Grammatical Information in ESL Dictionaries 9783111341125, 9783484309487

Citation preview

Series Maior

LEXICO GRAPHICA Series Maior Supplementary Volumes to the International Annual for Lexicography Suppléments à la Revue Internationale de Lexicographie Supplementbände zum Internationalen Jahrbuch für Lexikographie

Edited by Sture Allén, Pierre Corbin, Reinhard R. K. Hartmann, Franz Josef Hausmann, Hans-Peder Kromann, Oskar Reichmann, Ladislav Zgusta

48

Published in cooperation with the Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA.) and the European Association for Lexicography [EURALEX]

Edward Scott McCorduck

Grammatical Information in ESL Dictionaries

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 1993

For my parents, Earl and Judy McCorduck

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme MacCorduck, Edward Scott : Grammatical information in ESL dictionaries / Edward Scott McCorduck. Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1993 (Lexicographica : Series maior ; 48) NE: Lexicographica / Series maior ISBN 3-484-30948-2

ISSN 0175-9264

© Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Tübingen 1993 Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Druck: Weihert-Druck GmbH, Darmstadt Einband: Hugo Nädele, Nehren

ν

Table of contents Preface

1

Chapter one: Grammar and ESL dictionaries

3

1. Introduction 1.1. The theory of grammar in ESL dictionaries 1.2. Linguistic approaches to grammar in ESL dictionaries 2. The incorporation of grammatical information 2.1. Direct incorporation 2.1.1. Explanatory information within entries 2.1.2. Usage notes 2.1.3. Abbreviations and codes 2.1.3.1. Abbreviations 2.1.3.2. Codes 2.1.3.3. Codes and the dictionary user...; 2.2. Indirect incorporation 2.2.1. In examples 2.2.2. In definitions

5 7 10 13 13 13 13 15 16 16 21 23 23 26

Chapter two: Types of grammatical information in ESL dictionaries

27

1. Traditional (general) information 1.1. Parts of speech 1.2. Irregular forms 2. Information particular to ESL dictionaries 2.1. Morphological and word class information 2.1.1. Nouns 2.1.1.1. Countable and uncountable nouns 2.1.1.2. Article use with nouns 2.1.2. Verbs 2.1.2.1. Aspect, voice and tense restrictions 2.1.2.1.1. Restrictions on the passive voice 2.1.2.1.2. Restrictions on the progressive aspect 2.1.2.1.3. Restrictions on tense and mood 2.1.2.2. Phrasal and prepositional verbs 2.1.3. Adjectives 2.1.3.1. Predicative and attributive use of adjectives 2.1.3.2. Gradability of adjectives 2.1.3.3. Adjectival use of participles 2.1.3.4. Attributive use of nouns 2.1.4. Prepositions

29 29 35 39 39 39 39 44 49 49 50 55 57 58 71 71 76 79 81 82

VI 2.2. Syntactic information 2.2.1. Complementation 2.2.1.1. Verb complementation 2.2.1.2. Noun complementation 2.2.1.3. Adjective complementation 2.2.2. Word order 2.2.3. Transformations 2.2.4. Subject-verb concord 2.2.5. Syntactic functions of phrases 2.3. Discourse grammar information 2.4. Semantico-grammatical information

83 83 84 92 97 104 108 109 114 115 118

Chapter three: A research project into the interpretability and utility of grammatical information in ESL dictionaries

121

1. Description of the research project 2. Results of the questionnaire 2.1. Answers to Part 1 2.2. Answers to Part II 2.2.1. Item 1 2.2.2. Item 2 2.2.3. Item 3 2.2.4. Item 4

123 133 134 139 139 140 140 141

Chapter four: Conclusions

143

1. Conclusions from the analysis of ESL dictionaries 2. Conclusions from the research project 3. Recommendations for ESL lexicography

145 147 149

References

153

Dictionary abbreviations

155

English résumé

159

Deutsche Zusammenfassung

163

Résumé en français

167

1

Preface This monograph began as research I conducted for my Syracuse University thesis. As such, it owes much to certain members of the faculty at Syracuse University, namely Professors Lloyd Halladay, Jeanette Macero, William Ritchie and Clifford Flamm, who gave me invaluable guidance in conducting the original research. This work was also the basis for a paper I delivered at the eighth biennial meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America in Columbia, Missouri, in August of 1991. There I received several constructive comments and suggestions, most of which I have tried to incorporate in the present work. I am particularly grateful to Professor Ladislav Zgusta, who suggested that I submit the work to be considered for publication in the Lexicographica Series Maior and who assisted me in the different stages of getting the work published. I wish to acknowledge Pouliot International Communications of Syracuse, New York, for providing the French and German translations of this book's English résumé. Finally, I would like to thank some of my former ESL colleagues at Cornell University and the University of Maine—in particular Margaret Hallee, Mary Joan Reutter and Mary Savignano—specifically for their cooperation in some of the research conducted for this work and generally for aiding so much in my professional growth.

Ed McCorduck Homer, New York, USA October 1992

Chapter Grammar

and ESL

one: dictionaries

5

1. Introduction This study is an a t t e m p t to classify t h e i n f o r m a t i o n on English g r a m m a r t h a t is c o n t a i n e d in t h e most r e c e n t e d i t i o n s of m o n o l i n g u a l d i c t i o n a r i e s i n t e n d e d f o r l e a r n e r s of English as a second or f o r e i g n l a n g u a g e . It goes beyond t h e scope of t h e most closely r e l a t e d study t h a t has b e e n d o n e , L e m m e n s and W e k k e r 1986, in that this work f o c u s e s almost exclusively on t h e g r a m m a r coding systems of only five d i c t i o n a r i e s (two of which have b e e n s u p e r s e d e d by newer e d i t i o n s ) , w h e r e a s t h e p r e s e n t study a t t e m p t s to examine not only codes but t h e many o t h e r ways by which a variety of d i c t i o n a r i e s f o r l e a r n e r s provide g r a m m a t i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n . T h e t e r m learners is m e a n t to r e f e r to a b r o a d r a n g e of persons, including those who a r e studying English f o r m a l l y in an e d u c a t i o n a l setting, those who use English as a second language in business, g o v e r n m e n t or the like, and those who a r e simply not native s p e a k e r s of English. R e f e r e n c e will also be m a d e to users of d i c t i o n a r i e s who may also be c o n s i d e r e d to be l e a r n e r s unless otherwise s p e c i f i e d . This study will be f o c u s on m o n o l i n g u a l d i c t i o n a r i e s f o r l e a r n e r s of English, which will h e n c e f o r t h be called ESL dictionaries·, I use t h e a b b r e v i a t i o n ESL f o r "English as a second language," t h e n a m e f o r the field most commonly used in t h e U n i t e d States. E S L d i c t i o n a r i e s a r e the f o c u s of this study since they a r e able to d e v o t e m o r e space to g r a m m a t i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n in individual e n t r i e s than bilingual d i c t i o n a r i e s ; m o r e o v e r , E S L d i c t i o n a r i e s are w r i t t e n by native s p e a k e r s and t h e r e f o r e tend to be, in t h e words of L e m m e n s and W e k k e r (1991:1), "a realistic m i r r o r of t h e language." T h e following is a list and a simple c a t e g o r i z a t i o n of t h e E S L d i c t i o n a r i e s whose g r a m m a t i c a l i n f o r m a t i o n has b e e n examined f o r this study. F o r those d i c t i o n a r i e s t h a t have b e e n p u b l i s h e d in m o r e t h a n one e d i t i o n , only t h e most r e c e n t has b e e n analyzed ( t h e e d i t i o n is i n d i c a t e d by a n u m e r a l included in the a b b r e v i a t i o n , e.g. t h e 2 in LDOCE2 i n d i c a t e s t h a t it is t h e second e d i t i o n that was s t u d i e d ) . T h e list below is not claimed to be exhaustive but r e p r e s e n t s all the d i c t i o n a r i e s t h a t the a u t h o r was able to o b t a i n and examine. Since the a u t h o r resides and currently t e a c h e s E S L in the U n i t e d States, it may be a s s u m e d t h a t t h e s e d i c t i o n a r i e s r e p r e s e n t nearly all of the d i c t i o n a r i e s t h a t a r e available to l e a r n e r s of English in N o r t h A m e r i c a . T h e r e a r e some E S L d i c t i o n a r i e s , such as the Longman Active Study Dictionary, t h a t a p p e a r to be available only in E u r o p e (but according to Ilson (1989:1970) t h e coding system of this dictionary is t h e same as t h a t of t h e LDAE). A . General ESL dictionaries 1. For advanced learners (CELD) Carver, D. J., M. J. Wallace and J. Cameron (1974): Collins English Learner's Dictionary. - London: Collins. ('COBUILD) Sinclair, J. (ed.) (1987): Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary. London: Collins.

