Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

392.2.1.4. Semantic content and collocational context[Q4] “What is the feature according to which the relationship is established ormeasured (e.g. meaning, reference, message, effect)?”This question may seem redundant when compared to the previous one, but it is not.Whereas Q3 focuses on the nature of equivalence itself, Q4 concentrates on the ways inwhich the nature of equivalence can be perceived by lexicographers. What matters hereis the methodology for identifying the equivalence relationship.Adamska-Sałaciak explains that the OED online allows the feature according towhich the equivalence relationship is measured or compared to be one of the following:import, meaning, importance, significance, value, force, power or efficacy, whereasHartmann and James (1998: 51) only mention meaning as the feature according towhich the equivalence relationship is measured or compared. From our point of view,the dictionaries‘ and Adamska-Sałaciak‘s answer is not very helpful as there is littletheoretical consensus on what meaning is.Other interesting and interrelated answers to Q4 that are extremely relevant forthis research can be found elsewhere in the literature. The first one is provided inWerner (1999) and in Wiegand (2005). These authors consider the context and cotext(―Kontext und Kotext‖) of the entities an important feature according to which therelationship of equivalence can be measured, an idea also shared by Atkins and Rundell(2008). For them, there is not only one feature according to which the relationship ofequivalence between lexical units is measured, but several ones: semantic content,collocational context, vocabulary type, message and function. They note that: ―The firstfour of these factors relate to lexical items while the last is principally of interest whenyou‘re looking for equivalents of grammatical items‖ (Atkins and Rundell 2008: 468).