~-----N_ic_h_t_-_t_h_e_m_a_ti_·s_c_h_e_r_T_e_il _____ ~I Kurt-Michael Pätzold The new generation of learner dictionaries (Part II of Words, Words, Words) * 1. lntroduction We live in interesting lexicographical times. There is now an unprecedented range of general-language leamer dictionaries available. 1 There are works for beginners, both bilingual 2 and monolingual, for intermediate (LASDE, MSD, OSD and OWD) and advanced students (ALDS, CIDE, COBUILD2 and LDOCE3, all in editions 1995). There are dictionaries that offer encyclopedic information over and above the normal word entries. 3 While one dictionary (PWD) offers fascinating insights into the history of the meaning of words, information normally found only in specialist etymological dictionaries, another offers a description of the English language based on broadcasting data from 1988 to 1992 (BBCED). There are dictionaries specially devoted to American English (LDAE and OSDAE). 4 There are Part I of "Words, Words, Words" has appeared in FLuL 23 (1994), 13-64. To save space, dictionaries will be referred to by abbreviations in the main body of the article, while their full bibliographical details appear in the bibliography at the end. 2 WYCU, HUYW, TGAE offer the most frequent English words arranged according to subject matter with German equivalents and, in the case of WYCU, various usage notes. As this joumal is dedicated to the teaching of English at college and university level I can do no more than mention them here and refer the reader to Zöfgen (1991) for a detailed review, which does however not discuss TGAE as it was published in 1993. 3 See BBCED, which has encyclopedic entries on people and places, while LDELC and OALDED offer entries and articles on a much broader range of topics. For a critical discussion of this new type of dictionary see Heath/ Herbst (1994). 4 Written for intermediate leamers, both are of middling size (OSDAE: 714 pages; LDAE: 792 pages) and in need of being brought up to date. They score respectably on the American regional test (50 items, see below): the Oxford dictionary has 15 correct items, the Longman 17. lnterestingly, both have two items not in their respective advanced leamers' dictionary: OSDAE has chew out and laundromat, which are missing in ALD5, and LDAE has not give two hoots and again laundromat, both not in LDOCE3. 1s this a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand has been doing, or a small triumph of the old harmless drudges over the mighty corpus-supported new breed of lexicographers? FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of learner dictionaries 185 dictionaries that consider the needs of foreign learners not only for the understanding of texts, but also for language production (LLA and OLWD). There are almost innumerable dictionaries of idioms, phrasal verbs and collocations. 5 Finally, there are valuable dictionaries devoted to link words, items like after all, nevertheless, now, so much for and weil (DOLW), and to allusions in British English (see Sampson/ Smith 1997). All these dictionaries reflect the progress of linguistics and language teaching as put to good use by lexicographers, but also of course the growing business of teaching English as a foreign language. This review article will be divided into three parts. In part two I will discuss dictionaries for language production, and in part three I will focus on the big four learner dictionaries for advanced students of English. In this introduction I would like to draw attention to some current trends in lexicography. There are three new types of dictionaries at the beginning to intermediate stage, all of which are based on the insight that a learner's first language plays an important part in her learning a foreign language. 6 One is the bilingual learner dictionary7, the other is the bilingual dictionary with usage and other notes, and the third is the bilingual thesaurus. Short bilingual dictionaries come from Oxford University Press, which has published an alphabetical English-German and German-English dictionary (OS) that offers about 30,000 words in its two parts, with German translations and explanations of points of English usage and culture in both parts. 8 There are similar works from Langenscheidt (LPD) and Klett (PCES), both with excellent layout and language and culture notes. The other new departure is a series of bilingual thesauruses, called Word Routes, published by Cambridge University Press. These offer the basic stock of English words and phrases arranged in 450 semantic and thematic categories, and include translations into the respective foreign language and various usage, notes, tables and illustrations. Apart from the translations into the foreign language, it looks rather similar to OLWD reviewed below. 5 Fora recent survey see Henke-Brown (1994), who also reviews dictionaries of culture. The most complete bilingual record of idiomatic English (a massive 1300-page tome) is Schemann (1997), which consists of the main German-English volume and an English-German supplement (still of 567 pages). At 348 DM it will, however, be beyond most people's pockets. lt includes (made-up) example sentences for every entry but does not indicate possible subjects and objects (as does the magisterial ODOCIE), which are so important for language production. 6 In Germany, the bilingual approach to language teaching has been propounded most consistently by Butzkamm (1973, 1980 and 1993). 7 For more information on dictionaries published and references to relevant research see Baker/ Kaplan (1994) and Hartmann (1994). 8 HarperCollins started to launch a similar series in 1994, in which bilingual versions of its Collins Cobuild Essential English Dictonary will appear. FLuL 26 (1997) 186 Kurt-Michael Pätzald 2. Production dictionaries In this section I want to look at BBI, LLA and OLWD, three dictionaries which are explicitly designed to help learners with producing English language texts. While the primary arrangement of entries in all three is alphabetical, not systematic, they show major intemal differences. BBI is ideally suited as a work of reference for lexical and grammatical pattems.9 lt is unsurpassed by the general learner dictionaries in the number of collocations and the syntactic constructions it offers. 10 There are specialist dictionaries that offer more collocations 11 , but BBI blazed the trail in 1986, particularly in listing noun-verb collocations in the entry for the noun, and verb-adverb ones, of which it has perhaps rather too few, in those for the verb. This was a tremendous improvement that still has not been adopted by learner dictionaries. lt also introduced another important feature, though not consistently enough, in that it listed only the characteristic, often unpredictable combinations of lexemes (collocations), which present major difficulties for foreign learners. Minor drawbacks are that BBI lists some bases that would seem superfluous in a book its size and that the glosses it provides to differentiate meanings can be too demanding. A disadvantage for learning is that it has very few illustrative contexts and full-fledged examples. All this makes it a reference tool rather than a dictionary suited for leaming the English language. (see Table 1 on page 187) Things are different with the other two dictionaries. Here the head word stands both for itself and is also used to refer to a concept. Though neither dictionary has an index, they offer other means of finding what one is looking for. LLA has integrated an alphabetical index into the main body of the dictionary. OLWD on the other hand has a list of 23 topic areas at the front, which is meant to enable learners to find and then study areas systematically. This list is supplemented by occasional extra references in the margin, but even so it is not complete it failed to turn up crowd, which will be discussed below. The topic area approach is such 9 For a detailed review of BBI see my earlier article (Pätzold 1987). 10 Bahns (1994) has run an exhaustive comparison of BBI noun-verb collocations with the big learner dictionaries and has found that the best leamer dictionary (Oxford Advanced Leamer's Dictionary, fourth edition) contains 43,9% of BBI's number. For a brief update on the 1995 editions of the four learner dictionaries see Bahns (1996), where he shows that on a very small test corpus of 17 noun-verb collocations ALD5 has the highest score (12). II Earlier, comprehensive compilatons like RWF did not distinguish between freely formed and typical combinations of lexemes. For the state of the art see CEC, which boasts 10,000 headwords and a total of 140,000 collocations, incorporating 2,600,000 examples. lt is also the first dictionary to offer frequencies and other statistical data on collocations. FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 187 a good idea for learning and teaching vocabulary 12 that I hope the author will spend a little more time on it for the next edition and make it even more useful. layout and ungenerous with space; very generous with generous with space; accessibility short glosses for polyspace; summary of summary of meanings semous entries; no meanings ("access (boxes shaded in grey summary of meanings maps') for polysemous called 'index') for or numbering of entries; material polysemous entries; senses; collocations grouped in numbered material grouped in numbered and labelled sections, numbered and labelled with all terms listed at sections, which are the entry head furthered divided into labelled paragraphs typeface typeface not differenfour different typefaces four different typetiated enough; no diffefaces rentiation of definition different typeface for different typeface for and example definition and example definition and example word division 0 0 0 pronunciation 0 + (for single words as 0 well as phrases) (cross) refernone references to specific references to entries ences meanings within entries definitions sometimes difficult, easy; füll easy; usually füll always brief (gloss) examples very few almost one example for quite a number of colevery entry word in locations and phrases bold; whole sentences, sometimes more Table 1: Some features of the three production dictionaries 13 12 As most brillliant ideas it has a long history behind it. Interested readers might want to turn to these books which present English lexis by subject matter: Leyton (1971), Plant (1973) and Glazier (1992). Glazier's dictionary is easily the most comprehensive and up-to-date of the three, but it is short on example (sentence)s, while the other two present their material in narrative form. Mention should of course also be made of McArthur (1981). 13 Note: for collocations see table 2 below (page 192). For more on examples, see 3.4. FLuL 26 (1997) 188 Kurt-Michael Pätzold I will discuss and compare them for four important aspects that language teachers and psycholinguistics consider of central importance for the learning of words. The dictionaries in our heads, our mental lexicons, show a mixture of two principles of arrangement. For language recognition, similar sounding words are stored together, partly at least in alphabetical order. But for memory and language production, the arrangement of words is largely in semantic fields. Within these fields, ties between co-ordinates (items that can be members of lexical fields, e.g. salt-pepper-mustard, butterfly-moth, red-white-blue-black-green, or of scales: hot, warm, cool, cold) and collocations are strongest, while super-ordinates (e.g. butterfly-insect, rose-flower) and synonymy provide slightly weaker links. 