It's about Time: On coherence and simplicity in dictionary entries

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Notes

¹Hartmann and James, 110.

²Svensén, 115.

³Hanks, 111 – 12; also cf. van der Meer, “On Defining.”

⁴Hanks, 112.

⁵See References section for full bibliographical details.

⁶This umbrella term was proposed by Heuberger. I use this term here to avoid the terminological confusion of SIGNPOST, GUIDEWORD, SHORT CUT, etc. as used in the various dictionaries, as if they all invented the wheel independently. Catchwords are short capitalised indications, not necessarily sense definitions themselves, of the meaning or use described under that heading. They are intended to lead the user quickly to the desired information.

⁷In fact, as to layout, they are presented as separate entries.

⁸Cf. Csábi.

⁹Scholfield.

¹⁰Wierzbicka, 160.

¹¹We may then have to consider the option of distinguishing homonyms.

¹²I here quote from my 2002 paper, “Dictionary Entry and Access”, 514: “The semantic profile: the semantic profile should be written in such a way that the average user can grasp the main outline of the meaning of an entry-word and will in many cases not really need to continue his search if his primary aim is merely to understand the meaning of a word. Ideally, any particular use and particular combination should be interpretable (at least in its main outlines) with the aid of the profile. In case this does not succeed or more details are required, access from the profile to the section offering more examples should be as straightforward as possible by means of numbering. Should this still not be enough the third section (with fixed combinations) will have to be accessed, but then the profile's role has come to an end. Experienced users may often guess that this is necessary and may then skip the first two sections.”

¹³For meaning 2 no further examples are needed.

¹⁴In the case of metaphor and metonymy we might also speak of “transferred” senses.

¹⁵As is well known, metaphorical, etc. senses may become so frequent that the once basic meaning is lost, and in such cases the “new” senses are basic.

¹⁶And, of course, as manipulable and hence flexible wholes.

¹⁷As in Geeraerts.

¹⁸On p. 132 Geeraerts writes “the readings involved are part of a prototypical cluster, precisely because such a cluster ensures the internal coherence of the lexical category”. By “lexical category” he means the semantic structure of a lexical item (p. 20).

¹⁹Please recall the quote from Svensén (note 2) in my introduction.

²⁰Seemingly to some extent arbitrarily, given the varying numbers of distinguished senses in the several dictionaries.

²¹Geeraerts.

²²Both context-restricted and context-free.

²³See note 12.

²⁴For meaning 2 no further examples are needed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geart van der Meer

Geart van der Meer is at the Department of English, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.