Lexicographic Resources Research Articles

Application Of the National Corpus Of The Kazakh Language In Linguistic Research

National corpora are essential tools in modern linguistics, offering valuable data for analyzing language structures and their connection to the world.The primary goal of this study is to enhance the perception and analysis of the Kazakh language. It introduces a methodological approach that deepens the understanding of the structure and features of Kazakh.The research utilizes frequency analysis, syntactic parsing, and statistical methods to examine Kazakh language texts. The results demonstrate that the National Corpus provides extensive data for studying linguistic patterns. Frequency analysis identifies the most common words and phrases, while syntactic analysis uncovers patterns and connections between words. The study also highlights the variation in word usage and constructions, showing the language's adaptability to modern communication.The findings are applicable to lexicography, semantics, and syntax studies of the Kazakh language. Additionally, they offer practical benefits in language teaching, lexicographic resource creation, machine translation, and natural language processing.In conclusion, the research provides valuable tools for in-depth analysis of the Kazakh language, with broad applications across linguistic studies and practical fields.

ASSESSING THE REPERCUSSIONS OF DICTIONARY FORMATS ON SCHOLARLY WRITING OUTCOMES: UNDERTAKING MIXED-METHOD APPROACH

The complexity of foreign vocabulary and the multifaceted meanings of word combinations often pose significant challenges to language learners, potentially deterring their motivation. Dictionaries, however, serve as pivotal tools in surmounting these obstacles. Extant research has extensively explored the intersection of language acquisition and dictionary utilization, revealing a marked preference among EFL students for online or electronic dictionaries over traditional paper formats. Despite the recognized importance of dictionary use in fostering language proficiency, there remains a notable paucity of research investigating the specific impact of different dictionary formats on learners' writing skills. This study adopted a quasi-experimental between-groups design, including a control group and two experimental groups, involving a cohort of 67 Chinese EFL graduates from an international college in China. Over a ten-week experimental period, participants in the experimental groups utilized digital and paper dictionaries as reference aids for abstract writing, whereas the control group was deprived of any dictionary usage. Following the experiment, a semi-structured interview was conducted to assess the benefits of dictionary use in abstract writing and to elicit learners' perceptions of digital versus print English dictionaries. The weekly abstract writing submissions from all three groups were collected and meticulously analyzed. The findings revealed that both digital and paper dictionaries significantly enhanced the abstract writing performance of the Chinese EFL graduates in the experimental groups. Notably, participants who used digital dictionaries demonstrated a substantial and statistically significant improvement in overall abstract writing quality and language usage compared to those in the print-dictionary group. Furthermore, the study reported that digital dictionaries were particularly favored by Chinese EFL graduates due to their numerous advantageous attributes, including their reliability and efficacy in identifying appropriate linguistic expressions and vocabulary. In conclusion, the empirical evidence underscores the efficacy of digital dictionaries in augmenting the writing skills of EFL learners, suggesting a potential pedagogical shift towards the integration of digital lexicographical resources in language education curricula.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0705/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

The Evolution of Pedagogical Lexicography From the 1990s to the DigitalEnvironment: An Analysis of Open Source Materials

The dictionary is a tool with a clear didactic function: explaining the intrinsic characteristics of the terms in a specific context, with the objective that the user can both understand and use words appropriately. However, since the introduction of new technologies and the internet, the way of dealing with lexicographical work has changed, as have the ways of consultation. While dictionaries used to be conceptualized as large paper books, they are now enriched and interconnected online platforms. The proposed topic in the present text may be of interest to explain the current pedagogical lexicography landscape and to know what open lexicographic resources can be used by students and teachers of Spanish as a mother language (L1) and as a second language (L2) or as a foreign language (ELE); since, thanks to these databases, a representative sample of the language in use is provided.

Health literacy and language teaching: data-based host language lexicons

Using a corpus-based approach, this paper presents methods and results for assessing, extracting, and describing the core vocabulary relevant to healthcare access among migrant populations. The aim is to bridge the gap between the basic information conveyed to people arriving in Portugal and the materials as well as other lexicographic resources used in language teaching. The work includes identifying available resources and/or sources for compiling the relevant dataset for healthcare access; selecting available tools for corpus inquiry; testing and comparing results from different functionalities and different lexical statistics measures available in the tools; manual filtering of the data; and analyzing the results and the extracted lexicon. The obtained results reflect the organization of the extracted lexicon in subdomains, the organization of the items within each subdomain, the relationship with common vocabulary, and the extraction of authentic examples from the corpus.

