[Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

[Mike Maxwell]

Ron Moe wrote:
> I would agree with all Mike's points except the last.
>
> So I would prefer the general rule: "Give an illustrative
> sentence for every word unless you cannot find one that
> is non-trivial and informative.

Well, I guess I basically agree.  But I think my consultees would have
kicked me out of my linguistic consultant position if I had made them do
that :-).

> We say, "He's as faithful as a dog," and "He's nothing but a
> dirty dog." Or, "He's as strong as an ox," and "He's as dumb
> as an ox." In fact these uses may be more common than literal
> references to oxen.

Particularly in American culture--I'm not sure when I last saw a real ox.
But as for these particular uses, I would say they are frozen metaphors
and/or idioms (I'm not sure there's a difference, but let's not get into
that).  As such, most (or maybe all) of them deserve their own
(sub-)entries, and as such might even get illustrative sentences under the
criteria of my original msg.  (I was at least allowing the possibility that
adjectives--most of these are headed by adjectives--would get illustrative
sentences, although I admit to saying that I didn't push for that.)  But I'm
still not sure that the basic, non-metaphoric sense of 'dog' and 'ox' needs
an illustrative sentence.

> Even 'rock' needs to be carefully defined and illustrated.
> 'Rock' and 'stone' are not exact synonyms and the
> difference needs to be made explicit.  "We built our
> house on a rock." *"We built our house on a stone." "I cut
> my hand on a sharp rock." *"I cut my hand on a sharp stone."

Agreed that they're not synonomous (although I would not star the last
example S).  But I'm still not convinced that they need illustrative
sentences, provided the definitions distinguish them.  (Note that both these
words have mass and count meanings; it's the count meanings that are used
above.)  Putting it differently, you might need an entire corpus to
distinguish among all the uses of (a) stone and (a) rock.  While some on
this list have said that "the corpus is the dictionary", that may not yet be
practical in every situation (and even if it were practical, most dictionary
users would not put up with it).

    Mike Maxwell


    Mike Maxwell



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