Devices for Information Presentation in Electronic Dictionaries

Abstract

Electronic dictionaries should support dictionary users by giving them guidance in text production and text reception, alongside a user-definable offer of lexicographic data for cognitive purposes. In this article, we sketch the principles of an interactive and dynamic electronic dictionary aimed at text production and text reception guiding users in innovative ways, especially with respect to difficult, complicated or confusing issues. The lexicographer has to do a very careful analysis of the nature of the possible problems to suggest an optimal solution for a specific problem. We are of the opinion that there are numerous complex situations where users need more detailed support than currently available in e-dictionaries, enabling them to make valid and correct choices. For highly complex situations, we suggest guidance through a decision tree-like device. We assume that the solutions proposed here are not specific to one language only but can, after careful analysis, be applied to e-dictionaries in different languages across the world.

An overview of Digital Lexicography and directions for its future: An interview with Gilles-Maurice de Schryver

“…G-MdS: The digital format offers far more options to 'solve' problematic lexicographical issues, especially for languages with complex morphology. English is trivial lexicographically speaking (it has typically two forms for nouns, four forms for verbs, and very little morphology and thus lemmatisation issues elsewhere); this is very different for many other language families, including for instance the Bantu De Schryver, Chishman e Silva -An overview of Digital Lexicography and directions for its future: An interview with Gilles-Maurice de Schryver languages, which are agglutinative, and where digital dictionaries may truly simplify look-up for both decoding as well as encoding purposes (Prinsloo, 2005;Prinsloo et al, 2012;Prinsloo et al, 2017). Moreover, for polysynthetic languages, such as several of the Amerindian languages, the only truly successful way to lemmatise lexis in a user-friendly way is in a digital product (Frawley et al, 2002).…”

Direct User Guidance in e-Dictionaries for Text Production and Text Reception — The Verbal Relative in Sepedi as a Case Study

“…As will be clear from the discussion above and from Prinsloo et al (2011Prinsloo et al ( , 2012, such techniques are made available "on demand", i.e., users are not forced to use them if they feel that their information needs have been solved by the "standard" dictionary article. In every case, the use of such a technique is therefore a conscious choice of the user to find more information or information that is easier to use, digest or apply than the information available in the dictionary, the outer text of the dictionary or other reference tools such as grammar books that the user may have available.…”

A General Lexicographic Model for a Typological Variety of Dictionaries in African Languages

“…Concerning productive purposes, we also foresee (user-activated) connections with the decision-tree system developed in the framework of the SeLA project (e.g. described in Prinsloo, Bothma, Heid and Faaß 2012). Another option will be to access corpus data, however, only maintainers will be allowed to see the whole of the data, as one cannot assume that all corpus data would be usable for exemplifying the meaning of a word (see section 6).…”

“…Such rather morpho-syntactic challenges can be related to the issue of accessibility. We therefore do not see the electronic dictionary itself as the best solution, but rather develop connected systems that could, for instance, assist learners in producing the correct form, such as a decision tree-like device (described in Prinsloo, Bothma, Heid and Faaß 2012).…”