Apropos macrostructure

• Categorisation and search functions
• Semasiological macrostructure
  • form based
  • assigning meaning to a form.
  • Example:
    • word A: surface structure
    • assign definition and usage of the word
• Onomasiological macrostructure
  • concept/meaning oriented
  • assigns a form to a meaning
• Macrostructure possible based on each lexical data category in the microstructure

Why wait for morphology to finish with this?

• Headword selection in Latin dictionaries for verbs: 1st person singular
• German: infinitive
• English: morphological stem (!)
• How about languages with inflectional affixes?

Sorting strategies

• Alphabet: where do you include h@me; m@il; 4 u @ w@rk?
• Other alphabets: /sʌmθɪŋ/ Unicode value
• Syllaberies: し shi;ぎゃ gya Hiragana; Katakana/Kanji

Mesostructure

• Generalisations
  • inflectional patterns
  • derivational options
  • ...
• Metadata: information about the lexicon
  • lexicographer(s) names
  • applied theories
  • language
  • date
  • character set

Lexicon megastructure

• For print dictionaries
• Titlepage
• Front matter
• Back matter
• Lexicon body
• "Interjections" in the lexicon body

Interim summary

• Lexicon structures
• Lexicon and lexical relations
• Lexicon and morphology
• Lexicon and lexical semantics
• Lexicon and related models
• Motivation for lexicons

Structures of a lexicon

Structures of a lexicon

Structures of a lexicon

Structures of a lexicon

Special relations between words

Special relations between words

Special relations between words

Special relations between words

Lexicography and other linguistic fields

Creating lexicons: why?

• Studying unknown languages
• Language documentation
• Syntax
• Natural Language Processing
• Artificial Intelligence
• Typological studies
• Psycho-linguistics
• Language education

Studying the unknown

• Understanding unknown words: form - meaning ("reader's dictionary")
  • encyclopedic dictionaries
  • bilingual dictionaries
• Expressing concepts: meaning form ("writer's dictionaries")
  • bilingual dictionaries
  • travel dictionaries
  • terminological dictionaries

Language documentation

• Preserving culture
• Enable long time translation
• ...

Syntax

Integral part of well founded grammars

Natural language processing

• Spellchecker
• Grammar checker
• Dialogue systems
• ...

Artificial Intelligence

• Knowledge modelling
• Web technology
• Text classification

Typological studies (+variation studies)

• Comparing languages
• Sociolinguistics
  • Lexical variation between different groups
  • Gender Studies
  • ...
• Dialectology/Regional varieties

Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics

• Brain activation of lexical clusters
• Associative patterns
• Utterance composition/slips of the tongue
• Language acquisition
• Language attrition

Language education

• Determining the most important words to teach
• Words to exclude
• Vocabulary lists
• Impressing the student...

Procedure for creating lexicons

• Introspection
• Empirical investigation
  • Questionnaires
  • Corpus investigations

Homework for next week

1. Select three areas from different sections above in which lexicons play a major role. Think of a concrete scenario for each where a lexicon might come handy. Which data categories do you need? How would you sort your dictionary? Is it a writer's or reader's dictionary? Why?
2. Find at least three different word frequency lists for English on the web sorted by frequency. How do you explain the differences? Do you think genre, gender, social class, age group, region relate to that? Why (not)?
3. Find a linguistic questionnaire on the web that can be used for investigating words used in various languages. What is the structure of the resulting lexicon?

Merry Xmas

... and a happy new year!

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