave the number of senses to the
>
>> software to determine, largely through collocation.
>
>
>
> Doesn't the software need to be told how many clusters to make (or what
> degree of dissimilarity to allow within clusters)?
>
>
>
>    Mike Maxwell
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 15:26:11 -0700 (PDT)
>
> From: Bill Louw <louwfirth at yahoo.com<mailto:louwfirth at yahoo.com>>
>
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)
>
> To: maxwell <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu<mailto:maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu>>
>
> Cc: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>
>
>
>
> Maxwell is correct. But the quote that Laura is searching for implies that
> lexicographers' discretion may be excessive or irresponsible. We may need to
> ask her about that if we are to unpack the problem without moving into the
> checks and balances offered by modern lexicography. She seems to want to
> make a point about 'anything goes' attitudes. Bill
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
>
> Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 08:13:38 +0530
>
> From: Upali Kohomban <kohomban at gmail.com<mailto:kohomban at gmail.com>>
>
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)
>
> To: Laura Lofberg <Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi<mailto:Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi>>
>
> Cc: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>
>
>
>
> That quote reminded me also of Adam Kilgarriff. A simple google search
> yielded, a page from "The Lexicography of English  By Henri Béjoint" p 293
>
>
>
> A word in dictionary 'can have as many senses as the lexicographer cares to
> perceive'
>
>
>
> which is from to a certain [Hanks 2002], page 159.
>
>
>
> [
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=jq-izE-sWD0C&pg=PA293&lpg=PA293&dq=%27a+word+has+as+many+meanings+as+a+lexicographer+cares+to+perceive&source=bl&ots=-msyneHaze&sig=ocCbObcUfSvR3KjOwfo0s2CRGJk&hl=en&ei=IfSGTJXuE46AvgP38cmZBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDUQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> ]
>
>
>
> This is *possibly*
>
>
>
> Patrick W Hanks 2002 ?Mapping Meaning onto Use? in Marie-Hélène Corréard
>
> (ed.): *Lexicography and Natural Language Processing: a Festschrift in
> honour of B. T. S. Atkins*. Euralex
> [http://www.patrickhanks.com/publications.htm]
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 11
>
> Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2010 21:12:03 -0700 (PDT)
>
> From: Bill Louw <louwfirth at yahoo.com<mailto:louwfirth at yahoo.com>>
>
> Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Quotation (lexicography)
>
> To: Laura Lofberg <Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi<mailto:Laura.Lofberg at uta.fi>>, Upali Kohomban
>
>       <kohomban at gmail.com<mailto:kohomban at gmail.com>>
>
> Cc: corpora at uib.no<mailto:corpora at uib.no>
>
>
>
> Well done Upali! Now all that remains to be done is a stylistic analysis of
> Hanks's attitude. As members of the corpora list we are honour-bound to find
> it in a corpus rather than call it intuitively 'illocutionary force'. It is
> in subtext and semantic prosody that we shall find it, but if and only if,
> we are allowed the Bank of English in a form that allows wildcard/skip
> searches. For details of how you do it, see my 2010 article in Zyngier et al
> Eds. _Digital Learning..._ IGI Global. (logical semantic prosody). Hope
> Laura is happy that Upali came through with the answer. Bill
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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>
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>
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>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>

--
Tad Piotr

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--
James L. Fidelholtz
Posgrado en Ciencias del Lenguaje
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, MÉXICO
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