[Lexicog] Criteria for example sentences

[John Roberts]

Philippe Humblé said:



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.

  


Collins COBUILD lists 10 senses of "new" while NODE only lists 3 primary senses. COBUILD is designed specifically for learners and teachers of English. It says the editors have given exceptionally detailed treatment to the most frequent 2000 words in English, which form the central core of English. All students can now learn to use these words naturally and accurately. So the primary purpose is for language use. For example, a speaker of language A might express "young man" in her language with the English language equivalent of "new man", i.e. where "new" in language A also includes the sense of "young". But she would learn from a dictionary like COBUILD that "new" in English does not include the sense of "young" and so it would be inappropriate to say "new man" when you wanted to express "young man". On the other hand, the learner might hear or read the expressions "he is a new man" and "he is the new man" and not appreciate the significant differences in the sense of "new" in these expressions. I am currently learning a language in which "new" is expressed by three different words in this language. I certainly appreciate the 30 or so examples given in my English - X dictionary which illustrates the contexts in which I should use these different "new" words.

John Roberts



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