14 Much has been written about the form and function of examples in dictionaries, both for native speakers and for foreign learners. 15 What I would like to do here is to underline the general importance of examples and illustrative contexts for the learning of languages, whether native or foreign. Psycholinguists have drawn attention to this (see e.g. Kess 1991: 217), although this fact has been an open secret for a long time among language teachers. These then are the points to be treated in this section: synonyms and synonymous expressions, lexical fields, collocations, and examples. 2.1 Synonyms and synonymous expressions How do the two dictionaries work? In the entry for crowd we find in LLA the item crowd next to mass, swarm, horde, throng and crush. These nouns are distinguished through definitions and examples (crowd 1). But this is not all. We are also given the right words for an "angry, violent crowd" (crowd 2), and adjectives to describe places with a crowd of people in it (crowd 6: crowded, packed, be swarming with, teeming, overcrowded). We are told what verbs express how a crowd forms (crowd 3: "to come together so that a crowd forms"), how it is in existence (crowd 4: "people fill a place and move around it") or how it disappears (crowd 5: "ways of saying that the people in a crowd separate and leave, so that the crowd disappears"). To put all this in more abstract terms: we get the head word with its (pejorative) synonyms (crowd 1 and 2), followed by verb collocations tracing the temporal existence, the waxing and waning of crowds (crowd 3 to 5): The last section lists synonyms and synonymous expressions for the derived adjective crowded. 14 For a convenient summary of human word webs see Aitchison (1987, chap. 7): "Wordwebs". Butzkamm (1993: 275) makes the same points from a teaching perspective, recommends the use of both formal and semantic links and summarizes: "Vokabellemen, vielmaschiges Assoziationsnetz und Systematisierungen aller Art". 15 See Zöfgen (1994: 183-201), who offers an admirably clear and comprehensive survey of many of the relevant problems. FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of learner dictionaries 189 OLWD handles crowd slightly differently. Fora start, it is a much more modest affair (519 pages as against LLA's 1587) so that we get fewer synonyms: the two dictionaries both list mob and crush, with OLWD alone offering squash and squeeze, which are however found in different entries in LLA because of a different, and I think finer, semantic analysis. LLA in its turn is alone in listing mass, swarm, horde, throng and rabble. And so it goes on the language leamer really should have both books: OLWD includes information on the agreement between crowd and verbs (as subject, it can take singular or plural verbs), whereas LLA has the grammatical construction with of for all nouns (e.g. They found themselves surrounded by a mob of angry youth). OLWD offers four ((over) crowded, packed and overcrowding) of LLA's six crowded-expressions (in addition to OLWD: teeming, be swarming with ), without giving the important preposition with (as in LLA's The train to Paris was packed with British soldiers). OLWD lists in the crowd-entry verbs for putting a large number of people in a small place (pack, squash, squeeze sb into/ onto sth), which I regard as a more convincing solution than LLA's decision to put them in the entry for FULL (cross-referenced, it is true, from the "access map" of crowd), where however we only find pack (FULL 6). There is no way from LLA's crowd-entry to squash and squeeze, although of course LLA lists them, but only with inanimate objects, not people (see PUSH 6). When we compare these two with perhaps the best of the systematic bilingual leamer dictionaries, we notice that Berold only lists crowd but none of its synonyms, nor does he give any of the verbs in or near the entry for the noun, although we find gather (with the example sentence a big crowd gathered in the marketplace) later in the section on materials and objects, a somewhat surprising place, to say the least. WYCU is clearly much more basic than either of these two monolingual works. In some cases OLWD has more to offer than LLA. For verbal realisations of 'meeting somebody by arrangement', both offer meet, meet up (with), and get together. OLWD's definition of meet up with (to meet sb after first separating and doing different things) is better than LLA's and it also lists two more verbs, join sb for sth and see sb. Verbs shared by both dictionaries for a chance meeting are meet, bumplrun into sb and encounter. In addition, OLWD has run across, come face to face with sb and come across sb, with good definitions. In most cases, however, LLA has more items than OLWD. I tried to find expressions for these four situations: ► you want to say something in reply but just manage to hold back; LLA: I looked up say, where I found (say 9) bite your tongue, with two good examples OLWD: no entry s.v. say, but there is a cross reference to inform and speak. There is nothing in the inform-entry and speak 6 only offers shut (sb) up; ► you laugh a lot at something funny; I also wanted to find out whether you can say kill oneself laughing LLA: The entry laugh 6 has a list of 10 expressions, more than enough or than anyone really needs. FLuL 26 (1997) 190 Kurt-Michael Pätzold OLWD: the laugh-entry ('to laugh very long and loudly') lists have a good laugh, roar with laughter, laugh your head off. Neither dictionary lists kill oneself laughing, which is a perfectly idiomatic way of expressing the concept of laughing a Jot about something very funny. ► you look closely at someone to see whether they are good-looking. LLA: I looked up Look at, and found eye, Look sb up and down (sense 3) OLWD: I found in the entry for Look, looking carefully: look hard at sblsth, study, examine, and inspect, none of which fit the bill as neatly as does Look sb up and down; ► how does one start a request for a speaker to repeat something she has said? OLWD: looking up the word repeat I found a cross-reference to the entry for say, after which I had to search for a bit to find this example in the section "adding to what you have said": Sorry, I missed that could you repeat what you just said? The meaning of sorry is not explained. I next looked in the entry for sorry-apologising and found that excuse me! is usual, especially in American English, and that one can also use I'm so/ really/ very sorry! , neither of which however are what I was looking for. The entry for excuse threw up a cross-reference to forgive, where I found the example Excuse me for bothering you, without an explanation or definition of excuse me. There are no entries for either pardon or what! . LLA: looking up repeat, I found in the section on "ways of asking someone to repeat something" (no 7) the items sorry/ pardon? , excuse me? , what? , what did you say? and would you mind repeating that? , with these distinctions: sorry/ pardon? are used when you have not heard something; excuse me? is used in American English, and what? in informal situations. The last two are used when you are annoyed by something, with would you mind repeating that? being formal. There is also a social class difference in Britain, not mentioned in LLA, between what? , sorry? and pardon? , with barked what? being typical of the upper classes, while sorry? is uppermiddle and pardon? lower-middle class. 16 To get some idea of the relative number of synonyms I have counted all, and only, verbal expressions for the concept steal (defining have your fingers in the till and pick s.o. 's packet for the purposes of this article as verbal expressions), and have also listed the results for Longman 's Lexicon of Contemporary English, to see how the more recent dictionaries compare with the first dictionary in the field (see in chap. 3.4.5, table 9 [page 209 ff)). LLA with 22 has six more than OLWD with 16, but LLCE has most of all with its 27 synonyms. This result needs to be interpreted a little cautiously because the difference can at least partly be put down to the different classifications of the dictionaries (LLA e.g. has swindle in the entry for cheat). lt does seem however to confirm my impression that LLA lists more synonyms than OLWD. There is in any case a striking lack of agreement in what the dictionaries regard as belonging to the semantic field of steal : only seven items are shared by all three dictionaries (burgle, burglarize, hold up, loot, pinch, roh and steal), while 16 The son of an upper-middle class parent was overheard telling his friends "Mummy says 'pardon' is a much worse word than 'fuck"' (Cooper 1981: 71). On pardon cf. also the punning reference Don't say 'Pardon', say 'Surrey' (ib.: 220). Fora comprehensive treatment of class in Britain see Cooper (1981). Some very useful things can also be found in Sampson/ Smith (1997), especially in the section on geographical and social markers. For the USA see Fussell (1984). FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of learner dictionaries 191 another six are found in any two (break in(to), embezzle, hijack, mug, nick and pilfer), while the remaining items, over two-thirds, are found in one dictionary only. Worthy of notice is, perhaps, also that the (originally) American English terms rustle and snitch are only listed in one dictionary each, and a different one at that, while BrE pinch is found in all three, and nick in two dictionaries: these production dictionaries have a slight British bias. How do the bilingual learner dictionaries compare? In addition to the basic lexeme steal, WYCU lists hijack, kidnap; HUYW has kidnap, shoplift, mug, rob, blackmail; TGAE offers trick, smuggle, mug, rob, hijack, kidnap and raid. This shows that they have of course far fewer items, but also that they ! ist different items from the production dictionaries: they only have hijack, mug and rob of the 13 items shared by 2 of the production dictionaries, with TGAE listing most items (seven), and also recording all three items shared with the production dictionaries. 2.2 Lexical fields There is an important difference between LLA and OLWD in that OLWD treats lexical fields (or topics), while LLA does not. LLA is organised around just over 1,000 semantic fields that deal with the core of the English vocabulary. 