Methods of Lexicographic Definition in the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary

Scholary Paper aus dem Jahr 1998 im Fachbereich Anglistik - Linguistik, einseitig bedruckt, Note: 1 (A), Universität Zürich (English Seminar), Veranstaltung: Lexicography, 18 Eintragungen im Literaturverzeichnis, Sprache: Englisch, 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.