[Lexicog] lexical relation

[Ronald Moe]

Lengosi/Paul wrote:

"For now I'll probably make some kind of 'catch-all' lexical relation for
fringe relations like 'slip' / 'slippery'--just to link them--and move on."

 

Actually this is exactly what you should do. If the two words are related in
some systematic way, then by all means use the appropriate lexical relation.
But if the relation is more complex, then set up some general
cross-reference, such as "cf - Compare". Please don't be confused by the
'Cross References' field which is on the entry level and the 'Lexical
Relations' field which is on the sense level. Both use the same set of
lexical relations which can be found in the Lists area under Lexical
Relations. Both produce cross-references in your published dictionary. (I
get confused just trying to explain it.)

 

The system of semantic domains has three primary purposes. The first is to
group words that are similar in meaning so that you can investigate them all
at one time. The second is to include a list of semantic domains as an
appendix in your published dictionary. Each semantic domain would list all
the words that belong to the domain. The third is to produce a thesaurus or
semantically classified dictionary. A thesaurus would just list all the
words in the domain. A semantically classified dictionary would also
describe each word.

 

I would highly recommend that you use the second option instead of creating
a lot of lexical relations in your dictionary. So instead of creating the
synonym set
big:large:bulky:good-sized:sizable:substantial:huge:massive:enormous:colossa
l:giant:gigantic:mammoth and cross-referencing each member of the set to all
the other members, you could merely point the user to the domain '8.2 Big'
in the appendix, where the user would find all of these words and many more.
It is fairly easy to produce such an appendix. It is a huge amount of work
to create the same semantic network using lexical relations. So, yes, your
simple question has brought you to dictionary design philosophy. It would be
good for you to decide ahead of time what kind of dictionary you want, so
that you don't waste a lot of time.

 

By the way, you would translate all the domain labels into the vernacular.
You don't want your vernacular dictionary referring to English domains. So
instead of referring to '7.2.1.5.1 Slip, slide', you would refer to
'7.2.1.5.1 Sororo'

 

Ron Moe

 

  _____  

From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of lengosi
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:03 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] lexical relation

 






Thanks for your helpful response, Ron. A lot more than I bargained on, but
it certainly helped lay out the issue(s)! I'm wondering how to apply it,
though ... All I wanted was a utilitarian means of helping the reader get
from A to B; i.e., "I know /sororo/ but what was the word for 'slippery'
again?!" Perhaps this has a lot to do with intended audience--I would expect
speakers of the language to know the 'pair' (and not even think English
'slippery' when associating them)--but language learners / non-language
speaking users would not be expected to know the pair. But in my (limited)
experience, even language speaker are keen to point out related words, and
it's my feeling that this should be reflected somehow in the dictionary.

At one level, just what /kind/ of relationship the words have is a not as
important as /that/ they are related--to go to the entry for /sororo/ and
find reference to /madali/ (and vice versa) is probably more helpful than
not cross-referencing them at all. But, as you pointed out, determining and
defining the relationship can be tricky, and it should have fairly wide
application to be considered useful. So I'm back to where I started--wanting
to demonstrate the relationship between the words and not quite knowing how
to represent it. I'm aware of your penchant for semantic domains ;-), but
even that has its challenges (at least in a dictionary with 'traditional'
alphabetical layout)--how does the reader connect /sororo/ with semantic
domain: 3.4.5.6 (completely made up) to /madali/ s.d.: 3.4.5.6? S.d. 3.4.5.6
is probably opaque to most dictionary readers ... Suddenly what I thought
was a simple question has brought me to dictionary design philosophy! :-0

For now I'll probably make some kind of 'catch-all' lexical relation for
fringe relations like 'slip' / 'slippery'--just to link them--and move on.
Perhaps I can come back to this some day when I have more time and energy to
spend on it. :-/

Paul



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