Methods of Lexicographic Definition in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary

Download or read book Methods of Lexicographic Definition in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary written by Markus Widmer and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 1998 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1 (A), University of Zurich (English Seminar), course: Lexicography, language: English, abstract: In this paper, 80 lexicographic definitions from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary are classified and evaluated, the basic question being the following: are similar words defined in similar ways? The words are classified according to part of speech, concreteness and word frequency, and eight different ways to define a word are considered. The study confirms that concreteness and part of speech have a considerable impact on the way a particular word is defined in the ALD.