[Lexicog] Percentage of idioms vs single words

[John Roberts]

I am not sure if counting percentages of MWEs in the lexicon of a given
language will tell us very much about the lexicon of the language. Surely
the percentages of MWEs will depend on the semantics and history of the
language? For e.g. in Amele (Papuan) there are many single-word-entries
(SWEs) which translate into English as MWEs - such as

bec    'to come up'
lec    'to go (in)'
nec    'to come down'
noc    'to go down'
tec    'to go up'

These Amele verbs combine MOTION+DIRECTION in a single lexical unit. On the
other hand, Amele has MWEs which translate into English as SWEs, such as

cal mec    'to die (lit. to become stiff)'
sib qoc    'to yawn (lit. to hit chin)'
ji fec        'to taste (lit. eat and see)'
wa nec    'to rain (lit. water come down)'

So I would only see a purpose in counting percentages of MWEs if it was done
in particular semantic domains. Then you might learn something interesting
about the semantics of the language.

John Roberts



----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Moe" <ron_moe at sil.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 8:18 PM
Subject: [Lexicog] Percentage of idioms vs single words


> One discovery (that has implications for us) was when I was trying to
think
> of English example words for each domain in my list of semantic domains. I
> found that a high percentage were multi-word lexical items. In some
domains
> I quickly ran out of single word entries, but could think of lots of
> phrases. This phenomenon was repeated in a couple of workshops for Bantu
> languages. The speakers were generating about 25% phrases.
>
> I presume (without a lot of data to back me up) that our dictionaries
should
> have a goodly percentage of multi-word entries. A quick scan of Longman's
> Language Activator shows about 50% multi-word entries. Can anyone give
> figures for their dictionaries? Has anyone worked at
identifying/generating
> multi-word lexical items in such a way that they can estimate the
percentage
> of idioms vs single words in a language? I realize that there is a
gradation
> from collocation to idiom, so that it may be difficult to draw a line.
>
> Ron Moe
> SIL, Uganda
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: List Facilitator [mailto:lexicography2004 at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 10:11 PM
> To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
> 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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