Comparing Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and
COBUILD English—Chinese Dictionary on Definition
刘子辉
It is well known that definition plays a vital important part in an entry,
therefore, if a definition is not explained very well and clearly, the readers
or learners are not able to grasp the meaning or have poor comprehension.
How to define or confirm a meaning which is suitable or acceptable by
the language learners is still a great problem for lexicographers to solve.
As for a learner’s dictionary, the definition of a headword needs to be
easily understood and memorized. That is to say, after consulting the
meaning, the learners will use the word correctly and properly,
meanwhile, a good explanation also improves the efficiency of their
vocabulary learning.
As for a language learner, he or she should choose a bilingualized
dictionary instead of a bilingual dictionary. Because the former offers a
real environment for language learning, which means headwords and
definitions are used in the same language, and it also belongs to the target
language of the learner. Reading the whole entry, learners can improve
their levels of reading, writing and comprehension. Therefore, there is no
doubt that a good explanation must include there functions.
As we have mentioned above that an explanation of a word occupies a
s significant place in the dictionary as well as in the language learning, so
the two dictionaries are chosen to make a comparison on definition.
With regard to the two typical dictionaries, each one has its own
characteristic definitions to explain headwords. By the way, the two ones
are widely accepted, which indicates that their respective definitions
explain the words well, and learners have clear mind and good
comprehension after reading. We have observed that these two
dictionaries are both adopted limited common and easy words to define
the meanings. That is a smart way apparently, however, it needs enough
references and authoritative survey to make sure frequency of words
people used in the daily life to explain the meanings.
With the help of corpus, the problem is solved successfully. The corpus
is a rich store of information about the language. It enables dictionary
writers to examine how words have been used, and to write dictionary
entries which reflect the central and typical uses of the language. Every
entry in the dictionary is based on the evidence of the corpus.
By using the corpus, we are able to establish which are the common
and important meanings of a word and which are the main grammatical
patterns. This information is then carefully assembled by the editors and
presented in a clear and detailed way.
So the two dictionaries are both based on their respective corpus –
Longman Learner’s corpus and The Bank of English.
The Longman Defining Vocabulary of around 2,000 common words
has been used to write all the definitions in this dictionary. The words in
the Defining Vocabulary have been carefully chosen to ensure that the
definitions are clear and easy to understand, and that the words used in
explanations are easier than the words being defined. Words in the
Defining Vocabulary have been checked to make sure that they are
frequent in the Longman Corpus Network, and that they are used
correctly by learners in the Longman Learner’s Corpus. Over 200
students took part in texts for this new dictionary, to check that they
understood the definitions and could find the correct translation in their
own language for words used.
The Bank of English is a computer-held store of thousands of texts of
English, known as a corpus. These texts range from serious novels,
through popular fiction, newspaper, magazines and junk mail, to informal
spoken conversations. About 25% of the texts are American, and a further
5% come from varieties of English such as Australian and Singaporean.
At the time of writing, this corpus stands at over 250 million words, of
which 20 million words have been transcribed from spontaneous speech.
At present, The Bank of English stands at over 418 million words, and
has been used as basis of all Collins COBUILD dictionaries
It enables the dictionary writers at COBUILD to look at how language
works, and reveals the patterns and systems of the English language.
Because it is all held on computer, The Bank of English provides very
fast and accurate access to all sorts of information about the language.
One very significant area is word frequency. This information is
absolutely vital in helping to prepare dictionary entries, both because it
helps in the selection of words that are suitable for use in dictionary
definitions, and because it provides a sensible list of words that need to be
included and defined.
It seems that nowadays lexicography has connected with computer, so
various corpora have built up used for composing dictionaries. The
outlook is bright in the future.
Although both dictionaries have a intimate relationship with corpora,
the ways of explanations are still not identical with each other.
All COBUID dictionaries, explanations of meaning are presented in
full sentences. This style of explanation enables us to present words in
their typical context, and to show the typical grammatical patterns
associated with them. The direct and informal style of the explanations is
similar to the way in which teachers in a classroom would explain what a
word means.
This is the exclusive feature of this kind of dictionaries. Let’s take
“through” as an example. “To go through a town, area, or country means
to travel across it or in it.” We sometimes explain grammatical words and
other function words by paraphrasing the word in context. In Longman
dictionary, the meaning of “through” is that “going into an area, group etc
and moving across it or within it.”
The learners maybe understand well and use it correctly and properly
according to reading the 1st explanation. Because the unfamiliar word is
used in the context instead is isolated.
Longman Dictionary also has its own features of explanation. That is
the most useful explanation is ranked at the 1st place, which helps readers
grasp the main meanings immediately. We also take the same example
“through”.—“entering sth such as a door, passage, tube, or hole at one
end or side and leaving it at the other”. It is the 1st meaning of “through”.
Readers promptly understand the basic meaning and improve their
learning’s efficiency and save a lot of time. It indicates that composer of
Longman dictionary use corpus for define the meanings effectively and
successfully.
All in all, through making a comparison between the two dictionaries
on definition, we realized that corpus plays a role as scaffolding for
composers to explain each word and we should take it into consideration
and hope more corpora will be widely used and adopted in the field of
lexicography.