6 (CULD) Kirkpatrick, Ε. M. (ed.) (1980): Chambers Universal Learners' Dictionary. Edinburgh: R & W Chambers, Ltd. (LDOCE2) Summers, D. (ed.) (1987): Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. London: Longman. (OALDCE4) Hornby, A. S. (1989): Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. London: Oxford University Press. 2. For intermediate learners (LDAE)

(1983): - Longman Dictionary of American English. - White Plains, NY: Longman.

(NHLD) Shaw, J. R. and S. J. Shaw (1990): The New Horizon Ladder Dictionary of the English Language. - New York: Penguin.* (OSDAE2) Hornby, A. S., D. Harris, and W. A. Stewart (1986): Oxford Student's Dictionary of American English. - New York: Oxford University Press. (OSDCE) Hornby, A. S. (1978): Oxford Student's Dictionary of Current English. - London: Oxford University Press. 3. For beginning learners (BDAEU) Collin, P. H., M. Lowi and C. Weiland (eds.) (1986): Beginner's Dictionary of American English Usage. - Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. (EAED) Spears, R. A. (ed.) (1984): Everyday American English Dictionary. - Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. (LHLD) Costa, M., S. Crowdy and F. Mcintosh (1988): Longman Handy Learner's Dictionary. London: Longman. {OELDE) Burridge, S. (ed.) (1981): Oxford Elementary Learner's Dictionary of English. London: Oxford University Press.

B. Specialized ESL dictionaries 1. Idiom dictionaries (CAS) Spears, R. A. (1991): Textbook Company.

Contemporary American Slang. - Lincolnwood, IL; National

(DAI) Boatner, M. T. and J. E. Gates (1975):. A Dictionary of American Idioms. - Woodbury, NY: Barrons Educational Series.* ( E A I ) Spears, R. A. (1991): Essential American Idioms. - Lincolnwood, IL; National Textbook Company. ( H A I I U ) Whitford, H. C. and R. J. Dixson (1973): Handbook of American Idioms and Idiomatic Usage. - New York: Regents Publishing Company.*

7 (LDOEI) Long, T. H. and D. Summers (eds.) (1979): Longman Dictionary of English Idioms. London: Longman. (NTCAID) Spears, R. A. (1987): NTC's American Idioms Dictionary. - Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company.* (NTCDAS) Spears, R. A. (1989): NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions. - Lincolnwood, IL; National Textbook Company.* (ODCIE V2) Cowie, A. P., R. Mackin and I. R. Craig (1983): Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Volume 2: Phrase, Clause and Sentence Idioms. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. (PDEI) Gulland, D. M. and D. G. Hinds-Howell (1986): The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms. - Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd.

2. Multi-word verb dictionaries (up)J esp AmE to telephone: I'll call you up this evening. 2 [T] (call sbdy.up) BrE to order (someone) to join the armedforces; DRAFT: He was called up in 1917. - s e e also CONSCRIPT1 3 [T] (call sbdy./sthg.up) to bring back; cause to come back: This song calls up memories of my childhood. \ The magician says he can call up the spirits of the dead." In each of the senses, the arrows between the object and up show that the order of the object and the particle can be reversed.

OALDCE4 has run-on entries for call on and call up under its main entry for the verb call; the entry for call on is entered as "call o n / u p o n sb (to do sth)"; the entry for call up is entered as "call sb/sth up". The placement of the object "sb" after the particle "on/upon" indicates that the former is an inseparable two-word verb, whereas the the placement of "sb/sth" before "up" clearly indicates the separability of the particle from the verb.

2. For intermediate learners LDAE has the multi-word verbs call o n / u p o n and call up (and several others) as run-on entries under the main verb call. The first is entered as "call o n / u p o n sbdy. ν prep [T]"; both the placement of

67 the abbreviation "sbdy" after the particle "on/upon" and the part of speech label "v prep" (for a verb followed by a preposition) show that this verb is inseparable. The second is entered as "call up ν adv" and has three senses which have the respective grammar codes "(I;T call sbdy.< —> up]", "[T call sbdy. up]" and "[T call sthg. < —> up]." The abbreviation "vadv" represents a verb followed by an adverbial particle, and this and the "" between the abbreviations "sbdy." or "sthg." and up indicate that the particle may precede or follow the verb.

NHLD indicates phrasal and prepositional verbs as run-ons under their main verbs, but apparently has no systematic means of treating separability or inseparability, only indirectly through examples. Here are the entries for call on and call up under call: "—call on, 1. visit. Ex. We called on them at their home. 2. ask to do Ex. We called on him to make a contribution, —call up, telephone, [sic; "1." is not printed for the first sense] Ex. Call her up tonight. 2. order one to come for military duty. Ex. During the emergency, I was called up by the army."

OSDAE2

and

OSDCE

have call on and call up as indented entries under call; they are entered as call on/upon and call sb/sthg up (the OSDCE also has a separate entry for call on with the definition "make a short visit"; in the OSDAE2 this sense is incorporated into call on/upon). The entry for call up clearly indicates separability, but inseparability would be better indicated and reinforced if call on/upon were also followed by sb.

3. For beginning learners BDAEU doesn't list call on; has a run-on entry for call up under call, but there is no indication as to the separability of it. This is surprising because for other multi-word verbs, e.g. fill up, there is a clear indication of separability through usage notes: " N o t e : fill the glass up or fill up the glass but only fill it up."

EAED lists no multi-word verbs based upon call, nor does it apparently list any phrasal or prepositional verbs

LHLD has entries for call on\upon and call up under call; both are given the part of speech designation "phr vt" which designates a transitive phrasal verb (intransitive phrasal verbs are marked "phr vi."). There are no examples given and no other indication of separability or inseparability.

68 OELDE lists both call on and call someone up as idioms in its entry for call. By entering call up in the above manner, the OELDE suggests the separability of the particle, but the lone example does not as clearly indicate it: When the war started, Stuart was called up. Two senses with one example each are given for call on, Please call on me next time you're in Oxford and Mr. Woods called on the two boys to help him push the car; the first example, featuring a personal pronoun as object, unambiguously indicates the inseparability of the particle from verb. The examples are the only indication of the separability of multi-word verbs; there is no special marking for these idioms even to show if they are transitive or intransitive (indeed, the OELDE marks all verbs as just "v.")

B. Specialized ESL dictionaries 1. Idiom dictionaries CA S and

NTCDAS

have no idioms with call up nor call on. However, both can indicate separability or inseparability by means of their headword forms, putting someone or something both before and after the particle for separable verbs but only after for inseparable verbs; for example, both list the separable verb "bum someone out AND bum out someone" and the inseparable goof on someone.

DAI labels verbal idioms as either "v." or "v. phr.", the former indicating that such idioms may be used with objects or adjuncts (but not distinguishing between transitive or intransitive verbal idioms by using just "v.") and the latter indicating fixed phrases; for example, get at is labeled "v." and get a fix on is labeled "v. phr." The DAI has "call on or call upon" which is labeled "v."; there are two examples for both senses of the verb but both examples feature a noun phrase as direct object following the particle, so learners could infer inseparabilty from these. The DAI also has "call up v." with four senses, each of which has an example sentence also with a noun phrase as direct object, so here inseparability could be incorrectly inferred. Overall, the DAI does not seem to indicate the separability or inseparability of multi-word verbs.

EAI and NT CAI D Like Spears' other dictionaries the CAS and NTCDAS, these dictionaries can indicate separability in the form of the headword. Neither has call up, but both do have an entry "call the dogs off AND call off the dogs" showing that call o f f in this idiom is separable. In the NTCAID but not the EAI there is the headword "call upon someone AND call on someone," this form thus indicating the inseparability of call (up)on.

69 HAIIU has an entry for call on; this dictionary has no formal means of indicating the inseparability of this two-word verb, and the two examples given, "Yesterday the salesman called on three prospects" and "The chairman called on Mr. Brown to make a few remarks" do not suggest its inseparability since the objects are nouns, not pronouns. The HAIIU's entry f o r call up also does not formally indicate that up can be separated f r o m call, but the one example given shows the separability of the two-word verb: "I'll call you up about seven o'clock."

LDOEI includes neither call prepositional verbs

ODCIE

on nor call

up; in fact, it apparently does not list any phrasal or

V2

doesn't have entries f o r call on nor call up; this dictionary has many entries f o r verbal idioms, but apparently it does not include any phrasal or prepositional verbs (these are handled by the ODCIE VI, just as the LDOEI does not handle multi-word verbs but the LDOPV includes only them)

PDEI has only a few idioms with call, and apparently none of the idioms is part of multi-word verbs.