17 To give an example: when you want to find words and phrases to do with e.g. wind, flowers, parliament or university you are looking for lexical fields. There are no entries in LLA, not even cross references, while OLWD has good articles on all four areas, taking in the most important aspects: for university, the four sections are structure and organization; teaching and research; studying at a university; getting a degree. Individual aspects that lend themselves to semantic (synonymous) fields, e.g. teachers, are treated in LLA but under different headings (in this case teach 5: someone who teaches, where we find lecturer, professor, instructor, academic, faculty). There are entries for price and road in both because they lend themselves to both a semantic and a lexical field approach. Tue level of lexical coverage in OLWD seems to me to be up to upper intermediate and thus not quite advanced enough for university students. lts coverage of American English, though generally good for basic terms, leaves also something to be desired. Here are a few gaps, first in the article on universities. In the first section, there is no school ( of dentistry/ music/ veterinary medicine), institute (for advanced studies), long vac (informal for long vacation, but it lists exam besides examination, s.v. school); in section 2, I would like to see included don, reader; lecture in sth as opposed to lecture on sth; in section 3, advanced students should be given read (a subject), which collocation is a source of misunderstandings; student hostel and dorm(itory). This brings me to American English, where I noticed these words and phrases missing: ass, butt (s.v. body); Scotch tape (parcel); difference between pupil-student is BrE, not AmE (school); teach school (school, teach); assistant/ associate/ full professor (university). 17 "The scheme articulates English production vocabulary into meaning-based groups of manageable size [... ]" (LLA: FIS). FLuL 26 (] 997) 192 Kurt-Michael Pätzold 2.3 Collocations As stated above, BBI is the best dictionary on collocations. I will here report the findings of a test relating meet in combination with the nouns conditions, death, demand, opponent, cost-payments and threat. approval + (meet with) no meet no noun condition + + no noun t-------+------+------1-----1 BBI is clearly the best, death + no meet with LLA in second place, t--de_m_an_d---+---+---+-+-(-s.-v-.-ne_e_d_)-+-----i and OLWD coming last bet-------+-------+------1------1 cause of its small word list: in s.o.'s eye(s) no meet five cases it does not list the -----------------------< o's match + + noun, ------+-------+------------< while LLA has only one noun needs + + -~----+-------t-------+e-------1 missing. opponent no meet threat no meet train no noun Table 2: Collocations 2.4 Examples I will discuss the examples in the two production dictionaries together with those in the advanced learner dictionaries, see 3.4 below (page 202 ff). 3. Dictionaries for advanced leamers In this part of my review article I want to look at the four dictionaries for advanced learners that came out in 1995 in new editions (ALD5, LDOCE3 and COBUILD2) or were published for the first time (CIDE). There is not enough space to look at all relevant aspects, and there is also less need to do so as there are a number of detailed reviews available to the interested reader (see for example Herbst 1996). I will therefore concentrate above all on the question of how the four handle meaning the one aspect that users apparently care most about. 18 18 This was first reported by Bejoint (1981) and has been confirmed since; for a recent, systematic review of questions relating to what use learners make of dictionaries see Zöfgen (1994: 29-61). A füll bibliography can be found in Dolezal and McReary (1996). FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of learner dictionaries 193 My remarks relate to centrally important problems that learners have in English. • Users presumably want to know most often the meanings of words that they do not know. I will cater for this type of interest in my test of 50 items taken from three American novels. This test will check at the same time how good the big four are on American English as opposed to British English, e.g. it will look whether the dictionaries list important differences in meaning between British and American English, as for example for knock up and student. • On the other band, there are unknown uses of well known items that need to be recorded and illustrated, like the broad range of uses of all right, now, okay and weil. • A test of 50 body collocations is designed to evaluate the dictionaries for their collocations and the meanings they list for them. • Finally, I will take a detailed look at how the dictionaries handle examples. 19 3.1 Word list test and Regional Varieties Being produced in England, all dictionaries make a point of mentioning their thorough treatment of American English words and meanings. I have selected a mixed bag of 50 items from three recent American novels, which represent cultural and linguistic items, literal and idiomatic items, well-known ones and ones less often mentioned in books on American English. In the following, I give examples for those 12 items where neither form nor meaning are listed. In the abbreviations, K stands for Kingsolver, Pl for Paretsky and P2 for Parish: 2 "You know, this really looks more like - "He bit himself off. ''1'11 ask around." (PI, 267) 3 I [... ] drove south at a reckless pace, not even bothering to keep an eye out for the blueand-whites. (Pl, 72) 4 [ ... ] Kevin [... ] has asked Taylor seven or eight times if she would like to go out with him. Kevin doesn't exactly float her boat [... ]Taylor is about to relent. It's been so long since she had any fun [... ]. (K, 201) 5 "When you get old you need a lot more rest. .. so your body has time to recuperate and build up." (P2, 294) 7 "But he's innocent, Dad." Hanna's voice broke and she began to cry. Everything had suddenly caught up to her. (P2, 173) 11 [... ] the check was much smaller than she expected, after what fell out for taxes and Social Security (K, 205). 12 "You've been involved in two suspicious fires in the last month. We figure you for a sensationalist." (PI, 294) 19 I would have loved to look at false friends (for example English warehouse and German Warenhaus), a feature that CIDE has introduced explicitly, as well as the treatment of synonyms and confusibles (the difference between historic and historical or compare to and compare with) but reasons of space have made this impossible. FLuL 26 (1997) 194 Kurt-Michael Pätzold 14 "The manager said I spent too much time talking to you guys." (as object, women only; K, 140) 15 Her nightshirt was a long T-shirt, and it had hiked up around her waist. (P2, 96) 17 "We are staying right here." "Oh wow! " Adam said. "Honest, Dad? " "Honest." He looked at Ranna and Magdalena and smiled. "Honest Injun." (P2,159). This serves the same function as cross my heart (and hope to die). 23 The judge looked at him stemly. "Don't be flippant to the court."[ ... ] Better watch my mouth, Joshua thought, or good ol' Judge Buck is going to have me for lunch. (P2, 233) 37 "She might figure out where you are[...] "Shoot, Jax, I'm scared. We've got to get out of here." (K, 97) 1 your ass ( you; P2, 157; 353) -, US +, esp US -, US +, US 2 bite o.s. off (in-terrupt o.s.) 0 0 0 0 3 the blue-and-whites (police) 0 0 0 0 4 float sb' s boat (turn sb on) 0 0 0 0 5 build up vi (regain strength) -, only vt -, only vt -, only vt -, only vt 6 be on sb's case (criticize; Pl, 40) 0 0 0 +, nl 7 , catch up to sb (corne home to) 0 0 0 0 8 chew out sb (criticize; Pl, 211) 0 0 +, nl +,US 9 dime novel (cheap, trashy novel; P2, 0 0 0 +, US 139) 10 drown out sb (be louder; Pl, 39) +, nl +, nl +, nl +, nl 11 fall out (be deducted) 12 figure s.o. for sth (think sb sth) 0 0 0 0 13 figure + that-clause (think; P2, 93) +, nl +, esp US +, nl +, esp US 14 you guys -, US -, esp US -, US -, US 15 hike up vi (ride up) - (only vt) - (only vt) - (only vt) - (only vt) 16 stay home ( at home; P2, 205) +, US +, esp US 17 honest lnjun 0 0 0 0 18 not give two hoots (PI, 284) +, nl +, nl +, nl 20 19 in the hospital (general sense; P2, 331) +, US +,US 20 knock up vt (make pregnant; P2, 139) +, esp US +, esp US +, US +, nl 21 laundromat (K,168) 0 +, US +, US 0 22 like adv (filler; K, 159, 169, 203) +, nl +, nl + +, nl 23 have sb for lunch 0 0 0 0 24 meet with sb (Pl, 107) +, esp US +, esp US +, US +, nl 20 LDOCE3 offers, however, two slightly different, yet similar forms, don 't give a hoot/ don 't care two hoots. FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 195 ...... \; } ": : l: ~; : : - 25 mess with sb (PI, 87) +, nl +, nl +, nl +, nl 26 over easy (of egg; K, 305) · +,US 0 0 +,US 27 be a pain in the butt (annoying person; 0 +, US· 0 +, US K, 167) 28 parking lot (K,100) +,US +,US +, US +, US 29 pointy (K, 207) 0 +, nl +, nl 0 30 pro-choice (PI, 20) 0 +, nl 0 +, nl 31 purse (handbag; K,316) +, US +, US +, US +,US 32 ride n (= lift; K, 71) +, nl +, nl +, nl +, nl 33 rock (= stone; K, 70, 277) +, US +, US +, nl -, n121 34 ruckus (P2, 93) +, US +, esp US +, US +, esp US infml 35 sailboat (K, 248) +, US +, US +, esp US +, US 36 shit (nothing; P2,139) -, nl +, US -, nl - 37 shoot exclam-ation (damn) 0 0 0 0 38 be shy of (shortly before) - -, nl +, nl - 39 sick to my stomach (P2,53) -, US -, US -, nl +, nl 40 snuck, pa.t. of sneak (K,234) + +, esp US . +, US +, US 41 state line (K, 143) 0 0 0 +, nl 42 sunny side up (of egg; K, 305) +, nl 0 0 +,US 43 sure: we didn't plan it that way (P2, +, esp US +, US +, nl +, US. 93) 44 pick up the tab (K,168) +, nl +, esp US +, nl +, nl 45 tune out vi (switch off; K, 202) 0 -, US +, nl +, esp US 46 turtleneck (PI, 125) +, US +, US - +,US 47 valedictorian (best Student; K,209) 0 +, US 0 +,US 48 wash up, get washed up (P2, 18) +, US +, US +, US +, US 49 way to go (weil done; K, 159) 0 0 0 +, US 50 what' s with you (P2,90) 0 +, nl 0 +,US Table 3: Regional varieties 22 21 This item was a difficult one to call as LDOCE3's entry goes like this: "a piece of stone, esp a large one: Kim sat down on a rock." But the other dictionaries are clearer, e.g. ALD5: "a small stone: That boy threw a rock atme." 22 Legend: 0 = not listed; + = required meaning and/ or syntactic pattem listed; - = required meaning and/ or syntactic pattem not listed: This category contains two very different types of items: those that show related meanings and syntactic pattems, as in the cases of items 5 and 15, FLuL 26 (1997) 196 Kurt-Michael Pätzold First, I will make a few comments on the scores, and then will ask what help we get in deciding whether a word or phrase is American English or not. With 31 hits LDOCE 3 comes out on top, followed by CIDE, which achieves 28. The two others lag behind, COBUILD2 listing only 22 of the meanings looked for and ALD5 coming last with 21 correct entries. There are 21 fixed expressions in the test corpus, of which LDOCE 3 has 12 and COBUILD2 8, which figures are roughly in line with their overall results, while ALD5 with 7 correct items achieves a slightly lower than expected score, and CIDE, also with 7 hits, lags dramatically behind its performance in the other items. LDOCE 3 alone has be on s.o. 's case, dime novel, sick to my stomach (in the physical sense), state line and way to go. That it should be the only dictionary to ! ist the literal sense of sick to my stomach is very surprising, as I would have thought that lexicographers know the equation BrE ill : sick = AmE sick sick to my stomach.. Together with CIDE it alone lists your ass, pain in the butt, pro-choice, valedictorian, what's with you, a rnixture of cultural and general language items, whose inclusion in the two dictionaries suggest a good (CIDE) to thorough (LDOCE 3) coverage of American English. But they also show surprising gaps: there is no stay home or laundromat in LDOCE 3, while CIDE does not ! ist two items of basic restaurant speak, over easy and sunny side up, and it seems particularly weak in its fixed expressions department. The two restaurant items no less absent from COBUILD2, which also fails to give us stay home, turtleneck, way to go what's with you, not to mention pro-choice and state line. For a dictionary its size this is a somewhat disappointing performance. ALD5, finally, is rather weak on idiomatic American English, but then it is conceived on a considerably smaller scale than the other dictionaries. Tue regional classification of items is the other question to which the test should be able to provide some sort of answer. Of the 38 test items listed in one or the other of the dictionaries, seven items are labelled as American by all four dictionaries (items no 1,14, 28, 31, 34, 35, 48), and another five items get this labe! in three of them (nos 20, 24,40, 43 and 46). Clearly, this is not very impressive for guidance on regional usage when we get a majority opinion in only 18,4 per cent of the cases. 