Meaning Discrimination as a Function of Equivalent Relation and Part of Speech: The Case of Hezaareh English-Persian Dictionary

Abstract

Abstract-To facilitate the task of meaning discrimination on the part of the users, addressing strategies are assigned to translation equivalents in dictionaries. The rate of addressing strategies assigned to different words in a dictionary should not be either at random or in a consistent way. In this study it is believed that the addressing rate (AR) should be affected by such variables as equivalent relation (ER) and part of s peech. This article statistically examines the practice of Hezaareh English-Persian dictionary in assigning addressing strategies to different items. The results indicate that there is no systematic relationship between AR an d ERs. It is also revealed that items belonging to different parts of speech are not adequately addressed, either. The article proposes that to be communicatively successful the dictionary compilers of Hezaareh should allocate more AR to the items in which the ERs of semantic or poly divergence prevail. Besides, the role verbs play in comprehension related purposes and their polysemous nature make them good candidates for receiving higher ARs.Index Terms-bilingual dictionary, meaning discrimination, equivalent relation, part of speech, addressing rate