2. Multi-word verb dictionaries CPGPV has five senses in its entry f o r call on; all but the fourth sense have the label "vt fus" which, as explained above, is the CPGPV's code f o r a "fused" or inseparable two-word verb. The fourth sense, "to order to come forward," has the label "vt sep" which is the dictionary's label for a separable two-word verb. The CPGPV's entry f o r call up has the label "vt sep" at the beginning of the entry, signifying that each of the three senses given for the verb are separable.

DEPVI has "call (up)on vt f us" and call up which is listed as follows: "call up 1 vi see *call 2 vt sep (a) see *call ( b ) (Mil: summon ' bring in) The general called up reinforcements, (c) (Mil: mobilize) The army is calling up reservists in case of emergency. η call-up = legal summons to join the armed forces, η cpd call-up papers. Example: He got his call-up papers yesterday = he received notice that he must report for military service, (d) (Tel: contact) I'll call you up if I need your help." The reference to "*call" tells the user to see the entry f o r call, where one finds: "'call + particle 1 vi (call, with direction) He called out when he saw her. She called across to me. He called down f r o m the top of the ladder. 2 vt sep (summon by calling, with

70 direction) He called him over to tell him the story. She called me aside to tell me the bad news. He was called away by his friends."

DTWVSE has two senses for its entry to call on, "to ask to speak" and "to visit" both of which it labels "(Γ//)". It has three senses under its entry for to call up, "to telephone" which it labels as "(I/I or T/S)", "to call for military service" which is labeled " (T/S)" and "to bring to mind" labeled

•(T/s): LDOPV has an entry for call on/upon in which this verb is labeled "v prep" which is the code this dictionary uses to indicate inseparable, prepositional verbs. The LDOPV's entry for call up is labeled " ν adv" which is the code for separable verbs.

ODCIE

VI

has three entries involving call on, call (on), call on/upon (to do sth) 1 and call on/upon (to do sth) 2 , each of which have the grammar code "[A2 pass rei]". This grammar code gives the user the following information about the idiom: by "A2" it indicates that this is an intranstive verb followed by a preposition (i.e. no object may come between the verb and the preposition); by "pass" it shows that this idiom may undergo that passive transformation, in which the noun phrase after the verb may be raised to the subject position of the passive verb (e.g. They were called on); and by "rei" it indicates that the idiom may be used in a relative clause modifying a noun originating as the object of the preposition, e.g. the students on whom the teacher called (in the explanation for the code "[A2 rei]," there is an explanatory note cautioning that this form of the relative clause "is associated with formal written usage...A more common type of relative construction in everyday informal use is... A warehouse which a gang of thieves broke into..."). The ODCIE VI hasfour homographsfor call up; their grammar codes and definitions are as follows: "call up1 [Bli pass] reach, communicate with, by telephone... call up 2 [Bli nom pass adj] (military) summon for military or national service... call up 3 [Bli pass adj] (military) summon to one's aid... call up4 [Bli pass] recall to the memory, bring back 2 (qv)..." The "Bli" in each of the grammar codes signifies by the "Bl" a transitive verb followed by a particle and by the "i" that the object of the verb can be placed "on either side" of the particle. The code "pass" indicates that the verb can enter into the passive transformation, the code "nom" indicates that the verb may be nominalized (an example is given: "The call-up of the 40-42 age-group was announced on the radio"), and the code "adj" indicates that the verb in the past participle form followed by the particle may be used as an adjective phrase, e.g. The cal ledup reserves performed well.

71 3. Other specialized dictionaries BBICDE has entries for both call on and call up, both of which carry the primary designation as "v." call up is given the grammar code designation "(D; intr.)," the "D" standing for a verb plus preposition collocation. The only sense of call up given is "('to shout') to ~ from; to (she ~ed up to us from the basement)"; hence the entry for this verb seems not to indicate so much a two-word verb as a verb with particle showing direction, call on has two senses, the first having the grammar code designation "(D; tr.)", with the collocational pattern "to ~ for (to ~ a pupil for an answer); the second has the grammar code designation "(H)" which represents the verb pattern for transitive verbs followed by an object and to + infinitive. Immediately after this code comes not a collocation pattern but an example sentence "the mayor ~ed on the people to remain calm." There is thus no clear indication as to the separability or inseparability of the particles in these idioms, though inseparability is strongly suggested. For other multi-word verbs, the BBICDE gives a better, though still indirect indication of separability; for the verb call over, for example, there is an example sentence "I ~ed him over to our table."

2.1.3. Adjectives 2.1.3.1. Predicative and attributive use of adjectives English adjectives vary in their a c c e p t a b l e syntactic positions. Some adjectives, e.g. atomic and former, may only p r e m o d i f y nouns or noun phrases; some, e.g. alive and adrift, may only occur as a subject or object c o m p l e m e n t following a copular verb, and others may freely occur in both positions. A knowledge of the positions in which p a r t i c u l a r adjectives may occur is also considered to be part of the knowledge of the native s p e a k e r and is thus rarely included in dictionaries f o r native speakers. However, such knowledge, which is i m p o r t a n t primarily f o r the productive use of English, cannot be assumed to be available to nonnative l e a r n e r s and t h e r e f o r e many ESL dictionaries a t t e m p t to indicate if an adjective, or its senses individually, can f u n c t i o n attributively, predicatively or both. For the most part, any adjectives with restrictions on their syntactic position are m a r k e d individually in ESL dictionaries. T h e r e is usually no a t t e m p t to p r e s e n t generalizations concerning these restrictions, e.g. the rule that the socalled α-words, e.g. ahead, around and asleep, usually cannot be used predicatively. Most ESL dictionaries distinguish attributive-only or predicativeonly adjectives by labeling t h e m with codes or labels based on the terms attributive and predicative. The COBUILD has the codes "ATTRIB" and "PRED" ( o f t e n modified by "usu") which are placed next to adjectives or individual senses of adjectives that are attributive- or predicative-only, respectively. The OALDCE4 uses the codes "[attrib]" and "[pred]" to label adjectives or certain senses of adjectives that are used attributively only or predicatively only, respectively. Like other dictionaries, the OALDCE4 uses no code f o r adjectives that may occur both attributively and predicatively, this t h e n being considered the u n m a r k e d case. T h e CULD uses the similar labels

72 "(attrib)" and "(pred)" only with adjectives or senses of adjectives that occur either attributively or predicatively, respectively. However, in the entries for adjectives that may appear in both positions, and are thus not labeled, the CULD attempts to give example sentences that feature the use of the adjective in both positions. This would seem to be a welcome practice, as it would seem to offer the user reinforcement for the fact that such adjectives function both ways. The LDOCE2 labels attributive-only adjectives with the code "[A]" and predicative-only adjectives with the code "[F]." Though one-letter codes like these are the simplest and therefore the most desirable kinds of codes, one wishes the codes were more transparent, i.e. a user could perhaps infer that "[A]" with the entry for an adjective stands for the first letter of attributive, but most users surely could not guess that "[F]" is short for predicative (unless it is assumed that "[F]" stands for "following" a noun, but by that reasoning "[A]" could probably also mean "after" a noun). "[P]" is not available to be used as the code for "predicative" since this is used in the LDOCE2 as the code for "plural." The codes "[A]" and "[F]" were used in the LDOCE1 with the same function, so this is an example of a case in which one of the main purposes of the revision of the LDOCE, making the grammar codes simpler and more transparent, was not realized. However, there would seem to be no need to make the codes symmetrical, i.e. something like "[attrib]" for attributive-only position and "[not attrib]" for predicative-only position, as the attributive and predicative positions cannot really be said to be in complementary distribution. The CELD labels all adjectives as adj. except those that are predicative-only, which it labels pred adj, and those that are attributive-only, which it labels attrib adj. Interestingly, the example that the CELD gives of an attributiveonly adjective, utter, in the introductory section of the dictionary where these labels are explained is labeled adj in the main body of the dictionary (the example of a predicative-only adjective given in this place, alive, is labelled adv/pred adj in the body of the dictionary). The BBICDE has a collocational category, "G6," which it identifies as comprising predicative adjectives followed by fo-infinitive constructions. Some of the adjectives in this category can also be followed by corresponding -ing constructions, a feature which is indicated only through examples in the entries for these adjectives, e.g. "nice adj....2. ~ to + inf. (it's ~ just to sit and relax = it's ~ just sitting and relaxing; she is ~ to work with = it is - to work with her = it is nice working with her." (However, the intrusion of the adverb just before the infinitives and the -ing forms of the first set of examples might be slightly confusing to the user.) This section will end with a survey of the entries in ESL dictionaries for two common adjectives, alive and former, the first predicative-only and the other attributive-only, to see how or if this fact about their usage is indicated.

73 Α. General ESL dictionaries 1. For advanced learners CELD has the label "adv/pred adj" before the first sense of alive, thereby showing that this is predicative in all its adjective senses. However, it labels the attributive-only adjective former as only "adj," even though, as mentioned above, this dictionary does have the label "attrib."

