[Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

[Mike Maxwell]

What criteria do y'all suggest for determining whether an entry (or sub-entry) should include example sentences?

I suspect the answer is the same for monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, although I'm interested in the bilingual case.

When I've reviewed bilingual dictionaries for publication, I have claimed that every 'adverb', verb and adposition needs (at least one) example sentence.  I have not pushed so hard for example sentences for adjectives and nouns.  My reasoning is as follows:

(1) Adverb is a catch-all category.  Even if it's broken down into verbal adverbs vs. sentential adverbs, or locatives vs. temporals vs. manners..., it's still going to be unclear to the user of the dictionary just what the behavior of that word is (even if there is a good grammar of the language).  Same goes for minor POSs, like determiners, 'particles' etc., although most of these should be reasonably well documented in the grammar.

(2) Verbs tend to have complex argument structures, which vary across languages even for similar meanings. (Cf. 'talk', 'say', 'ask', 'wonder'... with their counterparts in any other language you may know.)  So again, without example sentences, the user won't know how to use them.  (And it may be necessary to have at least one example for each subcategorization frame.)

(3) Adpositions usually have a more straightforward grammar, but their meaning may be unclear (no matter how well you gloss them).  So they should have several example sentences, to (partially) illustrate their range of meaning.  (BTW, there's a fascinating article in the Sept. 2003 issue of Language on the semantics of spatial adpositions across languages.  Should be required reading for lexicographers.)

(4) Nouns, and to a lesser extent adjectives, tend to have straightforward grammars and meanings.  You don't need an example sentence to know how to use 'dog' or 'rock'.  (Abstract nouns like the infamous 'destruction' are of course exceptions to this.)

This is an easy test to make in a computerized way, since it's easy to pull out all the words of a given grammatical category which do not have at least one example sentence (or one for every sense of those words).

Comments?

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