Seeing clearly: Frame Semantic, Psycholinguistic, and Cross ...

CHAPTER 5. WHAT THE DICTIONARIES SAY 211
Cross-linguistic Comparisons of Entry Structure
Next, we examine the structure of the entries in the major bilingual dictionaries in
more detail, with a view to comparing across languages. For this purpose, for each language,
we show a table with rows representing our usual list of senses (in a di erent order) and the
columns representing the sense divisions of the dictionary in question. The rows have been
ordered so that related senses are grouped together, and groups are separated by horizontal
lines. Then for each sense division, we have classi ed the de nition into one of our senses,
and counted the examples (if any) which fallinto each of our senses. Each such table is
followed by another table listing the de nitions for each of the the sense divisions; these are
taken from the full listings on previous pages, but are repeated here for convenience.
Let us begin by looking at Table 5.3 on page 213, which shows the sense divi-
sions for the Collins Spanish dictionary. The column on the left shows our sense divisions.
The rst group of senses are those that have to do with physical vision, eye, process,
spectate, tour, faculty, hallucinate, read, and vide. The next is the cognition
group, recognize, classify, envision, discourse, andnews, followed by a small group
having to do with human complements, visit, consult, andaudience. The fourth group
is a heterogeneous collection of fairly speci c senses, accompany, determine, ensure,
experience, setting, andgambling. The last two rows represent collocations already
discussed in the cognitive chapter, and idioms not elsewhere discussed.
The columns represent the sense divisions in the dictionary; those numbered 201
are the transitive senses, and those numbered 202 are the intransitive senses. Above the
numbers is a classi cation of the de nition according to our sense divisions; thus, 201-a is
our sense eye, 201-b, our sense accompany, etc. The numbers within the Collins represent
classi cation of the examples under each sub-sense. For example, looking at sense a. of the
Collins dictionary, on page 180, we note that the rst example under the rst de nition
is see page 8 , which would be our sense vide, and this is represented by the number 1 to
the right of the word vide in the rst column of Table 5.3. Of the 12 examples under this
heading, only one is our sense eye, 4 are our sense process, 1faculty, 2experience,
and 3 are idiomatic. But seven of the 12 are clearly \visual" senses, and to the senses
we have called \idiomatic" do involve physical vision (201-a-xi and 201-a-xii). Example
201-8-ix has nothing to do with physical vision, and the last two examples are only slightly
related.