COBUILD has five adjective senses for alive; three of them have the label "ADJ 0 U A L I T : P R E D " and two are labeled "ADJ CLASSIF-.PRED," the "PRED" indicating a predicative-only usage. In addition, in the entry for alive the COBUILD lists two idioms, alive and kicking and alive and well, both of which it labels "PHR:USED AS A C" indicating that both phrases are used as complements only, meaning that they are used only predicatively as subject or object complements. The COBUILD has two main senses f or f ormer based on the word's reference to past time and order (contrasting with latter) respectively. The first is divided into three subsenses; each of these subsenses has the grammar code "ADJ CLASSIF:ATTRIB," the "ATTRIB" showing that the adjective is attributive-only. Moreover, the second sense, which has the grammar code "N SING/PLURAL: the + N," ends with a usage note and an example: " • used as an adjective, EG Lack of space forbids the former alternative." In the extra column, the grammar code that goes along with this note is "ADJ CLASSIF:the+ADJ+Ν"; this code also indicates an attributive-only use.

CULD its entry for alive begins with the grammar label "adj (pred)" which indicates a predicative-only adjective. The CULD's entry for former begins with the label "adj (attrib)" which is used for attributive-only adjectives.

LDOCE2

and LDAE

put the code "[F]" before giving their four senses of alive, the code signifying a predicative-only adjective. In their entries for the adjective former, they give the code "[A no comp\"\ the "A" indicates that the adjective is attributive-only.

OALDCE4 has the code "[pred]" before the senses of alive, showing that all the senses are predicative-only. Similarly, before the senses of former it has the code "[attrib]" showing that all the senses are attributive-only.

2. For intermediate learners NHLD has alive and former but gives no indication that these are respectively predicative- and attributive-only

74 0SDAE2

and

OSDCE

The OSDCE has alive, labeled "ed;," but no indication that it's predicative-only; however, in the OSDAE2 alive is labeled "pred adj" with "pred" indicating "predicative." In the OSDCE former is labeled "adj," with no indication (except very indirectly through the examples) that it's attributive-only. In the O S DAE 2 former is also labeled "adj" similarly with no direct indication of its attributive-only character; the dictionary has no label "attrib" that would parallel its lable "pred."

3. For beginning learners BDAEU has a usage note under alive: "Note: alive cannot be used in front of a noun; the fish is alive but a live fish," commendably supplying an related alternate expression for the learner. The BDAEU also has an entry for former, but there is no indication through a usage note or otherwise that this adjective is attributive-only.

EAED has alive which it labels as an "adj," with no indication (with examples, usage notes, etc.) of predicative or attributive use. Interestingly, it lists former not as an adjective but as a noun, defining it as "the first of two things'named. Ex Cola and milk are both good, but I prefer the former." At least this analysis of the word may reinforce the attributive use of the word, occurring only after the in a noun phrase whether the noun head is present or deleted but understood (yet there is no usage note indicating that the definite article is necessary in such cases).

LHLD has alive and former both of which it labels as "adj"; there is no indication of attributive- or predicative-only use, and there is only one example of the use of these adjectives in each entry, in both cases showing the predicative use of the former and the attributive use of the latter

OELDE has alive and former both of which it labels "adj." with no indication of attributive- or predicative-only use. One example is given of alive, Only ten people were found alive af ter the crash; of course this is not an example of the use of adjective in predicative position, rather as an object complement in a passive structure. One example is given, showing the attributive use of former: William went to university and f orgot his f or mer friends.

75 Β. Specialized ESL dictionaries 1. Idiom dictionaries CAS The CAS does attempt to indicate adjectival expressions that are predicative- or attributive-only: "Some expressions that are modifiers (marked "mod") can occur before or after the things they modify. Other modifiers can occur before and after the things they modify. The possible orders of each modifier are illustrated in the examples." This dictionary doesn't include any slang expressions with alive or former, but there is an entry "evil mod. excellent. (See wicked) o This wine is really evil! »Man, what evil

fronts!"

This then shows that this adjective is both predicative and attributive. There is another entry for the modifier hard up that has three senses and six example sentences, all of which feature the expression in predicative position thus indicating that it cannot occur in attributive position.

HAIIU has an entry for the idiom alive with; there is no formal indication that this adjectival idiom is predicative only, but there is an example of such use: "When we opened our picnic basket, our lunch was alive with ants." The HAIIU has no idioms with / o r m e r .

NTCAID has two entries featuring alive, "alive and kicking AND alive and well" and alive with someone or something. Nothing in the entry, neither the definition nor usage notes, indicates the predicative character of these adjective phrases; all the examples given feature predicativeonly use.

NTCDAS Like the CAS, the NTCDAS attempts to indicate adjectival expressions that are both or only attributive or predicative: "Some expressions that are modifiers (marked "mod.") can occur before or after the things they modify. Other modifiers can occur before and after the things they modify. The distribution of modifiers is illustrated in the examples. For example: "back-to-back mod. in a line; in a series. • I can't take two days like this one I schedule all my appointments back-to-back to save time, o These appointments are really killing me."

back-to-back. back-to-back

(The underlined portions above actually appear as shaded boxes in the NTCDAS.) The NT CD AS has two entries, one for alive and kicking and alive and well, both of which have the function code mod. Each entry has two examples which feature the idioms in predicative-only use. The NT C DA S has no expressions with former.

76 ODCIE

V2

has entries for two idioms with alive, alive and k i c k i n g / w e l l and alive t o sth. The first has the function code label "[adj + adj non-rev]", which indicates that this idiom is composed of two adjectives which must occur in the set order; the latter has the function code, "[Comp (AdjP)]," which indicates that the idiom is an adjective phrase that functions as a complement (see also Section 2.2.5.)·

PDEI lists only one idiom with alive, alive and kicking (which is given under the list of idioms f o r kick)·, there is one example, "You needn't worry about Robert. He was alive and kicking when 1 saw him this afternoon," but no other indication of the predicative-only use of this idiom. The PDEI lists no idioms with / o r m e r .

3. Other specialized dictionaries BBICDE has an entry f o r alive which it labels "adj."; but in neither of the two senses of the word is there an indication that it's predicative-only, except perhaps indirectly in the way the collocational patterns are presented: "1. very much ~ 2. (cannot stand alone) ~ to ( - to the danger of becoming overconfident)"; it is perhaps to be surmised that users would realize that such collocation patterns would not occur prenominally but in the predication of a sentence. The BBICDE has no entry f o r / o r m e r .

The DAI, EAI, LDOEI, CPGPV, DEPVI, DTWVSE, LDOPV treat alive, f ormer or idioms containing it as separate entries.

and the ODCIE

VI do not

2.1.3.2. Gradability of adjectives A n o t h e r important aspect of the grammar of English adjectives is gradability, i.e. w h e t h e r an adjective may take comparative or superlative forms or is always used in the positive degree, and also w h e t h e r or not an adjective may be m o d i f i e d by intensifiers such as very, absolutely or virtually. On the surface, this would s e e m to be a matter of semantics rather than grammar; one might think that the gradability of an adjective d e p e n d s on its meaning, i.e. whether or not it refers to a quality that is "gradable" in what might be called universal semantics or in the semantics of a particular language. R u l e s governing the use of quantifiers with particular adjectives might also be viewed as a collocational matter, and one might thus expect that c o l l o c a t i o n a l dictionaries would be most likely to deal adequately with the matter. However, the only existing collocational dictionary for English, the BBICDE, appears to deal not at all with such c o l l o c a t i o n s involving intensifiers. Many E S L dictionaries indicate those adjectives that are nongradable, thus taking gradability for adjectives as the unmarked case. The LDOCE2 and the