23 But I think it is unfair to blame the dictionaries when it is really the English language that defies this sort of tidy labelling. English dialects are getting more and more mixed, with American English items finding their way into insular British English at what would seem an ever increasing rate. 24 This is likely to be the reason behind the cautious labe! "esp US" in CIDE and LDOCE 3. CIDE deserves a special mention as it is the only dictionary to cover also Australian English (see items no 14, 21,24, 28, 33 and 44). where the dictionaries ! ist only the transitive uses of the verbs in question, and those that are are semantically completely different, as e.g. item 11, where the dictionaries only offer meanings like lose (hair)and start to quarre/ . esp = especially; nl = item has no regional labe! ; US = labelled as American English; vi = intransitive use of verb; vt = transitive use of verb. 23 Herbst (1996: 343) also stresses the lack of agreement between dictionaries. 24 Out of a corpus of 120 idioms thought typical of American English in 1977, Gläser (1992) found 40 in British dictionaries. This is not the place to go into her results, but they underline in any case the increasing difficulty of distinguishing between the two national varieties. FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 197 To sum up then, the dictionaries do not speak with one voice on regional matters both because matters are not that simple any longer and lexicographers are divided in their assessment of an item's regional status. 3.3 Body collocations Many of the words for the human body and its parts belong to the core vocabulary of all languages. The human body has also been the source of innumerable idioms, such as twist someone 's arm, see eye to eye with someone and pull someone 's legs. But while these body idioms have had a lot of attention, combinations of body part and verb with meanings that range from the physical to the metaphorical, sometimes the idiomatic, have been comparatively neglected although they are no less a universally important feature. Continental European scholars have coined the term kinegramm for them and as such they appear in major treatments of fixed expressions (see Burger [et al.] 1982: 56-60). ALD5 is, however, the only learner dictionary to draw explicit attention to body collocations (s.v. body) and to list in a table some of the more common noun-verb collocations with their non-physical meanings. A good knowledge of these collocations is not least necessary for an appreciation of fictional texts. Writers often use collocations like purse one's lips and roll one 's eyes to express or underline the emotional state of their characters. If one fails to grasp this, one will miss an essential part of the meaning of a text, and an important aspect of a writer's art. Gestures are, indeed, of great interest, not only to literary critics and scholars (see Habicht 1959, Blaicher 1966, Roeder 1974 and Rüegg 1991), but also to psychologists (see Kiener 1962 and Feyereisen/ de Lannoy 1991) and art historians (see Demisch 1984). Tue verbs in these collocations sometimes have a metaphorical meaning only, as in his eyes blazed with energy and vitality. Others have two types of meanings, one physical and the other figurative. To gain a complete understanding of this type of collocation a definition like "move one's eyes in a circle" for to roll one's eyes is rather useless because it does not tell us what this gesture expresses, what emotion is implied, in short why people roll their eyes (see McNeill 1992). Similarly, we do not know what to make of purse one's lips if we are only told this meaning: "form (the lips) into a small rounded shape". 25 lt is not surprising that one of my students came up with the translation "einen Schmollmund machen". The problem is however that this meaning did not fit the context she was looking at: 25 A man [...] next to me looked up, affronted. I stared intently at the screen in front of me, pursed my lips, scribbled a note, and pretended I hadn't heard or said anything (Burn, 154). Both definitions are taken from PWD, s.v. roll and purse. FLuL 26 (] 997) 198 Kurt-Michael Pätzold What is expressed here is the complete concentration of the first-person narrator, cf. also this example: ''I'm not married." "You look married." "I was married. I got kids." "What kind? " He pursed his lips and thought for a moment. "Well, they're both human," he said seriously (DIVIDE3.DOC) Body collocations are also difficult because they are polysemous, i.e. many of them can express a number of different emotions, attitudes etc. Finally, while many of these collocations have more or less straightforward equivalents in German 26 and other languages 27 , some of them can be treacherous for the foreign learner because different cultures may read different meanings into them. Hang one 's head, for example, is such a false friend between German and English. While it usually implies despair or exhaustion or both in German 28, English uses this expression in the context of feelings of shame or embarrassment. 29 These collocations need therefore to be listed with all their meanings, physical and metaphorical, in order to give learners a füll understanding of them. From a larger collection of my own, I have chosen 50 items with one meaning each to test the leamer dictionaries. In the following, I give examples for the 12 items not listed in any of the learner dictionaries: ► chin stick out: Bobby looked at Vinnie. "You call the cops, son? " The banker stuck his chin out pugnaciously. "Yes, I did." (Paretsky, 98) ► eyebrow cock: "I'm not from around here." He cocked an eyebrow at her[... ] "No? " he said. "No." "Not from Shady Brook? " He said it as if he could hardly believe it. (Tartt, 352) ► eyebrows lift: "About Sy's wanting to get rid of Lindsay [... ] I think Sy might have been taking meetings off the [film] set." Nick had heavy eyebrows. He lifted them significantly. "Do you get my drift? " "He had someone else? " (Isaacs, 104) ► eyebrows rise: Montgomery's eyebrows rose to his sandy hairline. He made no effort to hide his contempt. (Paretsky, 79) ► eyebrows shoot up: When he saw me his eyebrows shot up in surprise. (Paretsky, 268) ► forehead hit: "Iran into LeAnn and Clara behind the tent [... ] They thought you guys were 26 I would like to refer the reader to the example sentence for forehead hit and offer this excerpt from Mann's novel Lotte in Weimar for comparison, which also has the German translation for lips twitch: "Ums Himmels willen, Frau Hofrätin! " rief er und schlug sich mit der Hand vor die Stirn. "Ich rede und rede, und jählings schießt es mir ein siedend heiß, daß ich ja noch nicht einmal gefragt habe, ob Frau Hofrätin denn überhaupt schon Kaffee getrunken haben! " „Danke, mein Freund", erwiderte die alte Dame, die dem Erguß des Biedermannes verhaltenen Blickes und dabei mit leicht zuckendem Munde zugehört hatte (Mann 1949: 19). 27 Thus, hang one's head corresponds to ltalian chinare la testa [incline the head] (per la vergogna), while French uses a different, though contiguous part of the body, baisser/ courber le front (i.e. 'lower one's forehead'). 28 (Not) surprisingly, CGD translates as den Kopf hängen lassen, while DudOxf gives the correct translation, beschämt den Kopf senken (see their entries for hang). 29 Fora grammar of gesture see von Raffler-Engel (1984). FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 199 bringing them something to drink." Ernie hit his forehead. "Mind like cement [... ] l'11 take care of the girls, Ronnie why don't you guys wait forme here." (Paretsky, 41) ► head tilt back : His head was tilted back now as he roared in amusement. (Paretsky,45 ) ► lips move : He was hunched over his desk, going over all the [...] lab reports, index finger inching down the pages, lips moving [... ] (Isaacs, 219) ► lips suck on (concentration): She thought it over, sucking on her upper lip. (Paretsky, 223) ► stomach fall: "We can start for you first thing in the morning, Vic [... ]" My stomach feil. Morning seemed an awfully long time away just now. I couldn't protest, though they were doing me a mighty big favor. (Paretsky, 299) arms cross vt (smug self-satisfaction) C,-,P C,- C,-,P C,-,P cheeks flame vi (embarrassment) C,+ 0 C,-, C,-,P chin stick out vt {aggressiveness) 0 0 0 0 ear cock vt (attention) B; C,+ C,+ C,+, 0 eyebrow cock vt (disbelief) 0 0 0 0 eyebrow raise vt (disapproval) B; C,+ BIC, - B,+ B,+ eyebrow lift vt (significance) 0 0 0 0 eyebrows rise vi (contempt) 0 0 0 0 eyebrows shoot up vi (surprise) 0 0 0 0 eyes blaze vi (anger) C,+ C,+ C, +I 0 eyes blink vt (grief, distress) C,-,P C,- C,- 0 eyes flash vi (anger) C,+ C,+ C,+ C,+ eyes flicker vi (surprise) 0 0 C,-,P 0 eyes glitter vi (great anger) 0 C,+ C,- 0 eyes lower vt (embarrassment) C,-,P C,+ C,+ B,-,P eyes roll vt (exasperation) C,-, p BIC, - C,- B,+ fingers click vt (jog one's memory) C,-,P C,- C,- C,fingers drum vt (boredom, impatience) 0 C,+ C,-,P C,fingers tap vt (nervousness) C,-,P C,-,P C,-,P C,fist clench vt (anger) B,+ C,+ C,+ B,+ foot shuffle from to - (impatience) C,- 0 0 0 foot stamp vt (anger, annoyance) C,+ C,+ C,+ C,+ foot tap vt (impatience) C,-,P C,-,P C,- C,forehead hit vt (forgetfulness) 0 0 0 0 forehead wrinkle vt (puzzlement) 0 0 C,-, p 0 FI..uL 26 (1997) 200 Kurt-Michael Pätzold ~ .• Jrz: 1., .. ·I•••., .. ,.Iii···•··; : : .; ; ••• ..•: ., .. ••.····.•·••·•· .. hands clasp behind o's back (triumph) 0 0 C,-, P 0 hands hold up vt (exasperation) 0 0 C,-,P 0 hands hold up vt (placating gesture) 0 0 C,-,P 0 hands wring vt (despair, distress) c,+ C,+ C,+ C,+ head cock vt (in appraisal, scrutiny) 0 C,- C,c~ + head hang vt (shame or embarrassment) C,+ C,+ 0 C,+ head - I,old high vt (pride) B,+ C,+ 0 C,+ head tilt back vt (amusement) 0 0 0 0 head -toss (back) vt (anger, scorn) C,- C,-,P C,+ C,+ heart pound vi (fear) C,+ C,- C,+ C,jaw drop vi (surprise) B,+ B,+ B,+ B,+ lips move vi (concentration) 0 0. 