4.2 Changes In The Sequence Of Sense In An Entry Analysis

4.2 Changes in the Sequence of Senses in an Entry. Any language is vulnerable to changes at all its levels, so the core meaning/ historical meaning becomes no longer the commonest one. This shift of meaning is typical of basic words of everyday use and the reason for this can be the more frequent use of one of the senses. A proper example for this can be a word ‘see’ (v). In LDOCE 5 (2009) the first sense is “to notice or examine someone or something using your eyes”, the “ability to see” sense is placed as the third. One more word to consider is ‘tablet’ (n). In OALD 3 (1974) the first sense is “flat surface with words cut or written on it”. In OALD 7 (2005) the first sense has been changed “a small round piece of medicine that you
Information about token frequency and modern use of different meaning of words is provided by corpora. Modern corpus dictionaries provide more objective data concerning the use and more frequent meanings of words in comparison with pre-corpus dictionaries. Lexicographers have more chances to trace the development of a language by using corpora. Despite the fact that any corpus is a restricted sample, the data provided by it still remain more objective and up to date, and methods of data collection and data analysis are more advanced that they used to be before using a computer and creation of a corpus in particular. Providing the use of a word in context is more representative for a lexicographer and would help to compile a dictionary entry more
Corpora provide the use of a target word in particular context which helps to predict its use in general. This helps to build up adequate examples for a learner’s dictionary, which is extremely important because of its scope. Very often dictionaries provide not precise information concerning the contextual use of a word in focus. Corpora solve this problem efficiently. For example: in OALD 3 (1974) the following phrase represents the use of a word ‘argue’ “He argued well…”. In BNC there is only one hit of this word combination. The possible alternatives represented in BNC are: ‘successfully, passionately, forcefully, convincingly’. In OALD 7 (2005) the example ‘to argue well’ is omitted. In this case contextual use helps to avoid ambiguity and misinformation. Context is representative enough also for the cases with phrasal verbs and collocations. For example, let us consider a collocation ‘business end’. In LDOCE 1 (1978) the following example is given “Don’t hold a gun by its business end.” As we see from the BNC there is no combination ‘business