The Relationship Between Dictionary Look-up Frequency and Corpus Frequency Revisited: A Log-File Analysis of a Decade of User Interaction with a Swahili-English Dictionary

Abstract

In an earlier publication it was claimed that there is no useful relationship between Swahili-English dictionary look-up frequencies and the occurrence frequencies for the same wordforms in Swahili-English corpora, at least not beyond the top few thousand wordforms. This result was challenged using data for German by a different team of researchers using an improved methodology. In the present article the original Swahili-English data is revisited, using ten years' worth of it rather than just two, and using the improved methodology. We conclude that there is indeed a positive relationship. In addition, we show that online dictionary look-up behaviour is remarkably similar across languages, even when, as in our case, one is dealing with languages from very dissimilar language families. Furthermore, online dictionaries turn out to have minimum look-up success rates, below which they simply cannot go. These minima are language-sensitive and vary depending on the regularity of the searched-for entries, but are otherwise constant no matter the size of randomly sampled dictionaries. Corpus-informed sampling always improves on any random method. Lastly, from the point of view of the graphical user interface, we argue that the average user of an online bilingual dictionary is better served with a single search box, rather than separate search boxes for each dictionary side.

A Lexicological Approach to Look-up Frequency of Turkish Sign Language Dictionary Users

“…In recent years, extensive research on spoken languages has been carried out on the behaviors and trends of users of the online dictionary (see: Frankenberg-Garcia, 2020;De Schryver et al, 2019;Koplenig et al, 2014). The main objective of these studies is to effectively determine the users' needs for the ideal dictionaries and learn about the user's profiles.…”

“…Following the functional perspective, this study examines the look-up properties and frequencies of Turkish Sign Language Dictionary users using the log files and compares these appearances with the objective lexical frequency list 1 of the Turkish Sign Language corpus (Makaroğlu, 2021). Similar to other studies in literature (see: Koplening, Mayer & Müller-Spitzer, 2014;Müller-Spitzer et al, 2015;De Schryver, Wolfer & Lew, 2019), the main purpose of this research is to describe the relationship between the TİD Corpus frequency and the dictionary look-up and to create a user look-up frequency list for potential new SL dictionaries. In the current study based on the log files on the look-up behaviors in the "written form" in the online The Contemporary Turkish Sign Language Dictionary (Makaroğlu & Dikyuva, 2017), (i) the relationship between the corpus-based word frequency list and the dictionary look-up frequency list, (ii) the effect of dictionary visits on the distribution of look-up patterns, and (iii) the power of the word category within the frequency list are analyzed.…”

“…Moreover, due to the large data provided, log files provide a wide area of research for online behavioral studies of dictionary users (Nicholas et al, 1999). As mentioned above, in terms of technology, the term "user" is the browser client trying to communicate with the server hosting the dictionary, rather than the person using the dictionary (De Schryver et al, 2019). Therefore, interpreting the requests from each IP address as a single user can result to misleading data, and a general search pattern regardless of the IP address will provide more efficient results (see : Santos & Frankenberg-Garcia, 2007).…”

“…Although look-up frequency studies for online dictionaries in spoken languages such as English, German and Danish (see : Bergenholtz & Johnson, 2005;Verlinde & Binon, 2010;Lew & Schryver, 2014;Koplening, Meyer & Müller-Spitzer, 2014;Müller-Spitzer, Wolfer & Koplening, 2015;De Schryver, Wolfer & Lew, 2019;) have made great progress in particular over the last 15 years, as far as is known, apart from the preliminary research on the New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Dictionary (Vale, 2015;Vale, 2017) there is no study on online sign language dictionaries carried out in this context in SL literature. Furthermore, there is no comprehensive study in literature on the usability of SL dictionaries (Kristoffersen & Troelsgård, 2012).…”