0 0 lips purse vt (concentration) C,+ B,+ C,+ C,lips smack vt (relish, enjoyment) B,+ C,+ C,+, C,lips suck on vt (concentration) 0 0 0 0 nose crinkle vt (laugh, smile) 0 C,- C,+ 0 palm tingle vi (nervousness) 0 0 0 C,- 1 shoulders sag vi (exhaustion, tiredness) 0 0 0 C,shoulders shrug vt (indifference) B,+ C,+ C,+ B,+; C,+ shoulders square vt (resolve) C,+ C,-,P 0 C,+ skin crawl vi (fear) 0 0 C,- C,stomach fall vi (despair) 0 0 0 0 teeth grind vt (anger, rage) C,-,P 0 C,-,P C,-,P teeth grit vt (determination, resolve) BIC,+ C,- C,+ C,+ tongue click vt (disapproval, criticism) 0 C,+ 0 C,- Table 4: Body collocations in learner dictionaries 30 A few words of interpretation are in order. There is not much to choose between the dictionaries in the overall number of non-physical meanings listed, nor in what meanings they include. While about a third of the test meanings are listed, a non- 30 Legend: 0 = not listed; B = collocation listed in the noun entry; C= collocation listed in the verb entry; + = meaning listed; - = meaning not listed; P = no non-physical meaning listed. FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 201 physical meaning is mentioned in up to ½ of all cases, hardly enough for literary interpretation. The four dictionaries clearly concentrate on core meanings and collocations to the neglect of less common ones. Finally, while the dictionaries are designed for decoding, they are very little use in producing the test collocations. The table shows that ALD5 lists 17 out of 50 meanings, CIDE, COBU1LD2 have 16 and LDOCE3 14. lt is striking that the dictionaries are not only similar in the number of their hits, but also in what hits they have: 14 hits are shared by three dictionaries, and six correct meanings are shared by all four as opposed to seven that are found in only one of them. In other words, the dictionaries seem to concentrate on a central core of feelings and attitudes so that they will offer only limited help when it comes literary interpretation. Second, even if the learner dictionaries at best only list about a third of the meanings looked for, do they at least indicate that there are non-physical meanings to these collocations? The figures are slightly better for this count: ALD5 records non-physical readings in 19 cases, while the other three do better, with CIDE listing 23, COBU1LD2 24 and LDOCE3 25. Again, when one counts the examples where the dictionaries list physical meanings only, one finds that CIDE and LDOCE3 do so in four cases, while ALD5 has eight items of that sort and COBU1LD2, surprisingly, no less than nine. There is, then, on the whole little difference between the learner dictionaries so that it would seem that ALD5's headstart in awareness is not followed up, at least not in the 50 items looked at. Third, just as there is a duster of meanings covered, so there is a set of ten collocations not mentioned in any of the dictionaries. The reason for this seems to be in most cases that the dictionaries go for the most frequent verb and neglect less common ones, which is a defensible practice. In the case of eyebrows, for example, they list raise, but not lift, rise, or shoot up; for head they offer toss (back), not tilt; for lips we find purse, but not move and suck on. Also, it would seem that we do not find stomach fall because the more established collocation heartl spirits sink (not in the test) is preferred in all the dictionaries. Fourth, how useful is the manner of listing the collocations for encoding? If the learner knows that there is a way of expressing, say, anger by using a collocation with eye or eyebrow will she get help? As one can see, COBU1LD2 has the highest score overall for body collocations but lists the fewest collocations under the noun, and is therefore the least useful for language production. The discrepancy is less for ALD5 and LDOCE3, but no dictionary can be said to be adequate for producing English collocations. 31 BBI is still easily the students' best help. ALD5 8 22 30 26,7 CIDE 4 27 31 12,9 COBUILD2 2 31 35 5,7 LDOCE 3 6 23 29 20,7 Table 5 31 Herbst (1996: 337) reaches the same conclusion for COBUlLD, while there is little to choose between the three others. However, he uses a corpus of only 21 items. FLuL 26 (1997) 202 Kurt-Michael Pätzald 3.4 Examples Examples, like literature, are there to instruct and entertain. First, they should show learners the syntax (for example concord and complement structures), collocational potential and meaning of words as well as their stylistic level, which functions can of course also be performed by the definition part of dictionary entries. This is why examples have to be considered in combination with definitions, although I will largely concentrate on the examples for the purposes of this article. Also, examples and illustrative contexts should use language that learners can understand without having to consult a dictionary. Second, examples should illustrate the non-linguistic, i.e. general cultural context and characteristics of words. This is where instruction and entertainment meet: when examples are good they catch the learners' attention and make the storage process easier. How can examples achieve this? By giving cultural information, by giving examples that stand out because they are funny, sad, irritating, outrageous or out of the ordinary in some other respect. When we are intellectually or emotionally engaged the likelihood is that we will learn and remember something from an example. Language teachers knows how difficult it is to find examples, let alone good examples so we should perhaps not expect too much from the dictionaries either. My sections on examples divides into two parts. Tue first (3.4.1-3.4.3) deals with discourse items, or the discourse uses of words, while the second looks at words in their 'normal' uses. 3.4.1 Learner dictionaries, I said above, need to give detailed information on the unfamiliar meanings and functions of familiar words. Do they for example record words like again, also and plus as sentence adverbials in first position in sentences? CIDE has all three, ALD5 has again and also while COBUILD2 and LDOCE3 have only plus. All dictionaries give clear and easy examples for the uses they include, with only this exception from CIDE : We had to have an actor who could generate real empathy. Plus he had to carry the audience through a lot of plot (s.v. plus) I would imagine that both generate empathy and carry the audience will prove hard nuts for learners to crack. On the other band, I would think that my students would like this context for its reflection of the reality of present-day student life: He's been studying for the exams all week, plus he's been working in a bar all night (LDOCE3, s.v. plus) Or take of course when it is used to introduce a circumstance that qualifies in some way what has just been said, as in: But once in a while, even if nobody mentioned one, the thought of warnen entered his head all on its own, and once it came it usually tended to stay for several hours, filling his noggin like a cloud of gnats. Of course, a cloud of gnats was nothing in comparison to a FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 203 cloud of Gulf coast mosquitoes, so the thought of women was not that bothersome [...] (McMurtry 1985: 133). Although quite common, this use is not listed in any of the learner dictionaries nor the specialist dictionary of Ball (1991). 3.4.2 Another set of items are all right, I mean, okay, now, weil etc, but not in the adverbial phrases (for example are you getting on all right, she did weil in the exam), which most users are familiar with from school, but in connected discourse.32 I will discuss all right and weiland will start with all right. First, there is an important distinction to be drawn between single all right and multiple uses of it because multiple all right is not an emphatic way of signalling complete agreement: • 'Amphetamine poisoning [...]" "lt's not that," Francis said angrily, glancing up. "All right, all right. Something eise it could be is a panic disorder" (Tartt 1993: 396). • 'Lie down here beside me. When I was fifteen and you were SL Y you used to.' 'I was innocent then.' 'And now both your eyes are open. Oh Christ, what a stupid, what an unutterably inept and brutal-• 'All right, all right, all right' (Burgess 1983: 480). All right here expresses very angry, grudging agreement, which can also be realized by single all right, but often by adding a but-clause: • 'All right, I may not be able to break his alibi, his or Mair's, but I shall have a damn good try' (James 1990: 265). • 'I hate you, I loathe you, you've been a devil in my mind ever after -• 'Look, all right, I left you, but you drove me to it, you were responsible too' (Murdoch 1978: 316). There is also the use of all right by people in authority to stop activities or, as in this example, to open proceedings: [... ] the judge took the bench. He looked around at the crowd of silent spectators and then at Joshua Rabb and Tim Essert. "All right, gentlemen. This is the time set for the continuation of the preliminary hearing in U.S. versus Antone. Counsel are present, Mr. Antone is at counsel table. Let's go" (Parish 1993: 278). This is how the dictionaries handle these four uses: double all right 0 0 0 0 grudging use 0 + 0 + closing use 0 + + + opening use 0 + + + Table 6 32 Cf. Ball (1991) for a dictionary, and see Schiffrin (1988) for a linguistic treatment of link words or discourse markers. FLuL 26 (] 997) 204 Kurt-Michael Pätzold ALD5 lets the user down completely. CIDE's definition of the discourse uses of all right leaves much to be desired ("used to show that something is agreed, understood, or acceptable") but its examples make up for it: it has a good example for the grudging-use (All right, so I was wrang about him being the one who stole your wallet, but I still don 't trust him) as well as for both closing and opening uses (All right, that's enough noise. Settle down and get on with your work; clearly, the speaker does not find the noise acceptable, in contrast to CIDE's definition). COBUILD2 helpfully mentions someone in a position of authority for the closing and opening uses in its definition (s.v. all right, meaning 7) and like CIDE offers an example from a school context (All right, boys and girls, let's meet again next week). The example from COBUILD2 is somewhat difficult to classify, and others may well think it illustrates the closing use only. The same goes for LDOCE3's example (All right, folks, J'd like to introduce our first speaker this evening; s.v. all right 2 , meaning 3). With discourse markers it is necessary to give an extended context, certainly more than one utterance or sentence to illustrate how an item works. Clearly, this applies to the uses of all right just discussed but, space being at a premium in dictionaries, lexicographers tend to think twice about it, although writers of learner dictionaries shouldn't, for the reasons mentioned above. LDOCE3 has one example with 2 utterances, while CIDE and COBUILD2 have two, which is not an awful lot. 3.4.3 Do they do a better job on the discourse uses of weil ? I will look at three different uses, one where it is employed in a yes-no question, when speakers "have difficulty finding an answer because what they want to say does not fit the semantic options implied or mentioned in the question" (Gramley/ Pätzold 1992: 239). Take this example: Zelda: Are you from Philadelphia? Sally: Well I grew up uh out in the suburbs. And then I lived for about seven years up in upstate New York. And then I came back here t'go to college (Schiffrin 1988: 106) The second use is when speakers use weil to qualify in some way what they have just said, and in the third use weil, rather like all right, has the function to wind up a conversation or activity. Let me, first, make a brief comment on the definitions. While ALD5, COBUILD2 and LDOCE3 define very clearly the various functions of discoursewell with relevant examples, CIDE