CURRENT STATE AND DEVELOPMENT VECTORS OF LEXICOGRAPHIC PRACTICE IN RUSSIA AND ABROAD

The article analyzes the current trends in the development of lexicographic practice in Russia and abroad. The authors proceed from the fact that the evolution of lexicography as a socially oriented science is determined by a multitude of external and internal factors, dominated by changes in the social life, transformation of users’ data acquisition and reading habits, improvement of technologies, etc. Shifts in the lexicographic paradigm result in the unification of approaches to the creation of dictionaries as well as their content and structure, which indicates the integration of the global scientific and methodological space of lexicography. Lexicographic resources aspire for hybridization, which provides for the solution of a wide range of tasks, use of corpus data, “client-orientation”, which changes the user concept of dictionaries towards personalization of query and dictionary browsing modes. Dictionaries are created in an electronic environment using the capacities of new digital tools and artificial intelligence. Lexicography for specific purposes, represented primarily by terminological dictionaries, databases, ontologies and thesauri, remains a priority. Bilingual and multilingual lexicography is actively developing too, witnessing a significant growth in the number of language parallels and the expansion of the repertoire of services facilitating translation and communication processes. On the other hand, the development of lexicography is determined by national interests, which manifests itself in the creation of dictionaries that form and preserve the national identity of the members of the linguoculture described in the dictionary. The lexicographic concept of cultural heritage is being formed. It is framed by dictionaries of language and culture, phraseological and paremiological dictionaries, onomasticons, dictionaries of idiolects, mythology, folklore, etc. The lexicographic practice adequately responds to the challenges of the time, improving the existing and developing some new methods and techniques of creating dictionaries, thus formatting the general scientific methodological paradigm.

Personal/impersonal and subject/null subject phenomena in the multi-structural languages

The study examines the functional potential of impersonal pronouns in different languages. The aim of this study is to analyze personal/impersonal and subject/null subject phenomena in multi-structural languages. The novelty of the study is to establish the role of the pronoun in personal and impersonal aspects. To achieve the aim of the study, the following methods are used: lexico-grammatical analysis, structural analysis, contrast analysis, and interpretative analysis of artistic and lexicographic texts. The comparative research was based on Russian, English, German, and French lexicographic resources and examples from artistic discourse in Russian, English, German, and French with their translations. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the impersonal pronoun is a homonym for the personal pronoun of the 3rd person unit. In grammatical studies, the impersonal pronoun stands out as an independent category. A unit known in grammar as the 3rd person pronoun (in German es, in English it, in French il, ce) has a broader functional potential than other pronouns. Namely, it can act in the text not only as a substitute for another word but can also indicate syntactic structures of different complexity: from a word to a complex of propositions. The prospect is to study the discursive nature of impersonality in various types of discourse in different linguocultures.

L’univers de la Blockchain : étude d’une terminologie émergente aux contours nébuleux à partir d’un corpus secondaire

The World of Blockchain: a Study of an Emerging Terminology with Nebulous Contours from a Secondary Corpus. Defined in 2008 as a large database with the unique feature of being shared simultaneously by all its users, the blockchain interests various actors as it presents itself as a technology with revolutionary potential. The terms of this new field of knowledge are increasingly penetrating the world’s institutional, economic and financial discourses, although this is not always matched by a real awareness of the concepts included in the world of blockchain, which nevertheless remains very nebulous. In this contribution we have analysed the emerging terms used in French in the constitution of the specialised lexicon of this field of knowledge from the point of view of language planning actions relating to these terms. To do so, we took into consideration lexicographic and terminographic resources available online and constituting a secondary corpus of study, which enabled us to show that the emerging terminology of blockchain lends well itself to studies in terminological neology. In fact, this terminology cannot be considered completely stable either at the formal level or at the semantic level. As for the terminological resources consulted, although they are very useful for understanding blockchain concepts and for linguistic orientation, our study reveals that there is no unanimity with regard to some of the linguistic equivalents proposed in French for these English terminological units. This leads us to consider the need for in-depth analyses of the French terminology of blockchain based on a primary study corpus. Keywords: blockchain, terminology, terminography, lexicology, terminological neology

Lexiques et corpus au service de la littératie océanique : propriétés et relations lexicales dans le domaine de la faune marine