77 LDAE label nongradable adjectives as "[no c o m p . ] " ; this code means that an adjective may not a p p e a r in the superlative nor the comparative form, and most users will be expected to read the explanation of the code in the introductory part of the dictionary that reads "Not used in the comparative or superlative forms." However, the code is uncomfortably close to being i n t e r p r e t e d as "no comparative" only if a user does not take the time to find and read the explanation of the code. This code is used to label not only individual adjectives but s e p a r a t e senses of adjectives when other senses do allow comparison, as is the case with the adjective independent. The LDOCE2 also has a two-page "Language Note" on gradable and n o n g r a d a b l e adjectives, in which the dictionary not only distinguishes between them but also discusses the use of intensfiers with gradable adjectives by distinguishing f u r t h e r between "scale" and "limit" gradable adjectives, i.e. scale adjectives are adjectives such as small, cold and expensive that have d i f f e r e n t degrees and limit adjectives are adjectives such as perfect, unique and impossible that are absolute. The usage note mentions that the latter are usually not usually used in the comparative or superlative degrees but may be p r e c e d e d by such intensifiers as completely and almost to express the highest or approximation to the highest degree. However, the LDOCE2 does not label adjectives as "scale" or "limit" in their entries in the main body of the dictionary. T h e LDOCE2 also has a two-page usage note on "Intensifying Adjectives" in which it discusses the use of and restrictions on these adjectives and the nouns with which they are used, e.g. the restriction that some nouns may take only certain kinds of intensifiers (this and o t h e r restrictions being similar to collocations). Yet, the i n f o r m a t i o n given in this section does not a p p e a r to be t r e a t e d in the main body of the dictionary. For example, one intensifying adjective dealt with in this note is big, and one of the nouns that the section says big can be used with is decision; however, u n d e r the entry f o r decision this i n f o r m a t i o n is not given, not even in an exàmple sentence f o r the word. O t h e r general ESL dictionaries, such as the OALDCE4, the CELD and the CULD, do not systematically indicate the gradability or nongradability of adjectives. T h e OALDCE4 does give the comparative and superlative f o r m s of monosyllabic and some bisyllabic adjectives and adverbs, but Bolinger (1990:135) finds and lists many inconsistencies in this t r e a t m e n t . The ESL idiom dictionary the ODCIE V2 in some cases gives an indication of the gradability (but only in the comparative, not the superlative degree) of adjectives that are p a r t of the idioms listed. T h e ODCIE V2 uses no explicit codes to indicate this but claims that if an adjective in an idiom may be put in the comparative, "such variation is generally illustrated [i.e. through examples]." O n e would hope f o r a more systematic t r e a t m e n t , but, as the introductory section of the ODCIE V2 states repeatedly, the grammatical behavior of English idioms is d e t e r m i n e d to a large extent by their "relative idiomaticity," a category difficult to define in precise terms except to say that relatively unidiomatic items tend to conform more to the regular rules of English g r a m m a r .

78 Finally, the COBUILD has a means of indicating not only the gradability of an adjective but also its general type and its order relative to other adjectives in attributive position. The COBU I LD classifies adjectives into three main types: "ADJ "ADJ CLASSIF" for classificatory adjectives such as dead and wollen, COLOUR" for adjectives of color and "ADJ QUALIT" for adjectives such as big and terrific that describe quality. In the boxed "Special Entries" describing each of these codes, the gradability of such adjectives is indicated; "ADJ CLASSIF" adjectives are described as not being gradable since "They are adjectives that cannot have more or less of the particular quality that they describe, and so they cannot have adverbs like 'very', 'more', or 'rather' in front of them," whereas "ADJ QUALIT" are specified as being gradable with "They are adjectives which can have more or less of the particular quality they describe, and so they can have adverbs like 'very', 'more', or 'rather' in front of them." However, Lemmens and Wekker (1991:5) point out that this means of indicating is gradability is inefficient since users seeing the code for a particular adjective cannot tell except by referring to the special entry for the code whether or not the adjective is gradable or ungradable. Color adjectives are not explicitly described as gradable, but there is a note in the boxed entry for the code that "ADJ COLOUR" that adjectives so labeled "can have another adjective before them which defines the colour more exactly, such as pale, bright, clear, and light." The COBUILD's classification of adjectives also indicates their relative order when adjectives of different types premodify nouns (see Section 2.2.2. below). However, Sinclair (1987:114) admits that in the compilation of the COBU I LD, "the distinction between qualitative or gradable adjectives and classifying or nongradable ones was difficult to maintain." What follows is a survey of the treatment in ESL dictionaries of the adjectives impossible and perfect. These are generally considered, particularly in prescriptive grammar, to be examples of ungradable adjectives, meaning that they are not used in the comparative or superlative forms and cannot follow an intensifying adverb such as very·, yet, especially in informal usage they are frequently used after certain approximating intensifiers, e.g. almost impossible and virtually perfect and arguably in such cases show some gradability. The aim of the following survey is to see how ESL dictionaries handle these facts of usage.

The following dictionaries have entries for impossible restrictions on them and other adjectives:

and perfect

and indicate gradability

COBUILD has three main senses for its entry for impossible, each of which has the grammar code "ADJ QUALIT." Six of the main senses for the COBUILD's entry for perfect are adjectives and each has the grammar code "ADJ CLASSIF." As mentioned above, with the codes "ADJ QUALIT" and

79 "ADJ

CLASSIF"

the COBUILD

indicates that an adjective is gradable or nongradable,

respectively.

LDAE has two senses for impossible, "not possible" and "hard to bear; very unpleasant"; with the first sense, the LDAE gives the code "[no comp]" which indicates that the impossible in this sense cannot be used in the comparative (nor superlative) form. However, the LDAE has five senses for the adjective perfect, none of which has the code "[no comp]."

BBICDE doesn't mark gradability restrictions for perfect. But in its entry for impossible, it has the first collocation list as follows: "1. almost, practically, virtually, well-nigh by listing these intensifies, the BBICDE does suggest that in common usage impossible is gradable.

The following dictionaries have entries for impossible and perfect but do not indicate gradability restrictions on them, even though they have means for indicating such restrictions on other adjectives:

LDOCE2 has two senses for impossible but does not use the grammar code "[no comp]" for the first, "that cannot happen or exist, or be done or fulfilled," and in fact in the second sense, "difficult or awkward to accept or deal with," there is an example "You're the most impossible person I've ever met!" showing gradability. The code "[no comp]" is not used for any of the senses of the dictionary's entry for perfect.

The following dictionaries have entries for impossible and/or perfect but do not indicate gradability restrictions on them and apparently have no means for indicating such restrictions on other adjectives: CELD, COLD, OALDCE4 [which in fact has an example with "virtually impossible"], NHLD, OSDAE2, OSDCE, BDAEU, EAED, LHLD, OELDE, HAIIU The following dictionaries do not have entries for impossible and perfect nor any idioms including them: CAS, DAI, EAI, LDOEI, NTCAID, NTCDAS, ODCIE V2, PDEI, CPCPV, DEPVI, DTWVSE, LDOPV, ODCIE VI

2.1.3.3. Adjectival use of participles A n o t h e r a r e a c o n c e r n i n g a d j e c t i v e s and a d j e c t i v a l c o n s t r u c t i o n s is t h e u s e of v e r b p a r t i c i p l e s as a d j e c t i v e s . T h e d i f f i c u l t y f o r l e a r n e r s is that in E n g l i s h s o m e , but not all, p r e s e n t and p a s t p a r t i c i p l e s of v e r b s can b e u s e d as a t t r i b u t i v e a d j e c t i v e s . T h e o v e r g e n e r a t i o n of a t t r i b u t i v e p a r t i c i p i a l a d j e c t i v e s is a c o m m o n error a m o n g l e a r n e r s of E n g l i s h , p a r t i c u l a r l y a m o n g s p e a k e r s of l a n g u a g e s , e . g . G e r m a n and J a p a n e s e , in w h i c h a t t r i b u t i v e p a r t i c i p i a l a d j e c t i v e s are u s e d

80 extensively (Heath 1985:337 discusses examples of such errors among German students of English). However, information on restrictions on the adjectival use of participles of certain verbs appears to be insufficient in most ESL dictionaries. According to Heath (1985:337), such information is included by the use of codes in the LDOCE1 but not in any way in the OALDCE3 nor in the CULD, these being the three dictionaries he examined. Interestingly, information on participial adjectives is not given in coded form in the LDOCE2-, this information is included only incidentally through examples given with some verbs. Under the entry for the transitive verb dry, an example of the adjectival use of the past participle is given, dried fruit/milk. However, under the entry for another transitive verb, defeat, several example sentences are given but none of them illustrates the acceptable use of the past participle as an attributive adjective, e.g. the defeated army/proposal·, if a learner is aware that the participles of some verbs, e.g. dry, may occur in attributive use, a fact reinforced by the presence of such an example in the entry for dry in an ESL dictionary such as the LDOCE2, and is also aware that the participles of other transitive verbs, e.g. read ( *the read newspaper), cannot be used in this way, he or she might incorrectly infer from the lack of such an example with the verb defeat that such an attributive use of the past participle def eat ed is unacceptable. Other ESL dictionaries, however, attempt more or less systematically to account for the restrictions on participial adjectives. In the ODCIE VI, there is a clear attempt to indicate under what circumstances the past participle forms of phrasal and prepositional verbs may be used adjectivally, specifically as attributive adjective phrases before nouns; one might expect to find such information in the ODCIE VI as this dictionary specializes in providing comprehensive information on the grammatical behavior of phrasal and prepositional verbs. The dictionary provides this information through the use of the code "[adj]" following the code that indicates the verb type for the verb, as for example after the intransitive verb plus particle plus preposition (or "[A3]") type verb look forward to which indicates that a construction such as his very much looked-f orward-to retirement is possible. Moreover, the explanation of this code in the introductory section includes a useful discussion of what might be called the "origin" or "deep structure" of this adjectival construction; the ODCIE VI relates this construction to the passive construction in a way that would seem to be illustrative for users, e.g "[A3] She is facing up to the responsibilities badly, [A3 pass] The responsibilities are being badly faced up to, [A3 adj] The badly faced up to responsibilities." The BBICDE makes a useful distinction between adjectives derived from participles and participles clearly functioning in passive constructions, examples of the latter being abandoned by and absolved by. The latter, since they are by and large regularly derivable from active transitive verbs, are not listed in the main body of the dictionary, which would appear on lexicographical grounds to

