1999 MerriamWebsterCollegiateDictionary
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- (Merriam-Webster, 1999) ⇒ Merriam-Webster. (1999). “Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition.”
Subject Headings: Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, English Vocabulary, Dictionary.
Notes
- Its introduction describes some of the challenges of Word Meaning Representation.
- It suggests that Lexical Semantic Theory is far behind that of Phonetic Theory or Syntactic Theory.
- It suggests that a Dictionary Entry focuses on the Denotation of Words rather than their Connotation.
- It describes the role of an Entry Definer.
Cited By
Quotes
The English Language in the Dictionary
Semantics in the Dictionary
- If one function of a dictionary is more important than its many others, surely that function is to define the meaning of words.
- … our understanding of the semantic system is very imperfect, and much of what we do know about it does not come very obviously into play in a dictionary.
- Perhaps the first thing that we need to remind ourselves of is that when we speak of the meaning of a word we are employing an artificial, if highly useful, convention. Meaning does not truly reside within the word but in the minds of those who hear or read it. This fact alone guarantees that the meaning will be to a great degree amorphous: no two people have had exactly the same experience with what a word refers to and so the meaning of the word will be slightly or greatly different for each of us.
- So dictionary editors involve the traditional distinction between denotation - the direct and specific part of meaning which is sometimes indicated as the total of all the referents of a word and is shared by all or most people who use the word - and connotation - the more personal association and shades of meaning that gather about a word as a result of individual experience and which may not be widely shared. The dictionary concerns itself essentially with the denotations of words.
- The kind of definition that you would write in most cases is called an analytical definition. It consists in its purest form of the statement of a class to which the term being defined is assigned and a number of characteristics which differentiate the individual from members of the class.
- Defining by synonym tends to be inexact because even true synonyms do not have just the same meaning and is perhaps most useful in cases like the one just mentions where one kind of referent has two or more names, a situation that occurs frequently with the common names of plants and animals.
- It is worth nothing briefly that in the course of your work as a definer you would have been concerned with what the citations reveal about a word in addition to its meaning. The definer is initially responsible for most of the framework of the entry including not only spelling variants and run-ons but also inflected forms, usage notes, verbal illustrations, and temporal, regional stylistics, and subject labels.
Grammar and Usage in the Dictionary
- Usage is a concept that embraces many aspect of and attitudes towards language. Grammar is certainly only a small part of what goes to make up sage, though some people use one term for the other, as when the label what is really a controversial point of usage a grammatical error.
A Dictionary of the English Language
References
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