[Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

[cce]

It would be interesting if someone investigated exactly what purpose all
these examples for ‘new’ exactly serve. Excellent in a monolingual native
speakers dictionary. I would honestly like someone to explain me what they
are good for in a Learner’s Dictionary.

 

Philippe Humblé

 

  _____  

De : John Roberts [mailto:dr_john_roberts at sil.org] 
Envoyé : jeudi 11 mars 2004 20:31
À : lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Objet : Re: [Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

 


Mike Maxwell said:


(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.)

Hm, maybe, but Collins COBUILD has the illustrative sentence 'Their dog
started barking at me.' to illustrate that dogs are typically owned by
someone and that 'dog' collocates with 'bark'. I should imagine that dogs
don't 'bark' in all languages. The same dictionary also has a range of
illustrative sentences to show how to use 'rock' as a mass noun and 'rock'
as a count noun in English. And a common adjective like 'new' has a range of
meanings depending on what it is modifying,

new (adj.)  (1) a new house (‘not existing before’)
                (2) a new member (‘additional’)
                (3) new potatoes (‘recently grown’)
                (4) new clothes (‘recently acquired’)
                (5) new ways of approaching a problem (‘not known before’)
                (6) 


John Roberts

 

  _____  

Yahoo! Groups Links

*	To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/
  
*	To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
lexicographylist-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com
<mailto:lexicographylist-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe> 
  
*	Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo!
<http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>  Terms of Service. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lexicography/attachments/20040312/46b1f160/attachment.htm>