Lexicons and Corpora Serving Ocean Literacy: Properties and Lexical Relations in the Field of Marine Fauna. In this article, we present the first steps of the Ocean Literacy project, which aims to promote the creation and processing of a comparable medium-sized specialised corpus (French-Italian) in the field of marine fauna as well as the creation of a lexicographic resource to describe the lexical relations between the terminological units (TUs) of the field in question, using the theoretical framework of Explanatory and Combinatorial Lexicology. After describing the methodological and theoretical choices made when compiling and processing the ZooCor (fr-it) corpus, we will proceed to the analysis of the French term candidates resulting from semi-automatic extraction using TermoStat software. We will then describe the general architecture of the lexicographic resource ZooTerm which is currently under development, and explain, with the help of a terminographical data model and concrete examples, why we chose to use lexical functions to systematically encode the relations between terms associated with the marine fauna domain. Finally, we will discuss the results and the main theoretical issues raised from this exploratory work. Keywords: lexicon, corpus, ocean literacy, marine fauna, lexical relations

Von Duden bis Deepl: zur Verwendung lexikografischer Ressourcen im Südtiroler Sprachunterricht (L1, L2, L3) im Spannungs-feld normativer Vorgaben und schulischer Praxis

The paper deals with the role of lexicographic resources in the South Tyrolean (i. e. the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen, Italy) educational context against the backdrop of legal provisions (Das neue Autonomiestatut 2019/1972) and the relevance of language education on the part of educational institutions (Rahmenrichtlinien DE, Rahmenrichtlinien IT), taking into account both normative requirements and their application in practice. The focus is on two questions that have been little researched so far, not only in the specific context but also internationally (cf. Abel 2022; Nied Curcio 2022): To what extent are lexicographic resources represented in the school framework guidelines? How are they actually used in schools? For the case study presented here, the South Tyrolean framework guidelines provided by the German and the Italian school boards at all levels of education for German and Italian as first (L1) and second (L2) languages, as well as for English as a foreign language (L3) were examined by means of a document analysis. In a second step, a questionnaire survey with language teachers at all school levels (German and Italian as L1/L2, English as L3; number of survey respondents: 644) determined the actual use of lexicographic resources.

Sviluppo della competenza plurilingue nell’era digitale

The multilingual approach plays an important role in language teaching, therefore also in the teaching of German as a foreign/second language (DaF = Deutsch als Fremdsprache; DaZ = Deutsch als Zweitsprache) and Italian as a foreign/second language. Aim of this volume is to show how metalinguistic and cross-linguistic awareness, central pillars of multilingual didactics, can be developed through the use of lexicographic resources, corpora and new technologies. The contributions present research and didactic experiences of various kinds that are of interest to different levels of education (school, university, etc.); although the didactics of German is in the focus of many essays, references to other languages, primarily Italian, but also English, Romanian, Ladin and other Italian dialect varieties, are not missing.

What should a dictionary contain to be useful for translators?

Translators are one of the main groups of dictionary users. The design, revision, and compilation of any kind of lexicographic or terminographic resource for translators should thus be based on their specific needs. To this end, the research examined the importance attributed by 221 BA and MA trainee translators to the various types of information in a dictionary entry, with a view to determining which are most useful for translation. Also identified were the differences between an ideal entry for translators and one for the general public. The results showed that the students’ answers varied depending on their year of study, as well as whether they were on the BA or MA program. The data collection tool was a self-reported questionnaire. The dictionary information most valued by trainee translators was usage contexts, definitions, phraseology, and translation equivalents. Furthermore, students at higher academic levels attributed more importance to usage contexts and phraseology. This study highlights the need to include phraseological and contextual information in the entries of translation-oriented dictionaries.

Le Processus de Numérisation de la Lexicographie en Roumanie: Présent et Perspectives

Digitalization Process of the Lexicography in Romania: Present and Perspectives. In Romania, the lexicographic research is in a continuous development, in a natural process of digitalization. This step is absolutely mandatory for creating electronic instruments and resources, which are necessary for supporting the Romanian language and culture. The Romanian academic specialists in linguistics and applied informatics, as well as in computational linguistics fields, have initiated research projects by which they valorise the non-digitized resources by acquiring them in electronic formats or by which they create dictionaries and new resources and instruments directly in electronic format. The digitalization process put the Romanian academic lexicography at a level comparable to the international lexicography and allows the connection with lexicographic projects from abroad and the inclusion of Romania in the sphere of interest of the great international lexicographic networks. Keywords: Romanian lexicography, e-lexicography, electronic lexicographic corpus, digitalization, digital lexicographical resources, evolution, perspectives

