[Lexicog] English homonyms

[Mike Maxwell]

Ron Moe wrote:

> ...Several people have recommended that we do
> user research to determine what most users want and need in a dictionary. If
> no one except linguists use the pronunciation guide, then my claim is
> certainly exaggerated...

It is important to distinguish between the dictionary-as-database and
the dictionary-as-printed.  I would argue (and Bill Poser has argued, in
a paper presented at SSILA '03) that as dictionary compilers, we should
concern ourselves more with the former.  (I intentionally left the
implied object of contrast ambiguous--"more than we used to" is
certainly true.  One can argue about whether "more than printed
dictionaries" is true.)

The point is that a dictionary database (in whatever form that database
may take) can have multiple uses, with corresponding "views".  One use
is for native speakers, and a common "view" of that use is the printed
dictionary.  But another use is by linguists, both those of us around
now, and linguists of the future.  Another use is (potentially) people
ten or a hundred years after the language has gone extinct, who want to
learn about it.  (That is very much an issue today for many North
American languages, and will be for many other languages in the near
future.  But I am preaching to the choir.)

If we build a dictionary database, we can satisfy all those users, and
more--but only if we include all the relevant information, which
definitely includes anything unpredictable (such as tone, in tone
languages).

So record the tone in your dictionary database, along with whatever
other aspects of the pronunciation are not completely predictable from
the writing system.  Whether you include all that in printed
dictionaries (or in the future, in electronic dictionaries for native
speakers) is quite another issue.

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


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