[Lexicog] asking for advice

[Mike Maxwell]

shamla medhar wrote:
> It is different from bilingual dictionary because bilingual dictionary
> just provides us meaning in another language where as it is just like
> thesaurus but it will be in the bilingual form. Bilingual thesaurus will
> provide equivalents to the English synonyms.

There might be a problem with this, namely that the field of meaning for 
English words rarely corresponds one-to-one with the field of meaning for 
words in another language.  Thus, while 'big' and 'large' are synonyms in 
English, with slightly different usages (and depending on how you analyze 
things, both may have multiple senses); but I doubt whether there are other 
languages that cut the field of large size up quite the same way.  I know 
Spanish doesn't.  Thus, it is impossible to provide single word equivalents 
to 'big' and 'large' in Spanish.

Of course, second language learners have difficulty wrapping their minds 
around the differences among synonyms like these, so some sort of thesaurus 
  is often useful, with explanations of the differences.  But by the time 
learners get to the point of worrying about this sort of thing, they can 
generally handle the explanations in the second language.  Which of course 
is easier on the makers of thesauri, since you only have to write N 
thesauruses of N languages, rather than N*(N-1).
-- 
	Mike Maxwell
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu


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