gives a detailed, cover-all definition ("used to introduce something you are going to say, often to show surprise, doubt, slight disagreement or annoyance, or to continue a story") without linking its examples to the parts of its definition so that users do not know which part of the definition applies to which example. Ad 1: COBUILD has no yes-no question in its examples for the discourse uses of weil, nor does CIDE, which has however a wh-question which shows the addres- FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of learner dictionaries 205 see diverging from the speaker's implied options: "Who was that? " "Well, I'm afraid I can't remember her name." (s.v. weil, exclamation). Even further removed from the typical yes-no question, and a straightforward answer, is LDOCE3's example: "I reckon Mike Whelan is worth a place in the English side." "Well, he's not a very consistent player, is he? " (s.v. weil 2 meaning 7). The only dictionary to have an example in the form of a yes-no question with an evasive answer is ALD5: 'Do you want to come? ' 'Well, I'm not sure.' (s.v. weil 3 interj 7). Ad 2: Two dictionaries do not list the self-corrective use of weil, CIDE and LDOCE3, but the other two do, cf. for example COBUILD2: The comet is going to come back in 2061 and we are all going to be able to see it. Weil, our ojfspring are, anyway (s.v. well 1 discourse uses: sense 7). Ad 3: This third use clearly would seem to require the dictionaries to indicate something of the activity that has gone before, but LDOCE3 (Weil, that's all for today, I'll see you all tomorrow; s.v. weil 2 meaning 6) and ALD5 (Weil, l'd better be going now; s.v. well 3 interj 9) do so only implicitly. CIDE does not list this use of weil, but COBUILD2 is excellent: it gives a rnini-context of 2 utterances, thus sketching in the preceding context, which function is also served implicitly by the adverb finally: 'I'm sure you will be an asset,' she finally added. 'Weil, I see it's just about time for lunch.' (s.v. well 1 discourse uses: sense 4) To extrapolate wildly from these three examples: the good news is that all four dictionaries cover the discourse uses of weil and list examples where they give more than one utterance. The bad news is that they do not all list the important uses of weil, although they are all based on large corpora of spoken English. 3.4.4 When one takes a look at COBUILD2's examples, the claim on the blurb that this edition is completely revised is fully bome out, as is shown in the following table. The first five examples in COBUILD2 do not add anything to what we leam from the word's definition while the second set of five examples present semantic and syntactic difficulties that may well make too high demands on many of COBUILD2's envisaged customers. 33 33 I have taken the examples with their evaluation from Zöfgen (1994: 199 f). FLuL 26 (1997) 206 Kurt-Michael Pätzold baptism The took place a fortnight There are three -s tomorrow afternoon later in the Parish Church [...] Baptists only practice adult - 2 beautiful 2 Everything in life is - New England is - [ ... ] lt was a morning [... ] He has manners 3 disband They began to - All the armed groups will be disbanded...The rebels were to have fully -ed by June the tenth 4 disc 4 They regularly bought one This includes the piano sonata in C or two -s every week minor 5 sympathize I I with Delia [... ] I must teil you how much I with Everyone with Bruce you for your loss, Professor [...] He would but he wouldn't understand 6 acceptance 5 [... ] our ancestors' cheerful Popular of authority had been an of their plight early aim of the Nationalists [... ] The most impressive thing about him is his calm of whatever comes his way 7 beseeching Mary Stuart put a hand on She clung to him and looked up to myarm into his face with eyes 8 exult 3 He -ed in the title of Napo- He was -ing in a win at the show earleon of Fleet Street lier that day [... ] Some individual investors-ed at the record [... ] I -ed and wept for joy [... ] 'This is what I've longed for during my entire career,' Kendall -ed 9 hot dog [... ] truck drivers gobbling no example given up -s dripping with mustard 10 region 3 To have access to the truth this meaning is no longer listed and so to pass beyond the of mere opinion is to take great risks Table 7 The changes are sweeping: not a single example of the first edition has been kept, in one case (no 10, region) because the meaning is no longer listed andin another (no 9, hot dog) because, except for the compound hot dog stand, it is hard to see what an example could add other than some information about its cultural and national status: they are cheap and popular and are considered quintessentially American 34 , all of which is almost impossible to convey in a shortish 34 Cf. the entry in LDELC : "In the US hot dogs and HAMBURGERS are considered to be very American foods and are very popular." FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 207 context. There are now collocations for beautiful (no 2) useful both for linguistic (moming, manners) and cultural reasons (New England). The same goes for disband (no3), where we get typical subjects (armed groups, rebels). No 7 example is much easier to understand now and the examples in no 8 show both the absolute and intransitive uses, with two. different prepositions. They do, however, present some problems: what kind of show (füst example) or record (second example) is being talked about? I find a similar mixture of good and bad in the rest of the examples. While the first example for no 5 is admirable because it illustrates one of many possible causes to sympathize with somebody, the second example suffers from a referential (who do the two hes refer to? ) and a semantic problem (why would the second he not understand? ). The new examples for no 6 also get a mixed reception from me: the first example is unclear (who are the Nationalists? ), while the second is all right although not explicitly positive or negative. In fact, it is my impression that negative contexts are more frequent for acceptance (e.g. death, horror, punishment3 5 ), cf. She thought she had gotten over the pain of separation and had begun acceptance, but Cynthia's death had opened all the wounds (Goldsmith 1993: 20). To sum up then: while the revisions are generally very thorough, and the lexis of the new examples is on the whole easy, the new examples cannot always be said to be ideal. In particular, contextual and referential problems make the examples sometimes puzzling, if not annoying. There is not enough space to run a similar comparison for ALD5 and LDOCE3, the two other dictionaries of which we have revised editions. I propose however to list all the examples, collocations or other contexts that the other four dictionaries under review offer for the meanings of the ten items chosen. 1 baptism There were six -s at our All the family attended the no example local church last week of the first grandchild 2 beautiful 2 a face/ flower/ view/ You see lots of nice houses, a bunch of flowers; poem/ smelVmoming but rarely a one; there, were a house/ view some [ ... ] paintings in the exhibition; "Oh, what a morning,/ Oh, what a day! / I got a feeling / Everything' s going my way" 3 disband The regiment (was) -ed She formed a political group no example soon after the war which -ed a year later 4 disc 4 recordings on and This recording is available on no example cassette and cassette 35 This impression is supported by ALD s.v. acceptance 4: "willingness to tolerate sth unpleasant". FLuL 26 (1997) 208 Kurt-Michael Pätzold 5 sympathize 1 I with you - I bad a I was just -ing with Susie I -; you need to know similar unhappy expeover her mother-in-law trouexactly what caused rience myself bles; I know what it' s like to the accident; l with have migraines, so I do -'the plight of the (with you) homeless 6 acceptance 5 their calm of pain/ does not ! ist the meaning no example poverty 7 beseeching no example, but: "(of a does not ! ist the item item not listed look, tone of voice, etc)" 8 exult 3 Crowds --ed when vic- They --ed in/ at/ over their vic- They --ed at their victory was announced; tory; "Things will be different tory; the people --ed Tue nation --ed at the now", they -ed over their fallen eneteam's success; He --ed mies in bis role as national hero 9 bot dog no example a hot-dog stand/ stall no example 10 region 3 sense not listed sense not listed sense not listed Table 8 There is rare, and complete, unanirnity between the dictionaries in not listing the metaphorical meaning of region (no 10), and three of the dictionaries have no exarnple for no 9. LDOCE3 turns out tobe most sparing with exarnples, it has none for nos 3, 4,6 and 9. ALD5 often simply lists collocations (e.g. nos 2, 7) or noun phrases (nos 4 and 6), while CIDE is the most lavish of the learner dictionaries with its space: it alone has an illustrative compound for hot dog. Like COBUILD2, ALD5 shows both transitive and intransitive (i.e. pseudo-intransitive because it has passive meaning) uses of disband, while CIDE lists and illustrates only the intransitive one. CIDE and LDOCE 3 list the absolute use of / sympathize; ALD5 devotes an exarnple each to the intransitive absolute use of exult, but also to the two complementation pattems with the prepositions at and in; CIDE is uncharacteristically laconic, though it also gives all three possibilities in one sentence that can hardly have been tak: en from its corpus. LDOCE 3 alone does not record the absolute intransitive use nor the use with the preposition in. The lexis of the exarnples is generally easy to understand, with only LDOCE 3 using plight (in no 5), which COBUILD2 used in its first edition but rejected for the new edition. Finally, none of the exarnples in these three dictionaries suffers from the problem of the reference of narnes and pronouns that bedevils a number of exarnples in COBUILD2. In summary, LDOCE 3 has the fewest examples, lists fewer syntactic pattems and has one difficult lexical item. ALD5 seems niggardly with its space, with the exception of no 8, but covers all syntactic pattems. CIDE is not complete in its coverage of syntactic pattems but spends the most space on its illustrative contexts. lt also introduces an innovative feature to the world of learner dictionaries by including titles, slogans and famous quotations, as in no 2, where it quotes a few FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 209 lines from a famous musical. lt thus helps readers to become culturally literate in the English-speaking world. 36 3.4.S To round off this section on examples I will look at 45 synonyms of the verb to steal in the big four as weil as the two production dictionaries (see ·above section tw~)abduct +, 2s (I st ls 1s 2s (1 st good) ls (bad) good) 2 blackmail +, 1s 2s 1s31 3s (1 st good) 1s (bad) 3 break in(to) +,0 +, 2s (bad) 1s (bad) 1s 2s 1s (good) (2 nd good) 4 burglarize +, 2s +,0 +,0 0 0 1s 0 5 burgle +, 3s (2 nd +, 1s +, 2s (bad) 11s, 1s 1s 3s 1s (bad) good) 6 carry off +, 1s 1s (good) 7 cheat +, 1s ls, 11s 3s 2s (2 nd diff) 1s (good) (good) 8 con +, 1s 2s 2s 3s 2s (bad) 9 defraud +, 1s 1s 3s 2s 1s (I st diff) (2 nd good) 10 ernbezzle +, 2s +, 1s ls,--1-Is--. 