81 be a sensible practice as such a listing would take up an enormous amount of space. The COBUILD has a grammar code "PAST PART" by which it labels past participles of verbs when they are separate entries or when past participles have special uses set off f r o m the rest of the entry. Like some of the other "Special Entries" the COBUILD includes, this is essentially a short summary of the use of this form. At the end of the entry is the note "the past participle of some verbs is used as an adjective. You can say She has broken his heart, and you can also say...α broken heart and His heart is broken." However, the note does not indicate how if at all this f e a t u r e of certain past participles is indicated. In conclusion, it may be said that information on the adjectival use of participles in most ESL dictionaries seems to be generally inconsistent and therefore inadequate. This seems to be true even though ESL dictionaries, like dictionaries for native speakers, treat many participles, e.g interested, as separate entries; such participles are usually listed as adjectives and often several definitions are given for each one, yet grammatical information, e.g. information on attributive or predicative use, is very often lacking.

2.1.3.4. Attributive use of nouns When adjectives are discussed, the topic of the use of nouns as attributive adjectives should also be mentioned. In English, many—but not all—nouns may premodify other nouns, e.g. a grammar book, television broadcasts, art school, thereby showing various semantic and syntactic relations. Once again, the rules governing the attributive use of individual nouns are largely lexical and idiosyncratic, and t h e r e f o r e one might expect that this is a f e a t u r e of nouns that should be given attention in the entries for nouns in ESL dictionaries. Some ESL dictionaries do in fact attempt to provide information on the attributive use of nouns. The OALDCE4 uses the code "[attrib]," whose primarily function is to label the attributive use of adjectives, when examples of a noun are given that show the attributive use of these nouns, e.g. "iron...λ 1...[attrib] iron ore, ie rock containing iron." However, this scheme does not explicitly preclude the possibility that other nouns may be used in attributive positions, and some nouns, e.g. space, that may be used in attributive position (e.g. space travel, space exploration) are not given examples illustrating this; a user might then infer f r o m the lack of an example that such an attributive use is not possible with the noun. Similar to the OALDCE4, the CU LD uses the label "(attrib)" with both adjectives and nouns to indicate the possibility of their being used attributively. The LDOCE2, on the other hand, includes examples of the attributive use of nouns, such as iron gates, an iron foundry, iron ore and space travel, but provides no indication through codes or labels to signal this attributive use nor any indication of restrictions on such use with other nouns.

82 The COBI]ILD indicates nouns that can be used as adjectives with the usage note used as an adjective" and also with the g r a m m a r code "N BEFORE N." These codes are o f t e n used simultaneously, as in the case of the noun background, which might seem r e d u n d a n t except f o r the fact that the latter indicates that a noun or a particular sense of a noun is only or usually used attributively.

2.1.4. Prepositions Prepositions and their correct usage is a n o t h e r t r o u b l e s o m e a r e a f o r l e a r n e r s of English. This is due in large p a r t to the fact that the rules governing the use of prepositions are lexical and highly idiosyncratic, especially in the cases where nouns, verbs and adjectives require c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n by prepositional phrases headed by specific prepositions (this aspect of the use of prepositions will be t r e a t e d in more detail below in Section 3.2.2.). Many ESL dictionaries provide i n f o r m a t i o n on the prepositional c o m p l e m e n t s of words, but apart f r o m this information the LDOCE2 is apparently the only ESL dictionary that pays special a t t e n t i o n to other aspects of prepositions. In addition to indicating the prepositions that are used with certain nouns, verbs and adjectives, the LDOCE2 has two "Language Notes" that concern prepositions, namely "Prepositions" and "Words Followed by Prepositions," that describe aspects of their use that are often p r o b l e m a t i c f o r learners. However, the LDOCE2's handling of prepositions is suspect in some cases. Following adjectives and nouns, the dictionary uses the symbol " + " to indicate an obligatory preposition and p a r e n t h e s e s to indicate an optional preposition or prepositions; f o r the noun frontier, f o r example, t h e r e is the i n f o r m a t i o n " ( b e t w e e n , w i t h ) , " showing the prepositions that may optionally follow this noun. An example sentence containing with, Sweden has frontiers with Norway and Finland, is given but it is not evident how a l e a r n e r , mindful of the largely prescriptive rule that between is used with two prepositional objects, could be prevented f r o m generating a semantically defective sentence such as * S we de η has a frontier between Norway and Finland. O t h e r ESL dictionaries include some important information a b o u t prepositions. As Piotrowski (1988:50) points out, the COBUILD rightly gives special a t t e n t i o n to some correlative prepositional expressions such as from...to. However, Piotrowski also observes that the COBUILD does not discuss the special rule, which is indicative of these correlative p r e p o s i t i o n a l expressions, that countable nouns governed by these prepositions do not have an article, e.g. from hand to foot. The BBICDE, apparently unique among ESL dictionaries, excludes f r o m its entries what it refers to as "derived prepositions," i.e. prepositions that originate as other parts of speech, including such words and phrases as concerning, regarding, in regard to and with regard to. These "derived prepositions" are excluded apparently on the belief that since

83 these are regularly derivable f r o m o t h e r words t h e r e are not i n d e p e n d e n t lexical units and t h e r e f o r e do not merit t r e a t m e n t as s e p a r a t e entries in the dictionary. Nevertheless, with the relative f r e q u e n c y of these expressions, especially in more f o r m a l registers, this practice on the part of the editors of the BBICDE seems open to question. Before completing this section on prepositions, an ESL dictionary that deals exclusively with prepositions, the Dictionary of Prepositions for Students of English (Hall 1982), should be m e n t i o n e d . This dictionary lists 115 of the most common single- and multi-word prepositions in English and f o r each of them provides a brief f u n c t i o n a l definition of their meaning and usage. Since this dictionary treats prepositions in isolation and by and large in terms of their semantics, it provides very little i n f o r m a t i o n on the g r a m m a r of prepositions, except in the introduction where some facts, such as the rule that the -ing f o r m of verbs is required a f t e r prepositions, are m e n t i o n e d . Also due to the purpose and organization of the dictionary, one of the most t r o u b l e s o m e aspects of prepositions f o r learners, i.e. knowing which are used with specific verbs and adjectives as complements, is given no a t t e n t i o n at all.

2.2. Syntactic information Most ESL dictionaries also provide i n f o r m a t i o n on the syntactic rules that govern the use of English words. This is also a desired f e a t u r e of dictionaries f o r learners since most of these syntactic rules, which are assumed to be part of the c o m p e t e n c e of native speakers and thus are rarely indicated in dictionaries f o r native speakers, cannot be assumed to be p a r t of the knowledge of learners. Syntactic i n f o r m a t i o n about a word is f o r l e a r n e r s o f t e n the most essential information in their production of the second language.

2.2.1. Complementation O n e type of syntactic information that is necessary f o r l e a r n e r s and that many ESL dictionaries (especially those f o r more advanced l e a r n e r s ) include is information on c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n . What is m e a n t by c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is the range of words or word classes, or "complements," that accompany a word when it is used in a phrase or sentence, usually (but not always) following the word in syntactic position. In addition, c o m p l e m e n t s may be obligatory or optional, and some c o m p l e m e n t s when used with their headwords may affect the meaning of the headwords (particularly adjective complements; see Section 2.2.1.3. below).

