Learner's Dictionary Research Articles

Performing Non-sexism via Degendering Phoric Forms in English: The Gap between Rules and Practice as Observed in the 9th Edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English

Non-sexism is one of the outstanding and obvious proofs of how social and cultural changes are taken into account in the English language. However, it is still a usage problem for natives and learners alike. This paper uses the degendering of phoric elements as an illustration of efforts in the 9th edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English (OALD9) to capture and express social and cultural changes in the English language. It also attempts to point out some mismatches between rules and actual practice in this enterprise. Finally, it intends to show how the dictionary may act as an ideological tool, imposing, sustaining, highlighting, and perpetuating some points of view to the detriment of others. In practice, the use of more than one structure to achieve non-sexism makes fluency difficult and writing cumbersome.

Special Field and Subject Field Lexicography Contributing to Lexicography

Restricted dictionaries are fully-fledged dictionaries and their contribution to lexicography should never be underestimated. Because restricted dictionaries often are neglected in lexicographic discussions this article emphasises the significance of their role as members of the lexicographic family. Within a comprehensive dictionary culture the focus should not only be on dictionaries dealing with languages for general purposes but also on dictionaries in which languages for special purposes are treated. This paper firstly offers some terminological clarity and distinguishes between subject field dictionaries and special field dictionaries. The user-perspective is then discussed before it is shown how aspects of a general theory of lexicography also prevail in these dictionaries. This applies among others to the subtypological classification as well as different lexicographic functions. Using a dictionary from each of the categories of subject field and special field dictionaries it is indicated how dictionary structures are employed and further developed in an innovative way. Attention is given to structures like the article structure and the frame structure and to a transtextual approach in monolingual dictionaries with a bilingual dimension. The focus in the discussion of the subject field dictionary is on different aspects of the macrostructure. An explanation is given of double-layered sublemmata and it is shown how integrated macrostructures are employed in this dictionary. It is indicated how this section of the lexicographic practice can enrich the field of metalexicography and dictionary research. Keywords: back matter texts; double-layered sublemmata; first level sublemmata; guiding element; integrated macrostructure; learner's dictionary; partial article stretches; special field dictionary; specialised dictionary; subject field dictionary; sublemmata; transtextual approach; user-perspective

A Corpus-based Study on Collocation of Examples in Chinese Dictionaries for Foreign Learners

This paper analyzes the features manifested in the usage of the Chinese synonyms of “Chansheng” (“to emerge”) and “Fasheng” (“to occur”) in language use data corpus and the explanatory information as illustrated in usage examples provided in dictionaries for language learners. A comparison is made of the two types of analyses. The analyses reveal some discrepancies between usage examples and use authenticity in that usage examples provided in dictionaries lack representativeness and sufficiency in connotation meanings. Error analyses of learners’ use of the pair of the synonyms in Chinese suggest that an absence of considering factors concerning the learners might lead to inadequate use of the Chinese synonyms.

New-line and Run-on Guiding Devices in Print Monolingual Dictionaries for Learners of English

The paper focuses on guiding devices in print monolingual dictionaries for learners of English. It aims to find answers to six research questions. The main aim is to investigate how the location of guiding devices within entries — starting from a new line versus run-on — affects consultation time and sense selection accuracy of dictionary users in entry navigation. In addition, the paper looks at the effect that part of speech (noun versus verb entries) has on consultation time and sense selection accuracy; further, the relationship between entry length and consultation time is investigated, as well as that between consultation time and sense selection accuracy.

