Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

A-Z 395
a space between the parts of the compound (night owl, hammer and sickle); verb
compounds (phrasal verbs like give up); non-verb compounds and idioms (at all, hammer
and tongs, in front of); verb idioms (kick the bucket). In general, English-language
dictionaries have a far higher proportion of main entries than dictionaries of other
languages.
One important class of possible subentries is derivatives whose meaning is that of the
sum of their parts, such as lameness from lame and prewar from war. By convention,
such derivatives, unlike nocturnal owl, are regarded as lexical units despite their
semantic transparency, that is, in spite of the fact that their meaning is easily
understood on the basis of the meanings of the parts of which they are composed. Large
diction aries may make them main entries; many smaller dictionaries make them
subentries to save space. However, such subentries are presented without explicit
explanation of their meaning. Those formed by suffixation (lameness) are entered under
their source (lame) as so-called undefined run-ons; those formed by prefixation (prewar)
are in English-language dictionaries typically listed in alphabetical order under the
prefix, e.g. pre-; but in some dictionaries of other languages, e.g. those, like the Larousse
DFC and Lexis, that homograph by derivational families, they appear out of alphabetical
order under their sources, with cross-references to them from their proper alphabetical
position in the macrostructure.
3 Graphically identical homologues (homographs, like l bank n, 2 bank n, 3 bank v) may
be ordered historically—older before newer; by perceived frequency—more frequent
before less frequent; or even by the alphabetical order of their part of speech—adjective
before noun before verb. For graphically similar homologues, a variety of related
algorithms may be used, such as lower-case before capital (creole, Creole), solid before
spaced (rundown, run down), apostrophe before hyphen(s) (o’, -o-)—or any of these rules
may be reversed!
LEXICALLY RELEVANT INFORMATION
Dictionaries provide any or all of the following types of lexically relevant information
about the lexically relevant units they enter:
1 Information about the etymology, or origin, of the unit.
2 Information about the form of the unit, including spelling(s) and pronunciation(s).
3 Syntactic categorization and subcategorization. In the first instance this information is
given by a part-of-speech label (noun, verb etc.), but subcategorization can be supplied
to any delicacy desired; that is, in finer and finer detail. Thus a lexical unit represented
by the word-form tell may be categorized as verb, verb transitive (tell the truth), or
verb ditransitive (tell them the truth).
4 Inflections. Thus, the entry for tell will show that its past and past participle are told.
5 Derivatives, especially if, like lameness, they are of the semantically transparent type
that can qualify as undefined run-ons.
6 ‘Paradigmatic’ information, such as synonyms (same meaning), antonyms (opposite
meaning), superordinates (crippled is superordinate to one sense of lame), converses
(like buy for sell), and even paronyms or confusibles (like imply for infer). A special