[Lexicog] circular definitions

[William J Poser]

Someone who has written at some length about circular definitions and
how to avoid them, and generally about the "language of definition"
and semantic primitives and their role in lexicography is Anna Wierzbicka
at the Australian National University (home page: http://arts.anu.edu.au/linguistics/arts_fac/staff/wierzbicka.html). Her publications include:

1972. Semantic Primitives. (Frankfurt: AthenC$um).

1980. Lingua Mentalis. (Sydney: Academic Press).

1985. Lexicography and Conceptual Analysis. (Ann Arbor: Karoma).

1988. The Semantics of Grammar. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins).

1991. Cross-cultural Pragmatics. (Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter).

1992. Semantics, Culture and Cognition. (Oxford: OUP).

1996a. Semantics, Primes and Universals. (Oxford: OUP).

1996b. Understanding Cultures through their Key Words. (Oxford: OUP).

I have read some of her work and found it interesting. I don't know
how much impact she has had on practical lexicography. My feeling is
that she has some good ideas but that it would be difficult to
implement them fully and live up to her standard, particularly
when creating a bilingual dictionary of a language one is still
struggling to understand.

Bill

--
Bill Poser, Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~wjposer/ billposer at alum.mit.edu



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