Corpus Pattern Analysis for Learner Lexicography: A Pilot-study of Lithuanian Verbs

The aim of this paper is to present a pilot study which applies the framework of Corpus Pattern Analysis (CPA, Hanks 2004) to analyse some Lithuanian verbs which form part of the basic vocabulary. CPA draws on the insights of the corpus-driven language analysis and contextual and functional theory of meaning: a meaning of a word is associated with a specific lexical and grammatical environment, e.g. corpus patterns which represent an interconnection of lexical and grammatical elements. The CPA procedure is one of the several corpus-driven methods differing from the pattern grammar (Hunston, Francis 2000) in the way that CPA not only uses typical grammatical categories (e.g. word classes) but also introduces semantic values (e.g. semantic types) to distinguish different senses of a word. Semantic types are often the main separator of meanings, especially when two verb senses are associated with the same grammatical pattern. Concerning learners’ dictionaries, CPA could provide learners with more detailed usage data, and this could lead to a better understanding of meaning differences, important both for language reception and language production. After introducing the CPA methodology, we present the CPA analysis of two Lithuanian verbs, namely, the inductive procedure followed to observe and define meaning-related patterning. We also discuss the problematic issues related to the application of CPA as identified in this study and mentioned by other CPA practitioners. First, observing and defining corpus patterns is a challenging task for lexicographers, especially because of the pattern / meaning division and generalizations related to semantic types. The second problematic aspect is automatization in the process of pattern recognition. The third issue relates to foreign language learners as a target group: meaning-related patterning observed in the data has to be presented in a learner dictionary in a user-friendly way.

Vocabulary Journaling To Improve Reading Comprehension

Although the importance of vocabulary in language input (listening and reading) and output (speaking and writing) has long been established, time constraints and exam-oriented instruction in the Malaysian secondary school classrooms force teachers to prioritize content breadth rather than depth. In 2017, the Malaysian Ministry of Education implemented nationwide the new Standard Based Curriculum for Secondary Schools (KSSM). The integration of the Vocabulary Journal in the new textbook demonstrates the importance of vocabulary in language learning. This paper aims to present and share the findings of an action research study with a selected class of Form One students (13 year olds) engaged in vocabulary journaling to determine its effectiveness in enhancing vocabulary knowledge as well as reading comprehension. Vocabulary journals are also known as personalised dictionaries for learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) which allows them the freedom to include any information they deem relevant to the target words. To ease the process of deciding which information to be included, the vocabulary journaling used Frayer’s (1969) Vocabulary Four Square Model. This paper will share the findings from the study on enlisting the vocabulary journal approach to enhance the learners’ vocabulary range, thereby leading to improved reading comprehension.

Linguistic and Country Studies Learner’s Dictionary for Mongolian Citizens: Specifics of Presenting the Material

The article is devoted to the principles of nationally oriented lexicography - a new direction in Russian studies. Using the example of nationally oriented linguistic and country studies learner's dictionary project, the paper shows that it can be created on the basis of the Russian linguistic and country studies dictionary by adding Mongolian material to its content and by comparing lexical backgrounds of the same culture-specific concepts in two linguistic cultures. The purpose of the nationally oriented linguistic and country studies learner's dictionary – the explication of the cultural component of the language unit semantics, taking into account the specifics of the national culture and the language of the addressee at the same time and taking into account the stage of learning – is reflected in the content and structure of the dictionary in general and dictionary entries in particular. Selecting nominative units and providing vocabulary objectivity are determined by the addressee's communicative needs. The author uses the methods of semantization of lexical units adopted in educational lexicography and determined by the specifics of both the material and the addresse. The paper provides the characteristics of techniques that ensure compliance with the proportions in using target and native languages. The draft dictionary presented in the article is able to serve as a "starting point" in creating a new type of dictionaries and further developing fundamentals of the theory of nationally oriented educational linguistic and cultural lexicography in relation to the needs of teaching Russian as a foreign language in the absence of the language environment.

Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for Learners of English

Reviewed by Pedro A. Fuertes-OliveraUniversidad de Valladolid, Spain
 
 1. INTRODUCTION
 The Macmillan Collocations Dictionary for Learners of English (MCD) is a monolingual print dictionary aimed primarily at helping upper-intermediate to advanced students in productive use situations, such as taking English exams (especially the IELTS exams) and working in academic or professional environments. It has over 121,000 collocational phrases, a figure that leads Coffey to claim that the MCD attaches more collocates to each headword than competing dictionaries, for example, the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (OCD) (Coffey 2011: 329).

