[Lexicog] Interesting lexical discoveries

[Patrick Hanks]

Hello, fellow toilers at "the lower employments of life" -

My impression is that most people on this list will have something to say
about comparatively rare, even endangered, languages.

But I come from mainstream English (British) lexicography. I was editor of
Collins English Dictionary (1st edn. 1979), Cobuild (1st edn. 1987), New
Oxford Dictionary of English (1st edn. 1998 - a corpus-based as well as
citation-based dictionary, which was Americanized as the New Oxford American
Dictionary (2001)). Also the Dictionary of American Family Names (2003),
where the focus is more etymological.

So those are my credentials for contributing to this discussion. The most
interesting discoveries for me in a lifetime of monolingual lexicography
are:

1. Corpus evidence shows that word usage in a speech community, even one as
large as English, is very regular -- much more highly patterned, in
innumerable subtle ways, than some of us once believed. In the past,
research has tended to focus on "creativity" -- boundary cases, generally
invented boundary cases rather than actual examples of real use.  Now that
corpus evidence is available, it is up to the monolingual lexicographers of
each speech community to examine it and determine what the norms of word use
are. This we have not yet done.

2. English speakers all over the world unconsciously share subtle and
delicate collocational preferences, and exploit them in similar ways.
(Examples on request.) The same is certainly true of German (on which I am
now working) and, I suppose, of other languages too. Linguists -- especially
in America, where corpus linguistics is in its infancy -- have been slow to
come to terms with the theoretical implications of this empirically
verifiable observation, while commercial pressures drive dictionary
publishing houses to ignore it for as long as they can. (In America, for
example, publishers of old-fashioned dictionaries on historical principles
have a stranglehold on the dictionary market; they are not about to let go
and do something risky like a corpus-based dictionary.)

3. Collocational patterns seem obvious when pointed out, but are not easily
called to mind. From this I conclude that social salience (what we actually
do with language) and cognitive salience (what we think and say that we do)
are independent variables.  If this is right, introspection is a flawed
research technique -- downright misleading, in fact.

4. Although patterns of word use are very prominent, the ways in which
people use them to make meanings are extremely complex.  Linking meaning to
use is hard, and there have been many false starts, driven by bad theories.
The "definitions" in dictionaries are idealizations which look like
nec.&suf. conditions - but in fact word meanings are created
probabilistically in context. The basis for them seems to be perceived
resemblance to prototypes (Fillmore 1976). But we don't have good accounts
of the prototypes or word meaning and word use -- especially word use.  I
think this is the major challenge facing monolingual lexicography today.


Patrick Hanks

    Dr Patrick Hanks
    Berater, Digitales Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache,
    Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften,
    Jägerstrasse 22-23,
    Berlin 10117,
    Germany.
    Phone: + 49 30 20370 539
    Fax:  + 49 30 20370 214












----- Original Message -----
From: "List Facilitator" <lexicography2004 at yahoo.com>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 6:11 AM
Subject: [Lexicog] Interesting lexical discoveries


> What are one or two of the most interesting discoveries that stand out for
> you (plural) in any of the lexical research that you have done?
>
>
>
> Wayne Leman
> Cheyenne dictionary project
>
>
>
>
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