Abstract
This article critically analyses the Longman Defining Vocabulary (LDV) in relation to its size, range and frequency, senses, parts of speech, affixes, and multiword expressions. The recent versions of the LDV contain a relatively fixed number of items. Over 85% of those items were found to be highly frequent, and for the defining purpose, genus terms, grammatical terms, etc. have also been included. The number of affixes in the LDV has been greatly reduced, and some common derivatives have been listed separately. On the other hand, the actual size of the LDV is much larger than was reported, for LDOCE did not distinguish between the LDV items with different senses or forms. It was found that the claim of using the 'most common meanings' of the LDV items is not always held true. The parts of speech of the LDV items have not been systematically indicated. Many multiword expressions, which have been used in the definitions in LDOCE, are not part of the LDV. This study sheds some light on the improvement in the practice of using a controlled defining vocabulary in an English learner's dictionary.
Highlights
In the English learner's dictionary market, the five major competitors except for COBUILD have all acknowledged the role of a controlled defining vocabulary (CDV) in the decoding task, and compiled definitions on the basis of around 2,000 to 3,500 CDV items
'Partly in order to suggest that the learning burden represented by a CV is lighter than it is, there is a tendency on the part of their designers to conceal their actual size.' (Cowie 1999: 110) The count of CDV items in a learner's dictionary is often fraught with some problems: not distinguishing between words with different senses or forms, not indicating parts of speech, and not including multiword expressions
A derived word, such as laziness, though not on the Longman Defining Vocabulary (LDV) list, was still used in the definitions in LDOCE, for it can be formed by adding an affix to a CDV item
Summary
In the English learner's dictionary market, the five major competitors except for COBUILD have all acknowledged the role of a controlled defining vocabulary (CDV) in the decoding task, and compiled definitions on the basis of around 2,000 to 3,500 CDV items. MED, a relatively new addition to the English learner's dictionary family, used a CDV of under 2,500 words to write definitions. McCreary and Amacker (2006) reported that in a comprehension task of hard words, the groups of American college students who used an advanced learner's dictionary (i.e. MED1) performed slightly better than the groups using a collegiate desk dictionary (i.e. MW11). Some definitions using CDV items are deemed to be oversimplified, vague, unnatural or convoluted (Stein 1979: 6; MacFarquhar and Richards 1983: 115; Béjoint 2000: 70; Fontenelle 2009: 419-420). As a follow-up, this study will focus on those aspects in the recent LDV, and consider its developments over its past five versions and in comparison with other CDVs
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