Recent Bilingual English-Italian Lexicography: Insights into Usage

The presentation of usage in bilingual lexicography may be conditioned—to some extent, at least—by the fairly strong pedagogical aim of bilingual dictionaries, often targeted at students of a foreign language. In recent decades this approach has been further strengthened by the methodology and contents of learner's dictionaries. Given this context, this paper surveys the recent history (1970s–2010s) of English-Italian dictionaries and their treatment of usage. The paratextual material and selected entries of four representative works are described and evaluated: Skey's 1997 dictionary, directly inspired by the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English; Picchi's and DII dictionaries, the latter basing its English-Italian section on The Oxford-Hachette English-French Dictionary; and Ragazzini's compilation, the longest- and bestseller among bilingual English-Italian dictionaries. As a result of the assessment, the description of current usage can be said to be largely implemented in present-day English-Italian dictionaries, each dictionary trying to make use of different strategies for both lexicographical and marketing reasons.

A Corpus-Based Analysis of Two English Synonymous Noun: Alternative and Option

This study investigates two English synonymous nouns, e.g. alternative and option, concentrating their senses of meanings, collocations, and grammatical patterns. The sources of data used in this study are 1) Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online (LDOCE) and 2) the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). It was revealed that the two synonyms share the same core meaning, but still differ in terms of their senses of meanings, collocations, and grammatical patterns. For this reason, the two words cannot be used interchangeable in all contexts. In addition, the findings indicate that corpus data could provide some additional data which cannot be retrieved in the learner dictionary.

Defining your P's and Q's: Describing and Prescribing Politeness in Dictionaries

The politeness markers please, thank you, and sorry provide a raft of problems for lexicographical treatment. Grammatically, they fall between categories. As pragmatic elements, they defy easy definition, and variations in their usage are subtle. Few words are prescribed so vigorously as politeness markers (always say please and thank you), yet they do not fit the stereotype of a prescription, in that there is no proscription. This study investigates how please, thank you, thanks, and sorry are treated in thirteen monolingual dictionaries of English, finding variation in (a) the extent to which their interactional functions are covered, (b) the types of information contained in definitions, and (c) the (sometimes very subtle) ways in which information about the potential (im)polite effects of these words is communicated. Learner dictionaries generally provide more explicit information about the polysemy of these expressions, while traditional American lexicography provides much less useful information, in part because of a tendency to define interactional word senses using similar formulae to those for denotational senses. The best definition practice emphasizes the actions the words perform and the contexts in which the actions take place.

Enhancing the Learnability of Chinese–English Dictionaries for Chinese as a Foreign Language Learners: The Neglected Legacy of Robert Morrison in His Compilation of Wuche Yunfu (1819)

In previous studies on learner lexicography, design features of both the content and presentation of learner's dictionaries are the two major research concerns. The quality assessment of learner's dictionaries also covers the two dimensions. Terms used for evaluating them are respectively usability or availability for the former and findability or accessibility for the latter. However, the lexicographical construction of learnability, which takes into account the users' reference and learning needs, remains virtually unexplored either theoretically or practically. Compared to the features of dictionary design mentioned above, as the design philosophy of learner lexicography is worth more serious consideration. The present paper aims at exploring the lexicographical notion of by way of introducing the neglected legacy of Robert Morrison in his compilation of Wuche Yunfu (五车韵府) (1819), which is characterized by a high degree of learnability illustrated in the dictionary entries. Morrison's pioneering efforts may help with the conceptual clarification of in compiling learner's dictionaries, bilingual ones in particular. Moreover, it is hoped that the recognition of Morrison's lexicographical practice will be beneficial to the future production of better Chinese–English dictionaries for non-native Chinese learners.