1s (good) 1s 1s (good) 11 extort +, 1s 21s (bad) 1s 2s 1s (diff) (good) (2 nd good) 12 go/ walk off +, 2s 2s 0 1s 1s with 13 have your +, 2s 1s (bad) 1s (good) 0 fingers in (good) the till 14 help yourself +, 2s 1s 1s (good) 1s (bad) 1s (bad) to 15 hijack +,0 +, 1s 1s 1s (good) 3s (1" good) 0 16 hold up +, 2s (2 nd +, 1s +, 1s 11s (bad), 2s 1s (good) 1s (good) good, but (good) 1s diff) (good) 36 Readers may like to know that there is a dictionary specially devoted to cultural literacy in America, see Hirsch [et al.] (1988). 37 CIDE gives no definition, which is to be gathered from the definition of the noun, a bad practice. FLuL 26 (1997) 210 Kurt-Michael Pätzald 17 joyride 18 kidnap +, 1s (bad) 1s 1s 3s 19 knock over +, 1s 1s 0 20 lift +, 2s 11s 1s (good) 0 21 loot +, 2s +, 1s 38 +, 1s ls,11s 2s 2s 1s (good). (good) 22 make/ run off +, 1s 1s 1s 1s 1s with 23 misappro- +, 1s 1s 2s (both 2s (1 st good; 0 priate (good) good) 2 nd dift) 24 mug +, 2s +, 11s 1s 1s 2s (bad) 1s (good) (bad) (good) 25 nick +, 3s +,0 1s 1s 2s 1s (bad) 26 pick s.o.'s +,0 0 1s (good) 1s (bad) 0 pocket 27 pilfer +, 2s (2 nd +, 2s (2 nd 2s (1 st 1s 2s 1s good) good) bad) 28 pinch +, 4s +, 1s +, 2s 2s 1s 1 s, 11s (bad) 1s (bad) 29 pirate +, 1s 11s, 1s 39 1s 2s ( good) 0 30 plunder +, 3s (1 + 2s, 11s 4s ( 3s ( good) ls; 11s 2 good) good) (good) 31 poach +,0 1s 2s (2 nd 1s (good) 11s (good) good) 32 raid +,0 2s 3s (1,3 2s 2s (good) good) 33 rip off +, 2s 1s 2s 2s (1 st good; 2s (bad) (good) 2 nd dift) 34 rob +, 5s +, 2s +, 5s (2 nd 1s(sb), 3s (1 st 2s (2 nd bad) 3s good; 3n1 11s (sth) good) + 4 th bad) 35 rustle +, 2s 40 0 0 0 36 shoplift +, 2s 1s (bad) 1s (good) 2s (2 nd dift) 0 (good) 37 smuggle +, 2s 41s 7s 3s 1s 38 snatch +, 2s 1s 1s 2s 2s 38 The example is: The riots were followed by looting. 39 The big four do not have the steal-meaning any longer but know only the sense "use or copy illegally printed or recorded material [... ]" (ALD5). 40 The first example goes: He used to take part in cattle rustling. FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 211 40 steal +, 5s, 1s (bad) 3s (2 nd 6s (2 3s 4s 3s (1 st lms good) bad; 1 good) good) 41 swindle - +, 2s 1s 2s 2s 1s (good) (good), 11s 42 swipe +, 2s (1 st 1s (bad) 1s 2s (1 st good) 1s good) 43 take +, 3s (3n1 3s 2s 2s ex good) 44 thieve +, 1s 1s (bad) 0•1 0•2 0 45 trick sb into +, 1s 1s (bad) 1s (good) 3s (2 nd 1s sth good) entries / 541 91 43/ 651 "65/ 77/ 40/ examples 22 16 27 38 39 37 30 Table 9 43 In my comments I will first compare the dictionaries for the number of their examples before I look in detail at the quality of their illustrative contexts. Looking up 45 verbs in 7 seven dictionaries will inevitably result in a few mistakes, but the figures nevertheless indicate certain tendencies. OLWD has fewest, its ratio of examples versus entries listed being 9: 16. Using this rough measure, LDOCE3 is next (40: 30), then follow LLCE (43: 27), CIDE (65: 39), ALD5 (65: 38), COBUILD2 (77: 37) and LLA (54: 22). Let me now turn to the question of how good the examples are. I will distinguish between three types of examples: there are difficult (marked diff in the table), indifferent or serviceable examples (marked bad in the table), good, and interesting or, as is to be expected with synonyms of steal, chilling examples to be found in 41 42 CIDE only has this example: His was a life of thieving and cheating. I do not count this example: An ex-con who says he's given up thieving. 43 Legend: + = item listed in steal-sense; s = example sentence; 0 = no illustrative context; 1, 2, 3 etc = one, two, three etc. illustrative contexts; ms = example longer than a sentence; 1s = example shorter than a sentence; where there is nothing in a box, this means that the item is not listed. Note also that in columns 4-7 I do not specially mark when an item is listed and that ALD5, CIDE, COBUILD2 and LDOCE 3 can list different.meanings that are rather remote from stealing, e.g. in the case of pirate. I did not take this into account as I am only interested in their case in the number and quality of the examples they give. Finally, for joyride most dictionaries only record joyriding, but no finite verbal uses. FLuL 26 (1997) 212 Kurt-Michael Pätzald the learner dictionaries. Although I have tried to give what I consider good reasons for my judgements I am aware that there is always a measure of subjectivity in an exercise like this. But fi.rst, two brief notes, one on the relationship between definitions and examples, the other on a definition. In most cases the two parts of entries confirm and support each other, but there is one case where they seem to be pulling in different directions. LLA's definition of pinch goes "[ ... ] to steal something, especially something fairly small and not valuable", which looks strange when we read I almost had my car pinched last time I went to Marie's. Second, LLA also has an amusingly redundant or ambiguous definition for rip oft, "[ ... ] to steal something, especially other people's possessions", as if there were cases where one could steal one's own possessions. Let me start my discussion now by pointing out that the learner dictionaries hardly ever offer contexts that manage to convey or underline the regional (for example originally American snitch) or stylistic aspects of a lexeme (formal: misappropriate; informal: pilfer, pinch, rip oft and swipe). An exception is this example from LLA (s.v. snitch), The supermarket has a problem with kids snitching candy bars oft the shelves, where both snitch and candy bars are typical of American English. The example is also good because some of its lexis is pitched at the informal level (kids, snitch), as are LLCE's two examples hey, someone's pinched my money! (for pinch) and hey, someone's lifted my wallet (for Lift), although these last two are rather uninspired in other respects. Boring examples like Who's swiped my toothbrush? (ALD5) or Who's swiped my pen? (LDOCE3) are a little worse than Okay, who's swiped my keys? (CIDE ), where okay at least indicates the informal level. I now turn to difficult examples. I find those examples difficult that contain difficult lexis although the difficulty caused can also be for cultural or generally encyclopedic reasons, e.g. The Charlottetown agreement is history (COBUILD2, s.v. history, meaning 6), which only those familiar with recent Canadian history will appreciate. Similarly, although I remember vividly TV reports of the Great Train Robbery in 1963 and later, not everybody will, or will be prepared to look up the reference 44 when they see great train robbers in the great train robbers were among the last of their kind to hold up a train and get away with it (LLA, s.v. hold up). Corpus examples can have difficult words and phrases, like cover one 's lasses in Landlords tried to cover their lasses by extorting high rents from tenants (LDOCE3, s.v. extort), which is not listed in LDOCE3, or ticket touts and to the tune of in this example from COBUILD2 (s.v. rip off) Ticket touts ripped oft soccer Jans to the tune of i/ 38,000 in the FA Cup Final. I am not sure how many 44 There is no entry for it in OALDED, but LDELC has one, and the splendid Encyclopedia of Britain has an extended treatment of this highlight of recent British crirninal history, see Gascoigne (1993). FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of leamer dictionaries 213 leamers will be familiar with merchandise in this examples form COBUILD2 (s.v. shoplift): They had shoplifted thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise. If one assumes that examples should be immediately understood then this is clearly a drawback of authentic examples that have not been edited down to the (presumed) level of advanced leamers. I will now turn to examples that do little more than give the bare bones of a verb's syntactic or collocational pattem, of which ALDS has rather more than the others (syntactic: e.g. s.v.finger: He was caught with his fingers in the till, but see below for two good examples of the same idiom; s.v. trick: She tricked him into marriage/ marrying her; s.v. steal: Someone has stolen my watch/ 1 have had my watch stolen; collocations: s.v. extort: extort money, bribes from sb; s.v. hold up: hold up a banklpost oftice). The same goes for many examples in OLWD (My car was stolen last night; Who's pinched my cigarettes? ; s.v. burglary: to commit a burglary; s.v. mug: fear of being mugged) and for some in LLCE (s.v. break in(to): someone broke in (to our house) last night; The house was broken into last night). Even LDOCE3, which is so sophisticated in many respects, is not free of this, cf. they really ripped us oft at that hotel! ; somebody's ripped oft my bike! , where the first context has a human for object, while the second has a thing as object. Something very strange has happened to COBUILD2's examples for pilfer: Staft were pilfering behind the bar[. .. ] When foodstores close, they go to work, pilfering food for resale on the black market. The second example surely is a typo, while the first example really set me thinking what exactly the staff were stealing, and behind the bar, too. Good examples go beyond mere syntactic or collocational pattems and put a little flesh on the bones of their examples. Contrast an indifferent example like Our house was broken into by burglars last week (ALDS) with In this country a hause is broken into every 24 seconds (COBUILD2) or Thieves broke into the bank vault by digging a tunnel (LDOCE3). There are more examples füll of late 20 th -century social reality, cf. masked men held up a security van in South London yesterday (ALDS ), four masked men held up a bank in Norwich this morning (OLWD), his brother tried to hold up a drugstore and was sent to jail (LDOCE3) and a thief ran oft with hundreds of pounds yesterday after holding up a petrol station (CO- BUILD2), all in the entries for hold up. White collar crime is mentioned in/ think a Lot of the management here have had their fingers in the till at one time or another (LLA, s.v. finger), in the Consumer Federation claims banks are ripping you oft by not passing along savings on interest rates (COBUILD2; s.v. rip of/ ) and the entries for misappropriate, for example the charity was trying to get back some money which had been misappropriated by a former director (LLA) or he is accused of misappropriating $ 30,000 to pay for personal taxes, gambling debts and travel expenses (CIDE). The beginnings of a career in crime are exposed (he began his life of crime by pilfering (from) his fellow pupils' school Zockers; LLCE, s.v. pilfer), likely consequences pointed out (She lost her job after she was caught FLuL 26 (1997) 214 Kurt-Michael Pätzold with her fingers in the till (CIDE, s.v.finger) and psychological explanations given (Psychiatrists claim that many people shoplift due to emotional worries or personal problems; LLA, entry for shoplift). The breakdown of social order comes through in during the riot shops were looted and cars damaged or set on fire and discipline quickly broke down after the city fell, and the invading soldiers were found to be looting and sometimes killing (both in CIDE, s.v. loot) as well as in many examples for mug, cf. An old lady was mugged by a gang ofyouths in the park (ALD5), or steal (some drug users steal from their own families to finance their habit; LDOCE3, s.v. steal). There is little comfort to be had except perhaps for Robin Hood in Robin Hood robbed the rich to give to the poor (LLCE, s.v. roh, and a similar sentence s.v. steal), although