How to make a dictionary- 30.10.07

THE ARCHITECTURE OF A DICTIONARY

At the beginning we spent quite a lot of time on discussing the homework and repeating what we had learned in the previous lecture and we shortly sum up what the difference between a definition and an explanation is.
A definition answeres the quetion "What?" and an explanation answeres the question "Why?"

After that we talked about the 4 parts of a dictionary:
(1) MEGASTRUCTURE:
- contains f.e. metadata, list of abbreviations, grammar, phonetic transcription...
- the Megastructure of a dictionary is the entire structure of the dictionary, including: -the front matter,
abbreviations and explanations of grammar, the body of the dictionary
(2)MACROSTRUCTURE:
-body, lexical information...
- the Macrostructure is the organisation of the lexical entries in the body of a dictionary: lists, tree structures, networks
(3)MESOSTRUCTURE:
- holds the part of the macrostructure together
- links
-the Mesostructure is the set of relations between lexical entries and other entries such as other parts of a
dictionary or a text corps
(4) MICROSTRUCTURE:
- information about the structure of a word
- the word field
- the historical background
- the Microstructue is the consistent organisation of lexical information within lexical entries in the dictionary

QUIZ:

(1) What is the Megastructure of a lexicon?
The megastructure of a dictionary is its entire structure.

(2) What is the Macrostructure of a lexicon?
The macrostructure of a dictionary refers to its actual body – it shows the organisation of the lexical entries
into lists and tree structures.

(3) What is a semasiological dictionary?
A semasiological dictionary (reader’s dictionary, decoding dictionary) is a dictionary in that terms are
described and sometimes put into a context. The definitions in this kind of dictionary are constructive
definitions.

(4) What is an onomasiological dictionary?
In an onomasiological dictionary (writer’s dictionary, encoding dictionary) terms are defined by using similar
words.