Towards Chinese Learner's Dictionaries for Foreigners Living in China: Some Problems Related to Lemma Selection

During the past decades, various dictionaries for foreign learners of Chinese have seen the light. Except for one picture dictionary which is almost completely ignored in the academic literature, none of these dictionaries has taken into account the special needs which foreigners living in China and learning Chinese may have. This contribution will discuss these needs with special focus on lemma selection. We argue that foreigners living in China, in order to meet their lexicographical needs, require additional words typically occurring in social contexts in which they often find themselves, whether or not these words have a high corpus-frequency. As a solution we therefore recommend a set of selection criteria that combines corpus frequency and context relevance. Finally, we discuss how logfiles reflecting user behaviour can be used as a new and very reliable empirical source for lemma selection for an online Chinese learner's dictionary.

The Descriptions of Phrasal Verbs in Language Reference Materials

Multi-word units like phrasal verbs (PVs) are very common in English, indicating their usefulness in everyday settings. Despite the importance of PVs in both written and spoken discourse, it was reported that language learners generally have great difficulties in understanding and using this linguistic form due to various factors. However, studies examining the treatment of PVs in language reference materials, which may also contribute to learners’ difficulties in understanding PVs are still lacking. Thus, the present study investigates how language reference materials, in particular those commonly prescribed to Malaysian school learners, address and describe this very common and important linguistic feature. Secondary school prescribed textbooks and two learner dictionaries were examined. All sections in the textbooks and dictionaries entries that discuss the selected common PVs were analyzed. Descriptive analysis was conducted to examine how this particular language form is described by looking at the selection of PVs, as well as information provided with respect to PVs. Results of the present study have revealed a number of useful findings with regard to the selection and description of PVs in both reference materials which to date, have not been found in any other studies in Malaysia, to inform relevant parties for further actions.

On Building a Specialized Chinese-English /English-Chinese Electronic Dictionary for Chinese Business English Learners

Based on needs analysis, this paper studies the needs of Business English (BE) learners on acquiring business terms. An online questionnaire was conducted on full-time undergraduate business English majors and international business majors in the School of International Business English at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and 254 valid questionnaires were collected. The finding shows that a customized specialized C-E/E-C electronic dictionary is in great need during the 4-year-learning process of BE learners, while disadvantages of existing C-E/E-C electronic dictionaries are spotted. According to the data collected from the survey, author discuss the disadvantages of existing Chinese-English/English-Chinese (C-E/E-C) electronic dictionaries and tries to put forward improvement suggestions on building a specialized C-E/E-C electronic dictionary from the perspective of BE learners. This research will help business-English- term teaching and specialized C-E/E-C electronic dictionary compiling.

GUIDELINES FOR THE DESIGN AND GENERATION OF CORPUS-BASED TERMINOLOGY-ORIENTED INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIAL

A great deal of research has been conducted to exploit linguistic corpus data for language learning and teaching use. In the integrative corpora and language pedagogy stream of research diverse practical purposes coexist at the front and have presently become consolidated practice -learner corpora, ELT dictionary-making corpora, learner dictionary corpora, EAP corpora, specialised domain corpora, English-taught programmes corpora such as Content Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) or English-medium Instruction (EMI). This paper outlines a framework for corpus exploitation process towards the design of instructional material for the learning of terminology of a specialised domain which is applicable to ESP courses. Our proposal advocates for a protocolised use of written corpora to devise a resource for teaching terminology and, accordingly, suggests guidelines to ESP teachers/ practitioners who undertake the tasks of extracting corpus data and adopt the role of material designers and, occasionally, of computer programme developers. To accomplish this, in the first place, specialised corpus compilation and design criteria have been customised to guarantee consistency across the pedagogic ends, the functional language needs of the ESP user and the specific learning objects within the DDL approach framework. In the second place, search strings used for semi-automatic text mining actions are illustrated as well as samples of terminology-oriented activities that can be automatically generated using concordancers and annotating computational tools. Future research might apply our proposal to further language contexts.

