engleski

A corpus-driven approach to lexicographic definitions: The representation of meaning in the electronic Dictionary of Croatian Idioms

One of the major concerns in lexicography, both paper and electronic, are defining strategies. Several studies investigated what dictionary users want most from their dictionaries and the results showed that finding meaning is among their primary needs (cf. Wingate 2002 ; Tarp 2009 ; Lew 2010). The notion of meaning is especially relevant in the case of idioms1 – conventionalized multiword expressions with figurative meaning, or traditionally, meaning which is ‘not the sum of its parts’ (see Fernando 1996 ; Moon 1998). When it comes to the lexicographic treatment of idioms, there were two major milestones: computer corpora, given that corpus data provide many examples of real usage and context in which idioms tend to occur, and digital medium, which increased search options and eliminated space constraints. In this text we are presenting functionalities that contribute to the representation of meaning in the electronic corpus-driven Dictionary of Croatian Idioms, which is currently available in a beta version on the Lexonomy platform. The macrostructure is organized as follows: the headword is the most frequent variant form of the idiom, i. e., the whole construction. The dictionary entry also contains other variant forms of the idiom, explanation in the form of a reduced sentence (which is best suited to Croatian) and examples of use. Boxes with additional information regarding usage or wordplay are placed at the bottom of entry. A search box gives results if the user inserts any component of an idiom, as well as any variant component which is noted in the entry. It is a true electronic feature (cf. Prinsloo/van Graan 2021), which significantly upgraded the issue of searching in regard to printed dictionaries.

Corpus-driven approach ; idioms ; representation of meaning in the dictionary ; defining strategies ; true electronic feature

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