[Lexicog] lexical relation

[Ronald Moe]

I should have mentioned one other thing. I would recommend that a reference
to a domain in an appendix be formatted as follows:

 

madali  Vsta slippery (see 7.2.1.5.1 Sororo)

 

If space was at a premium, this could even be shortened to:

 

madali  Vsta slippery (7.2.1.5.1)

 

Users would very quickly get used to seeing a domain reference at the end of
the entry, especially if the appendix were a large section at the end of the
book. The appendix entry might look something like this:

 

7.2.1.5.1 Sororo

madali, sororo, .

 

In a bilingual dictionary you might want to also include the gloss:

 

7.2.1.5.1 Sororo 'slip'

madali 'slippery', sororo 'slip', .

 

Ron Moe

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From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
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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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