LEMMATIZING TEXTBOOK CORPUS FOR LEARNER DICTIONARY OF BASIC VOCABULARY

The purpose of this study is to lemmatize the vocabulary used in textbooks with the purpose to provide information for dictionary entries that are relevant to the learners. Although dictionaries for learners are commercially and electronically available, they may not be relevant to the learners’ needs for vocabulary learning in class, or may not have been designed for specific pedagogical purposes. To bridge this gap, the vocabulary used in some textbook series were analyzed using the vocabulary profiler available in Lextutor.com to identify the lemmas of different frequency levels. The analysis shows that the total number of lemmas in the textbooks were approximately about 58% of the total number of the most frequently used lemmas in the New General Service List (Browne, Culligan, & Phillips, 2013). Further exploration of the lexicogrammatical environment in the textbook corpus discovered lexical items that behave differently with regard to functions and meanings. These findings should provide lexicographers or teachers with useful information about word entries for a relevant learner dictionary to be used in the classroom.

Compilation of Japanese learners’ dictionaries

The number of Japanese language learners outside Japan, especially of advanced level learners, is increasing yearly. From the intermediate level onwards, they could profit from bilingual Japanese learners’ dictionaries in their native language, but in most linguistic areas of the world only very simple dictionaries for beginners and for tourists are available. Our project therefore aims at supporting the compilation of Japanese language learners’ dictionaries for intermediate and advanced learners by building a database of contents needed when editing a Japanese language learners’ dictionary, and offering it online. This 4 year project is going to be running from 2011 to 2014. Two surveys were conducted: a survey of the vocabulary used in textbooks of Japanese as a foreign language and a quantitative survey on the targeted area of the Japanese language in a large-scale corpus, in order to select the list of words to be included in the database, and a general list of basic vocabulary for Japanese language instruction was created. At present, usage examples are being compiled on the basis of this vocabulary list, and a database system is being developed. A prototype of a database search interface and download system has been completed. The database is going to include various types of information which are considered to be useful for learners, such as grammar, phonetics, synonyms, collocations, stylistics, learners’ errors etc. These are presently being studied in detail to be made public in 2014.

Specialised Dictionaries for LSP Learners in Hungarian Theory and Practice of Lexicography

The paper covers three topics: First, it surveys the expectations and requirements articulated by Hungarian specialised lexicographers towards modern, innovative, printed and electronic specialised dictionaries for LSP learners. Second, a Hungarian publishing house is introduced that plays an active role in publishing modern specialised dictionaries. Finally, three bilingual dictionaries of economics of this publisher are reviewed as to how much they comply with the expectations from modern, up-to-date printed and electronic specialised dictionaries for LSP learners.

Representing the Cultural Dimension of Meaning in Learner's Dictionaries — From the Perspective of Chinese EFL Learners in L2 Reception

Meaning in dictionaries ranks as the most frequent data type consulted by language learners. An extensive range of devices have been developed to represent the meaning of lexical items in learner's dictionaries. Starting from interpreting foreign language learners' lexicographic needs in specific user situations, this paper aims to examine the implications of customizing definitions from the cultural perspective with specific reference to Chinese learners of English. The purpose of this paper is three-fold: i) to understand the status quo of the lexicographic practice of English learner's dictionaries in terms of representing the cultural dimension of a lexical item; ii) to interpret the impacts of foreign language learners' language and cultural background on their lexicographic needs in terms of cultural aspects in L2 reception; iii) to address the identified problems with present lexicographic practices through model articles. It is expected that the findings in this paper can shed some light on interpreting other ethnic groups of learners' lexicographic needs in different situations and contribute to improving the services of learner's dictionaries in the future as well.