International Journal of Lexicography Advance Access originally published online on May 30, 2006
International Journal of Lexicography 2006 19(3):225-242; doi:10.1093/ijl/ecl011
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A New Type of Folk-inspired Definition in English Monolingual Learners' Dictionaries and its Usefulness for Conveying Syntactic Information
School of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Pozna
, Poland
(rlew{at}amu.edu.pl)
A new type of definition of abstract noun headwords, the single-clause when-definition, has recently found its way into major English monolingual learners' dictionaries. In line with a current broad tendency in pedagogical lexicography, the new definition format seems to be modeled after (English) folk defining, although in fact the latter has so far received little systematic study. The present contribution focuses on the usefulness of the new definition format for conveying syntactic class information to the foreign learner, who may be unfamiliar with the English folk defining tradition. The new definition is tested empirically against the traditional analytical definition.
1 In MEDAL, for example, which adopts a "dual-track approach", rare, or receptive, words are given only very schematic description without any verbal illustration.
2 While this makeshift label may seem to be imprecise, it is believed that, in the lack of any other established nomenclature, it is the simplest possible and that it best indicates one of the distinctive features of the new definition structure – the word when at the beginning. Importantly, no other word has been found to introduce the definitions in question. Besides, it is no coincidence that the usual definiendum in such definitions is an abstract noun. It appears that single-clause when-definitions are used mainly with abstract nouns for which genus terms in corresponding analytical definitions would be awkwardly general (also Walter, personal communication). This claim should no doubt be supported empirically. For the time being, however, such a conclusion follows from our review of one percent of randomly chosen pages in LDOCE4 and CALD2. Accordingly, in the present paper, the single clause when-definition is considered as a means of defining abstract nouns only, and no attempt is made to extend findings to other linguistic categories.
3 We are grateful to Yukio Tono for drawing our attention to this publication.
4 Needless to say, the structure is very schematic and does not account for any variation which this type of definition allows. For example, just like the co-text may precede and follow the topic, and is then referred to as co-text1 and co-text2, respectively, the framework may occur on both sides of the gloss. Besides, the left-hand part may incorporate a projection, or a reporting structure, such as "if you say that something is ...", "if you describe ..." or "if you refer to someone as ...", used when the subjective quality of the meaning being explained should not be disregarded. In the right-hand part there may also be an operator, such as a linking verb, which joins both parts in the absence of the hinge (Sinclair 1991: 127–133).
5 This assumption was verified in the course of the procedure, when the subjects were first of all asked whether they knew the meaning of the words. None of them reported any problems in this regard (Miko
ajczak-Matyja 1998: 94).
6 The instruction reads: "Podaj definicj
, twoim zdaniem dokadna, a jednocze
nie zwiz
" [Give a definition in your opinion precise, but also concise] (Mikoajczak-Matyja 1998: 93)
7 A similar technique has been used with considerable success within dictionary use research by Tono (1984) and Lew (2004). See Lew (2004: 53) for a discussion of the issues involved.
8 The choice of an adverb for an example made it possible to avoid a situation where some instances of part of speech recognition might have been attributed to the influence of the example. The task of composing an English sentence with the headword is similar to the LUCAS task, as described by Miller and Gildea (1985; 30).
9 This non-parametric significance test was used because underlying distributional assumptions for the corresponding parametric tests were not met; however, the Mann–Whitney U Test has turned out to be powerful enough. It is also because of non-normal distribution that standard deviation values are not reported.
10 Although both tasks have yielded similar results, provision of translation equivalent appears to have greater validity since it requires less cognitive effort, which is a potentially distracting factor, than the careful framing of sentences in a foreign language.
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  N. E. Osselton Innovation and Continuity in English Learners' Dictionaries: The Single-clause When-definition Int J Lexicography, December 1, 2007; 20(4): 393 - 399. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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