English School Science Dictionaries: A Comparative Analysis

ABSTRACT: Science is transferred and represented through its terminology. The acquisition of specialized knowledge is progressive and begins in elementary school. Even though science dictionaries for primary school students greatly facilitate this type of knowledge acquisition, such dictionaries are difficult to find, especially in languages such as Spanish. In contrast, English has a wide variety of pedagogical lexicographical resources. However, bilingual school science dictionaries are practically non-existent. This paper describes and compares a set of eight monolingual English school science dictionaries with a view to discussing what should be considered for the future design of a bilingual English–Spanish school science dictionary.

La fraise : histoire d’un accessoire et de sa terminologie

Between specialised and general language, the domain of fashion is of great interest for the study of terminology: a terminology that, following the trends of an era, evolves over time and space. In this context, this study focuses on a fashion accessory of ancient origin and on its terminology: the ruff.Very fashionable in the 16th and 17th century, after having symbolised the austerity and rigour of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, the ruff became a symbol of elegance and power. Nowadays, some fashion companies have reintroduced this accessory whose value has changed: contemporary ruffs are extravagant accessories for their shapes and sizes, that inevitably evoke the 16th and 17th century. The study of ruffs requires heterogeneous sources, such as manuals of fashion history, technical documents and lexicographic resources. Moreover, iconographic sources – paintings, sculptures, sketches – are to be collected and analysed, since they clarify similitudes and differences between different types of ruffs. After having described the most important sources for this study, the history of ruff is presented into details, in order to describe its different models. Then, a terminological analysis is conducted: the French terminology of this accessory is presented, with a focus on the difference between the termsfraise, collerette and gorgerette. The French terminology is compared to the Italian one and a French-Italian glossary is prepared in order to answer to the needs of experts of communication, translator and people working in the fashion field.

Linguacultural Representations in Specialized Migration Discourse: A Lexicographic Perspective

In the last two decades increasing movements of people across countries, due to economic and social reasons, have produced high levels of exchanges among speakers of different languages where English is used globally as a lingua-franca (ELF). Moreover, migration flows across nation states (especially from non-Western countries to Western ones) have encouraged the movement of people, mainly of African and Asian origin, from students to skilled workers, who are often involved in English-mediated interactions where migrants’ native linguacultural background inevitably connects to the language spoken by the host community (e.g., in European countries), and at the same time shapes the use of English as a global means of interaction (Canagarajah, 2013). ELF cross-cultural interactions and translingual processes, naturally occurring in intercultural settings, are particularly remarkable, since they plainly show how ELF speakers, engaged in intercultural interactions, differently appropriate the English language, according to their own native linguacultural patterns, and to specific pragmalinguistic purposes and processes (Guido, 2012, 2018; Mauranen, 2018). This study will address the influence that lexical actualizations in authentic spoken encounters, as well as in written productions in specialized contexts have on the current role and function of English as an international language and which deserve coverage and consideration in lexicographic resources. Research studies on migration narratives, language mediation, cross-cultural conceptual representation and reception of traumatic events, where ELF lexical processes are often activated by the speakers involved, are particularly important to address the development of linguacultural representations that should be covered in dictionaries, lexicons and other lexicographic resources, especially online.

Lexical Innovation in Ecotourism Discourse: The Case of Eco(-)lodge

As repositories of the cultures whose language they describe, lexicographical resources partake in the (re)production of dominant ideologies. This is especially relevant with regard to the current ecological crisis. With this in mind, the present article contributes to research within the field of ecolexicography. Combining critical lexicography with ecolinguistics, it acknowledges the role of lexicographical resources in shaping the users’ awareness of environmental protection. In particular, this study investigates lexical innovation within ecotourism discourse in order to understand whether “ecotourism talk” can respond to its sustainable objectives. The research focusses on one specific instance, the noun eco(-)lodge, which is examined by searching both native speakers’ and learners’ dictionaries and specialised and general English corpora. Results highlight a partial clash between the two types of sources. While examples of usage mostly connote ecolodges as a type of luxury and exclusive accommodation placed in natural—i.e., non-urban—contexts, dictionaries define them solely with reference to their supposed minimal environmental impact. Outcomes suggest a semantic bleaching of the combining form eco- in ecotourism discourse, which is exploited in lexical creations to advertise a form of niche tourism that does not always align with ecological concerns.