84

2.2.1.1. Verb complementation The term "verb complementation" is used here to mean the range of objects, subject complements, objects complements and other elements, such as prepositional phrases, adverbials, and other adjuncts, that can or must be used with a particular English verb. Verb complementation in English is often difficult for the learner for a reason similar to that stated above, namely that a translation equivalent of a English verb in one language may not take an identical range of complements as the English word. A very basic example of this is a case in which the semantic equivalent of an English intransitive verb such as catch is in another language intransitive, and thus a learner of English who is a native speaker of the latter language might produce a sentence like I didn't catch where no noun or pronoun object is used. The need to supply the full range of complementation a verb can take has been long recognized yet often not realized; in the words of Országh (1969:219), "...exhaustive answers should be given in dictionaries to these questions (in the case of verbs): where, what, o f / f o r what, when, how? Without these, all but the most literate users of English, natives and foreigners, will often be at a loss when trying to measure the perimeter of the living range of English words." The ESL dictionaries that give the most information on verb complementation are the OALDCE4, the LDOCE2 or the COBUILD. Yet almost all dictionaries, for native speakers and learners alike, that at least give part of speech labels can be said to provide some information on verb complementation as long as they distinguish between transitive and intransitive verbs. However, transitive and intransitive verbs are not distinguished even in some ESL dictionaries, such as the New Method Dictionary which as mentioned above gives no part of speech labels at all, and the EAED, BDAEU, NHLD and the OELDE, which label all verbs the same. However, the BDAEU occasionally provides rather sophisticated information on verb complementation, not through any systematic scheme but through its usage notes (see its usage note for pay quoted in Chapter One, Section 2.1.2.). The BBICDE also labels all verbs as "v." at the beginning of their entries, but it has a sophisticated grammar coding scheme that distinguishes transitive verbs from intransitive ones as well as providing much more information about complementation (see below). ESL dictionaries often attempt to explicitly illustrate the complementation patterns for individual verbs by giving example sentences that show the verbs being used in the various patterns. According to Heath, who compared the LDOCE1, the OALDCE3 and the CULD, the last is the most consistent in giving example sentences that illustrate verb complementation types (and in ordering them such that they correspond more closely to the order in which the patterns are presented in the entries for the verbs, even though overall the CULD describes fewer patterns since it concentrates on providing patterns that are more common and less complex (1982:99-100).

85 The importance of verb c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n may be ascribed in part to the fact that many schools of linguistics hold that the verb is the central, sine qua non of a sentence, and the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n f e a t u r e s of verbs d e t e r m i n e the overall syntactic structure of any sentence. It was such a view that shaped the (The first development of A.S. Hornby's p i o n e e r i n g dictionary, the OALDCE2. edition of Hornby's dictionary had the title Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary, and it was first published in Tokyo in 1942 and later reprinted in England (Hornby, Gatenby and Wakefield 1963:v). Since this dictionary was apparently never widely used, it is not examined in this study.) Hornby based the t r e a t m e n t of g r a m m a r in the second edition of the dictionary on Palmer 1938, which was a book on English g r a m m a r (Palmer's book was revised as Hornby 1975). The description of English grammar in the book f e a t u r e d the classification of verbs into categories based upon the kinds and o r d e r of grammatical structures following the verb (these in fact resembling the subcategorization f e a t u r e s of later t r a n s f o r m a t i o n a l g r a m m a r ) , and Hornby a d a p t e d this classification scheme as the principal means of incorporating g r a m m a r in the OALDCE. As a result, Hornby's work might be said to be the first dictionary f o r learners of English to make a serious effort to i n c o r p o r a t e useful grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n . W h e n a n o t h e r i m p o r t a n t ESL dictionary, the LDOCE, was produced in 1978, it also t r e a t e d verb c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n extensively, covering a similar range of m a t e r i a l and in a similar way to that of the OALDCE, f u r t h e r testimony to the influence of the latter dictionary, especially its third edition, in the field (Strevens 1987:77). In the OALDCE4, verb c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is indicated through a classification scheme built around five main verb types symbolized by single capital letters: "L" f o r "linking verb," "I" f o r "intransitive verb," "T" f o r "transitive verb," "C" f o r "complex-transitive verb" and "D" f o r "double-transitive verb." Each of these five p a t t e r n s is e l a b o r a t e d on through various means, one of which is to add lower case letters signifying f u r t h e r discriminations, in a way suggestive of the letter and n u m b e r combinations of the LDOCE I; f o r example, "La" is the code f o r a linking v e r b followed by a subject c o m p l e m e n t that is an adjective or an adjective phrase, and "Ln" is the code f o r a linking v e r b followed by a subject c o m p l e m e n t that is a noun or noun phrase. F u r t h e r m o r e , the codes s e p a r a t e the individual constituents of a verb's c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n through the use of raised dots; f o r example, the code "[Dn-t]" stands f o r a ditransitive verb followed by a noun (symbolized by "n") and a fo-infinitive phrase (symbolized by "t"), both of which are objects (indirect and direct, respectively) of the verb, as in She told him to play the piano. According to the explanation in the section of the OALDCE4 ("Using the Dictionary; a Detailed G u i d e to the Entries") in which these codes are explained, the reason f o r this practice is f o r users to u n d e r s t a n d the constituents of a particular sentence f e a t u r i n g a verb of certain verb p a t t e r n and realize how these sentences are thus structurally d i f f e r e n t f r o m sentences that are superficially the same.

86

The codes used for verb patterns in the OALDCE4 are generally transparent, e.g. "[Tw]" which is the code for transitive verbs followed by w/i-clauses, "[Tng]" which is the code for transitive verbs followed by a noun or pronoun plus a gerund, and "[Dpr-t]" which is the code for "double transitive" verbs followed by a prepositional phrase and a io-infinitive (Aarts (1991:220) objects to the OALDCE4's "not felicitous" use of codes such as w and g on the grounds that they do not represent standard abbreviations for grammatical structures). Some of the codes are not so transparent, however, such as the code "[Tf]" for transitive verbs followed by ί/ιαί-clauses. The verb pattern codes have been significantly revised in the OALDCE4 from those in earlier editions of the dictionary, especially in the way of transparency; the verb pattern codes were much less transparent in the OALDCE2 and OALDCE3, which relied on a sequential numerical and letter system to distinguish codes, e.g. "[VP1]," "[VP2A]," "[VP2B]," "[VP2C]," "[VP2D]," "[VP2E]," "[VP3A]," and "[VP3B]." In one respect, however, the OALDCE4's presentation of verb pattern codes is not superior to those of earlier editions of the OALDCE. In the OALDCE3, the fifty-one verb patterns included are summarized on a separate page before being described in detail in the introductory section; this summary gives the code for each verb pattern and a structural description of each pattern, such that even complex patterns are made superficially transparent, e.g. "[VP14]" which is summarized as "S + vt + noun pronoun (DO) + preposition + noun/pronoun (phrase)" ("DO" standing for "direct object"). (However, these structural descriptions are not repeated in the introductory section that explains the verb patterns in more detail, which would be helpful since some of the explanations are quite complex and occasionally obscure.) The OALDCE4, though it has fewer verb patterns (32) than the OALDCE3, regrettably does not anywhere summarize these patterns with a structural description. However, it does outline them on the inside back cover of the dictionary by giving the abbreviation for the pattern along with the name of the verb type it represents, e.g. "Dn-f Doubletransitive verb + noun + finite 'that' clause," followed by an example sentence with the pattern (e.g. Colleagues told Paul that the job wouldn't be easy). Yet Herbst (1989b: 103) is of the opinion that even the five basic verb patterns symbolized by "L,I,T,C and D" presuppose "a rather advanced knowledge of verb classes." The OALDCE4 has an interesting approach to one matter of verb complementation. Like other ESL dictionaries, the OALDCE4 lists obligatory and optional prepositions that follow verbs. Obligatory elements follow a tilde in bold type, whereas optional elements are given in parentheses following the tilde, e.g. "tangle...2 [Ipr] ~ with sb/sth" and "muse 2 ...l [I,Ipr] ~ ( a b o u t / o v e r / o n / u p o n sth)." In the cases where different prepositions are used when verbs are followed by animate or inanimate objects, the OALDCE4 indicates the alternative constructions by placing them between semicolons. For example, the verb supply is followed by "~sth (to sb); ~ s b (with sth)"; this tells the user that supply could be used in sentences like She supplied food to

87 the homeless or She supplied the homeless with food. In cases where alternatives can be used interchangeably with objects, the 0ALDCE4 uses the symbols "A" and "B" to represent the different objects, as for example with sprinkle·. "~A ( o n / o n t o / o v e r B); ~ B (with A)"; this indicates to the user that sprinkle can be used in sentences like He sprinkled water onto the lawn or He sprinkled the lawn with water. By contrast, an ESL dictionary with another rather sophisticated scheme of indicating verb complementation, the LDOCE2, gives no such indication of these correspondences. OALDCE4 In addition, in some of the descriptions of verb patterns, the attempts to give an idea of the general semantic force of the verbs in the pattern, e.g. the patterns "[Tng]" Most verbs in this pattern are 'perception' verbs. Of these, see, hear, feel, overhear and observe are also used in the [Tni] pattern:

watch,

notice,

The rescuers felt John losing his grip of the rope. [Tng] The rescuers felt John lose his grip of the rope. [Tni] Using the 'bare' infinitive here [Tni] implies that John fully lost his hold of the rope while the rescuers were in contact with him. The -ingiorm [Tng] does not imply this.

and "[Cn-n/a]": In this pattern, the object complement is an adjective or adjective phrase which describes a feature or quality of the direct object.

