[Lexicog] Percentage of idioms vs single words

[Ulla Wiesemann]

Dear Ron,

Just for kicks I counted the multi-word lexical items in the Kaingang
dictionary. They came out to 1233 multi-word entries against 2874 single
word entry ones, making them almost 1/3rd. In a further enlargement of
entries the multi word ones would increase proportionally by leaps and
bounds, because that is how new vocabulary is being created.

Ulla Wiesemann

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Moe" <ron_moe at sil.org>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2004 9:18 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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