his name is not mentioned in He stole from the rich to give to the poor (ALDS, s.v. steal). I have also come across one example that managed to make me smile: while I was swimming in the river, somebody swiped all my clothes (LLA). Finally, my favourite example comes from CO- BUILD2's entry for trick: His family tricked him into going into Pakistan, and once he was there, they took away his passport. Although, or rather because, it is not clear who the they refers to, a difficulty with COBUILD2 examples mentioned above, I am intrigued by this sentence it is sad, romantic, mysterious in short, the stuff that boys' adventure stories are made up of. To sum up: I am encouraged by the great number of examples that I consider good or interesting though I cannot say that I was vastly entertained by any of them, humour being conspicuously absent from the pages of learner dictionaries. I also think that this high standard has something to do with the fact that most dictionaries are now based on large corpora. Many lexicographers are brilliantly inventive, it is true, but there is a limit to one's creativity, and corpora are a great help when one's imagination flags. lt cannot be denied, however, that there are great differences between dictionaries both in the number and the quality of their examples. OLWD is rather sparing with examples, sometimes not giving any or often using only short contexts to illustrate pattems and meanings, and I can't say that I was thrilled by any of them. ALD5's record for examples is also not impressive. lt has a number of shortish, sub-sentence examples that simply illustrate a pattem although I have also found, and mentioned, a few more interesting cases. Although LLCE dates from pre-corpus times, is not free of the pedestrian pattem-examples and sometimes uses the same examples with different verbs, it also offers readers a fair number of good ones. Among the big four learner dictionaries LDOCE3 is the one with the fewest examples and the one where bad contexts and good ones are almost equally balanced. Next in rank comes COBUILD2, which has a great many examples, among which are however also a number of bad or difficult ones. CIDE has a great many examples, and good ones too, while LLA comes out on top, with no indifferent or downright bad illustrative contexts. FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of learner dictionaries 215 References 1. Dictionaries 45 ALD5 = Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. A.S. Hornby. 5 th edition edited by J. Crowther. Oxford 1995 [available from Cornelsen-Oxford, Berlin]. BBCED = BBC English Dictionary. London 1992. CEC = Collins Cobuild English Collocations on CD-ROM. London 1996. CGD = Collins German Dictionary. Ed. by P. Terrell [et al.]. 2 nd ed. Glasgow 1991. CIDE = PR0CTER, P. (ed.): Cambridge International Dictionary of English. Cambridge 1995 [available from Klett, Stuttgart]. COBUILD2 = SINCLAIR, J. (ed.): Collins COBUILD English Dictionary. New ed. London 1995 [available from Klett, Stuttgart]. DOLW = BALL, W. J.: Dictionary of Link Words in English Discourse. London 1991 (1986). DudOxf = Duden-Oxford Großwörterbuch Englisch. Englisch-Deutsch, Deutsch-Englisch. Edited by the Duden-Redaktion and Oxford University Press. General editors: Werner Scholze-Stubenrecht and John Sykes. Mannheim 1990 [reprinted in enlarged format and with corrections 94, 1995]. HUYW = P0LLMANN-LAVERENTZ, C./ P0LLMANN, F.: How to Use Your Words. Lernwörterbuch in Sachgruppen. Neubearbeitung. Dortmund 1991 (1990). LASDE = MAINGAY, S. (ed.): Longman Active Study Dictionary of English. New ed. Harlow 1993 (1991). LDOCE3 = SUMMERS, D. (ed.): Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Harlow 1995 [available from Langenscheidt-Longman, München]. LDAE = Longman Dictionary of American English. White Plains, New York 1983. LDELC = SUMMERS, D. (ed.): Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture. Harlow 1992. LLA = SUMMERS, D. [et al.]: Longman Language Activator. Harlow 1993. LPD = LANGENSCHEIDT-REDAKTION: Langenscheidt's Power Dictionary. Englisch-Deutsch, Deutsch-Englisch. München 1997. MSD = MANSER, M. H. (ed.): Macmillan Student's Dictionary. Revised ed. London 1990 (1984). OALDEE = CR0WTHER, J. (ed.): Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. Encyclopedic Edition. Oxford 1992. ODOIE = Vol. 1: C0WIE, A. P. / MACKIN, R.: Oxford Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs. Oxford 1993. Vol. 2: C0WIE, A.P. / MACKIN, R./ MCCAIG, I.R.: Phrase, Clause and Sentence Idioms. Oxford 1983. OLWD = TRAPPES-L0MAX, H.: Oxford Learner's Wordfinder Dictionary. Oxford 1997. OS = DEUTER, M. / Holtkamp, H.: Das Oxford Schulwörterbuch English-German, Deutsch-Englisch. Oxford and Berlin 1996. 45 Note: For reasons of space I have decided to give only the name(s) of the chief lexicographer(s) involved in the production of the respective dictionary, and sometimes I do not ! ist any names at all. I regret this very much as I think all people involved in the production of dictionaries deserve credit for the work they have done. Where given, numbers in brackets refer to the first printing of the respective (edition of the) dictionary. FLuL 26 (1997) 216 Kurt-Michael Pätzold OSD = HORNBY, A. S. / RUSE, C.: Oxford Student's Dictionary of Current English. 2 nd ed. by C. Ruse. Oxford 1988. OSDAE = Oxford Student's Dictionary of American English. 2 nd ed. Oxford 1986 [this dictionary is now sold, with minor corrections, as Oxford ESL Dictionary. For Students of American English. Oxford 1991]. OWD = WEHMEIER, S. (ed.): Oxford Wordpower Dictionary. Oxford 1994. PCES = SCHNORR, V. [et al.]: PONS Collins Easy Schulwörterbuch. Deutsch-Englisch, Englisch- Deutsch. Stuttgart 1997 [originally published in London 1997]. PWD = MANSER, M. H. / Turton, N. D.: The Penguin Wordmaster Dictionary. London 1987. RWF = RüDALE, J. I.: The Word Finder. Emmaus, Pa. 1947. TGAE = HÄUBLEIN, G. / JENKINS, R.: Thematischer Grund- und Aufbauwortschatz. Neubearbeitung. Stuttgart 1993. WYCU = BEROLD, K.: Words You Can Use. Lernwörterbuch in Sachgruppen. Berlin 1987. 2. Other References AITCHISON, Jean (1987): Words in the Mind. Oxford. BAHNS, Jens (1994): "Die Berücksichtigung von Kollokationen in den drei großen Lemerwörterbüchem des Englischen". In: Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen 23, 84-101. BAHNS, Jens (1996): Kollokationen als lexikographisches Problem. Tübingen (Lexicographica. Series Maior; 74). BAKER, M. / KAPLAN, R. (1994): "A new breed of bilingual dictionaries". In: Babel 40, 1-11. BE.JOINT, Henri (1981): "The Foreign Student's Use of Monolingual English Dictionaries". In: Applied Linguistics 2, 207-222. BLAICHER, G. (1966): Das Weinen in mittelenglischer Zeit: Studien zur Gebärde des Weinens in historischen Quellen und literarischen Texten. Saarbrücken. BURGER, Harald/ BUHOFER, Annelies/ SIALM, A. (1982): Handbuch der Phraseologie. Berlin. BURGESS, Anthony (1983): Earthly Powers. Harrnondsworth. BUTZKAMM, Wolfgang (1970): Aufgeklärte Einsprachigkeit. Zur Entdogmatisierung der Methode im Fremdsprachenunterricht. Heidelberg. BUTZKAMM, Wolfgang (1980), Praxis und Theorie der bilingualen Methode. Heidelberg. BUTZKAMM, Wolfgang (1993): Psycholinguistik des Fremdsprachenunterrichts. 2 nd edition. Tübingen. COOPER, Jilly (1981): Class. London. Cowrn, Anthony P. (1995): "The Learner's Dictionary in a Changing Cultural Perspective". In: KACHRU, Braj / KAHANE, H. (eds.): Cultures, ldeology and the Dictionary. Tübingen, 283- 295. DEMISCH, H. (1984): Erhobene Hände: Geschichte einer Gebärde in der bildenden Kunst. Stuttgart. D0LEZAL, F. / McCREARY, D. R. (1996): "Language Learners and Dictionary Users: Commentary and an Annotated Bibliography". In: Lexicographica 12, 125-165. FEYEREISEN, P./ DE LANNOY, J-D. (1991): Gestures and speech: psychological investigations. Cambridge. FuSSELL, Paul (1984): Class. London. GASCOIGNE, Bamber (1993): Encyclopedia of Britain. Basingstoke. FLuL 26 (1997) The new generation of learner dictionaries 217 GLÄSER, Rosemarie (1992): "Phraseologismen im amerikanischen Englisch". In: Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen 21, 88-103. GLAZIER, Stephen (1992): Word Menu. New York. G0LDSMITH, Olivia (1993): The First Wives Club. London. GRAMLEY, Stephan/ PÄTZ0LD, Kurt-Michael (1992): A Survey of Modem English. London. HABICHT, Werner (1959): Die Gebärde in englischen Dichtungen des Mittelalters. München. HARTMANN, Reinhard R.K. (1994): "Bilingualised versions oflearners' dictionaries". In: Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen 23, 206-217. HEATH, David/ HERBST, Thomas ( 1994): "Enzyklopädische Lernerwörterbücher ein neuer Wörterbuchtyp? " In: Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen 23, 149-163. HENKE-BR0WN, Käthe (1994): "Neuere phraseologische Wörterbücher und andere Nachschlagewerke für Anglisten ein Überblick". In: Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen 23, 120-148. HERBST, Thomas (1996): "On the way to the perfect learners' dictionary: a first comparison of OALD5, LDOCE3, COBUILD2 and CIDE". In: International Journal of Lexicography 9, 321-357. HIRSCH, E.D. Jr./ KETT, J.F./ TREFIL, J. (1988): The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy. What every American needs to know. Boston. ISAACS, Susan (1991): Magie Hour. New York. JAMES, P. D. (1990): Devices and Desires. London. KlENER, F. (1962): Hand, Gebärde und Charakter: ein Beitrag zur Ausdruckskunde der Hand und ihrer Gebärden. München. KlNGS0LVER, B. (1993): Pigs in Heaven. New York. LEYT0N, John (1971): Modem English Vocabulary in Narrative Fonn. München. LURIE, Alison (1986): Foreign Affairs. London. MANN, Thomas (1949): Lotte in Weimar. Stockholm (1939). McARTHUR, Tom (1981): Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English. Harlow. McMURTRY, L. (1985): Lonesome Dove. New York. MCNEILL, D. (1992): Hand and mind: what gestures reveal about thought. Chicago. MURD0CH, Iris (1978): The Sea, The Sea. London. PÄTZ0LD, Kurt-Michael (1987): "Context is all: The BEI Combinatory Dictionary of English and the German Learner". In: Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen 16, 151-182. PARETSKY, Sara (1990): Burn Marks. New York. PARISH, Richard (1993): The Dividing Line. New York. PLANT, P. M. (1973): Everyday English. Leipzig. R0EDER, A. (1974): Die Gebärde im Drama des Mittelalters. München. RüEGG, R. (1991): ,Jm Abgang ein Schnippchen schlagend" zur Funktion von Kinegrammen in Volksstücken des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Bern. SAMPS0N, Rodney / SMITH, Colin (1997): And now for something completely different. München. SCHEMANN, Hans/ KNIGHT, Paul (1997): PONS Schemann Idiomatik Deutsch-Englisch[... ] mit Ergänzungsband Englisch-Deutsch. 2 volumes. Stuttgart. SCHIFFRIN, Deborah (1988): Discourse markers. Cambridge. VON RAFFLER-ENGEL, P. (1984): The transfer of gestures. Trier. TARTT, Donna (1993): The Secret History. New York. FLuL 26 (1997) 218 Kurt-Michael Pätzald ZöFGEN, Ekkehard (1991): "[Article 305] Bilingual Leamer's Dictionaries". In: HAUSMANN, Franz Josef [et al.] (eds.): Wörterbücher • Dictionaries • Dictionnaires. [...] Berlin, 2888- 2903. ZöFGEN, Ekkehard (1994): Lemerwörterbücher in Theorie und Praxis. Ein Beitrag zur Metalexikographie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Französischen. Tübingen (Lexicographica. Series Maior; 59). FLuL 26 (1997)