Dictionary of IT terms as a tool for Russian language studies and linguodidactics in the context of digitalization in education

The authors present a comprehensive description of the main features of a new vocabulary project aimed at expanding and systematizing the methodological competencies of a modern teacher of philology. The relevance of the work is determined both by the object of research itself, which is a corpus of terminological units relevant in the digital pedagogical space, and by the need to fix numerous changes in linguistic/linguopedagogical/philological education determined by the transition to convergent learning. The aim of the research is to characterize the specifics of the dictionary entry structure in this lexicographic resource, to describe the principles and methods of selecting terminological units, to identify ways of their defining and translation. The research material includes Russian terminological systems and their English versions, correlated with pedagogical and lexical phenomena of the Russian language. The following scientific methods and approaches were used: component analysis of dictionary entries, comparative method, functional analysis of English and Russian terminology (if there is a translated version), linguistic-cognitive analysis, data systematization and clustering, qualification data interpretation. The results of the study are as follows: a set of problems related to the constitution and categorization of new terminological units explicating the transformation of the educational paradigm is identified and described; the features of lexicographic definition and presentation of indices are characterized; various ways of defining IT terms in the aspect of foreign language teaching methods are proposed, examples of dictionary entries are given. The perspectives of the study are in further expanding, specifying and systematizing IT terminology in modern language education and creating on this base new lexicographic projects which would intensify teaching in Russian higher education institutions.

Lexicography, Culture and Mediation. Or Why a Good Lexicographer Must Also Be a Good Cultural Mediator

Culture-bound items are often omitted in lexicographic resources, and when they are present, they are rarely described in an appropriate way, especially in bilingual dictionaries: the listed equivalents often do not reflect the meaning of the cultural word precisely, usage examples may be missing and above all — especially for a non-native speaker — important information on the cultural level is omitted (Nied Curcio 2020). Communication problems and misunderstandings which are triggered not by divergences on the linguistic level, but on the cultural level, can arise between speakers of different languages and cultures. Specific cultural knowledge and an advanced level of intercultural competence are required. Mediation of texts and concepts and using mediation strategies can provide significant input developing the lexicographer's intercultural competence, which is essential for an adequate lexico­graphic description of cultural aspects. Mediators often resort to their plurilinguistic and pluricul­tural repertoire and use mediation strategies. The same skills can also be harnessed by lexicogra­phers for adequate and successful descriptions of culture-bound items in lexicographic resources. In this article the focus is on the concept of mediation; the Companion Volume of the Common Euro­pean Frame­work of Reference for Languages (2018) shows parallels in the requirements of skills between mediators and lexicographers, and advocates the use of mediation strategies by lexicogra­phers to ensure that cultural information is adequately represented in the dictionary. Keywords: bilingual dictionaries, cultural items, translation, inter­cultural competence, mediation, mediation strategies, plurilingual com­petence, pluricultural competence

Cross-Linguistic Correspondences and Current Problems in Terminography

The paper investigates the current development of digital technologies, its terminology, the problems in cross-linguistic terminography and shows that at present terminography becomes an autonomous and leading multidimensional linguistic digital discipline. Its most urgent task is to create effective digital termilonological resources of cross-linguistic correspondences to authentic extended language-specific and idiomatic digital terminology in English, including its equivalents in Russian. A wide collection of corpus data, compiled for the last five years (over 1 mil. words) out of leading authentic journals and books in English on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and corresponding authentic texts in Russian, provided with translation of titles, abstracts and key words from Russian into English, as well as the analysis of computer translation systems, shows that contemporary English-Russian dictionaries and digital lexicographic resources need serious improvement. It can be based on contemporary linguistic knowledge in cross-linguistic English–Russian and Russian–English correspondences, particularly concerning “translation universals”, such as explication, implication and normalization.

Spazi di apprendimento virtuali per la didattica della lingua tedesca

E-learninng Spaces for Teaching German as a Foreign Language. This contribution, which takes into account the online didactic affordances in a German Language and Translation course for university students, is divided into two parts: the former focuses on the potential of the chat as a didactic tool; the latter shows the activities performed on an e-learning platform during a German Language and Translation course. Specifically, attention will focus on examples of chat interaction, error correction and concrete teaching activities – supplemented by targeted use of corpora and digital lexicographic resources – involving forms of fixation and memorization, while leaving room for reasoned, creative and conscious forms of autonomy.