[Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

[David Frank]

In our dictionary of St. Lucian Creole, we started off with the principle
that every entry, every sense, every subentry should have an illustrative
sentence. (But not every minor entry, which just pointed to a major entry.)
For certain sets of words we abandoned that practice because the only
sentences our mother-tongue compilers could come up with were trivial and
repetitive. This included many plants (unless they were used for something
interesting, such as bush medicine) and animals and types of food ("I like
to eat/catch red snapper", "I like to eat/catch jackfish", etc.) and times
of day (four o'clock, five o'clock, etc.).

-- David Frank

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Maxwell" <maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu>
To: <lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 2:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences


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 :-).



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