Nevertheless, some scholars such as Herbst (1984b: 143) have questioned the utility of such a depth of semantic information for learners, especially school learners, as the OALDCE3's specification that the verbs in one pattern "indicate physical perceptions." Herbst (1984b: 143) also criticizes the "absurdity" of the OALDCE3's creation of a single verb pattern ("VP 18 C") for one verb only, namely have followed by a noun or a pronoun and an infinitive without to when "it means 'wish', 'experience' or 'cause'" (the OALDCE4 classifies this use of have as belonging to its "[Cn-i]" pattern which includes other verbs such as make, let and help). (Herbst would probably level a similar complaint against the OELDE for having two part of speech labels def. art. and indef. art. which are only used for the entries for definite and indefinite articles the, a and an; demonstrative articles like that are labeled with adj.) It must be said, however, that the OALDCE2\ and OALDCE3's detailed treatment of individual verb patterns, including explanations in full sentences and information about passivization and other transformations such as itinsertion, seems preferable to the more superficial treatment in the LDOCE1 and even the LDOCE2. In the LDOCE2, the principal means of indicating verb complementation is with the symbols " + " and "()" which are used to show obligatory and optional

88 c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n respectively f o r individual verbs. The LDOCE2 thus fails to treat c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n as systematically as the OALDCE4, in which generalizations about verb c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n are at least a t t e m p t e d through the indication of verb p a t t e r n s . In the LDOCE2, the symbol " + " has in fact two principal meanings. O n e use of the symbol is show obligatory c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n of a verb, noun or adjective, as with the verb phrase which is followed by the label "[T + obj+ adv/prep]" signifying that this transitive ("T") verb is always followed by an object and then an adverbial or p r e p o s i t i o n a l p h r a s e as in the example sentence He phrased his criticisms carefully/in careful terms. However, t h e r e is no indication of restrictions on the adverbs or prepositions that may be used following this verb, i.e. this label does not rule out a sentence like *He phrased his criticism through careful terms', apparently users are supposed to infer through the example that a prepositional phrase h e a d e d by in is the only a c c e p t a b l e p r e p o s i t i o n a l phrase c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n . However, in the LDOCE2 the symbol " + " may also be used to show optional c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n , and this may in f a c t cause some confusion f o r users. T h e LDOCE2 explains the d i f f e r e n t uses of the " + " symbol in its introduction: "Note that the + sign has a d i f f e r e n t f u n c t i o n when it is used in codes that come directly b e f o r e examples. In these cases, the p a t t e r n shown is N O T obligatory: the + h e r e simply m e a n s that this p a t t e r n can be used as well as any others that have already been mentioned." For example, in the entry f o r the v e r b throw, sense 1, "to cause something to move rapidly through the air by a sudden movement or straightening of the arm," is labeled "[I;T ( a t , t o ) ] " and a f t e r the definition f o r this sense t h e r e are the example sentences "It's my turn to throw/He threw the ball 100 metres/Someone threw a stone at me/Throw the ball to me." T h e n the code "[ + obj(i) + obj(d)]" appears, signifying a following indirect and direct object, and t h e n two examples: "Throw me the b a / / / ( f i g . ) She threw me an angry look," and thus the user is expected to u n d e r s t a n d that this c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n of sense 1 of throw is optional. Next, sense 2 of throw has the label "[T+ obj+ adv/prep]" b e f o r e the definition, meaning that in this sense ("to move or put suddenly or forcefully into a p a r t i c u l a r position or state"), the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n by an object and an adverb or prepositional phrase is obligatory. It is easy to believe that users could b e c o m e confused over the use of the symbol " + "; a user who u n d e r s t a n d s e i t h e r the obligatory or the optional signification of " + " could easily assume this i n t e r p r e t a t i o n f o r all occurrences of the symbol in the dictionary. Nevertheless, the LDOCE2's practice of placing codes f o r c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n b e f o r e individual examples that illustrate the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is c o m m e n d a b l e ; as H e r b s t (1989b:105) notes, by this practice the LDOCE2 avoids long lists of c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n possibilities at the beginning of the entry making the i n f o r m a t i o n more accessible (but he wishes that the codes were p r i n t e d in bold type to make t h e m more noticeable b e f o r e the example sentences (1989b: 110)). As mentioned above, the LDOCE2 shows optional c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n primarily by the use of p a r e n t h e s e s around the c o m p l e m e n t , as with the verb

89 lag1 which is labeled "[I (BEHIND, b e h i n d ) ] " indicating that it may optionally be followed by the adverb behind or by a prepositional phrase headed by the preposition behind. The use of p a r e n t h e s e s is a common means of showing optional elements, and not only complements, in ESL dictionaries; if all ESL dictionaries were to adopt this convention, it would certainly be beneficial to learners, especially to those who make use of more than one dictionary. H e r b s t ( 1989b: 104) has pointed out a "major inconsistency" in the way the LDOCE2 t r e a t s verb c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n . He shows that by using the code "[T]" to indicate a transtive verb and its object, codes based upon "[T]" such as "[T+ tov]" which is m e a n t to show a transitive verb followed by a fo-infinitive phrase, are subject to m i s i n t e r p r e t a t i o n , i.e. the code " [ T + f o - v ] " could be thought to indicate a transitive verb followed by an object followed by a fo-infinitive phrase. Herbst explains: "[T+ to-v]" does not stand f o r He wants you to wait here (which is coded / + obj+ to-v/) but f o r sentences such as Do you want to system is clearer because the verb go now? In this respect, the [OALDCE4]'s class symbol always stands f o r the v e r b alone and never f o r any combinations of verb and object etc." It may or may not be that the typical user could be locked into such a mechanistic i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of the code "[T]," however. The COBUILD also provides extensive information on verb c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n , its basic m e t h o d being the use of the symbol " + " a f t e r the g r a m m a r code "V" by which it labels all verbs. Even all transitive verbs are not marked by an abbreviation "tr." or a code "τ" but by the code "v + o"; this a p p e a r s to be advantageous since in the experience of this author l e a r n e r s seem to have difficulty r e m e m b e r i n g the significance of the t e r m transitive (and its antonym intransitive) but they seem to be b e t t e r able to grasp and retain the concept of v e r b plus object. The COBUILD has a set of main codes f o r verb c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n : "V+A" f o r intransitive verbs such as behave which are followed by an "adjunct"; "v + c" f o r intransitive verbs such as look and seem which are followed by a subject c o m p l e m e n t ; "V + O+A" f o r transitive verbs such as put whose object must be followed by an adjunct; "v + o + C" f o r transitive verbs such as consider whose object is followed by an object c o m p l e m e n t . H e r b s t (1989b: 105) is critical of the fact that because these codes are explained only in s e p a r a t e entries in the main body of the dictionary and not in a s e p a r a t e table as in other dictionaries, a user wishing to find an explanation of the individual codes "c" or "o" is r e f e r r e d to the explanations f o r the compound codes m e n t i o n e d above. The COBU I LD also has a grammar code "RECIP" by which it indicates verbs such as meet whose a r g u m e n t s may be realized as subject and object or as a compound subject of the intransitive verb, e.g. John met Mary/John and Mary met. T h e dictionary also indicates verbs which r e q u i r e a preposition when one of the arguments comes a f t e r the verb; an example is argue which is labeled "V OR v+A(WIIA):RECIP" which is supposed to tell the user that the verb can be used in sentences like We were arguing about money and I don't want to argue withyou about it.

90 Another grammar code in the COBUILD is "REPORT-CL" which is used next to verbs to indicate that they may be followed by noun clauses of three types: that-clauses, ννΛ-clauses and //-clauses, the latter kind of clause not usually indicated in the grammar notes of other ESL dictionaries which do indicate verbs followed by the other two types of noun clauses. Another indication of a type of verb complementation which seems to be unique to COBUILD is its use of the code "QUOTE" to label verbs such as say, shout and suggest which are followed by a noun clause that is a direct quotation. From the author's experience, this would seem to be useful feature to indicate since students often incorrectly use semantically similar verbs such as tell before a direct-speech noun clause, e.g. *They told, "We will be there at eight. " Finally, the COBUILD indicates optional complementation with a code "IF+PREP THEN," which Herbst (1989b:104) calls "a rather roundabout way of indicating optional prepositional complementation." An example of the use of this code is "IF+PREP THEN to" which marks the lexical collocation come naturally, the code would tell the user that one could use the idiom in the example sentence given by COBUILD Politics came naturally to Tony or without complementation in a sentence (given the proper context) It just came naturally. Yet the code seems to be rather obscure with its separation of the abbreviation of the class "PREP" from any of its realizations, such as to. One general objection to the way in which both the COBUILD and LDOCE2 indicate verb complementation has been raised by Herbst (1989:102-103). Herbst points out that both dictionaries actually mix levels in giving verb complementation in that they indicate it on both the formal and the functional level together; that is to say, when the LDOCE2 gives the complementation of a verb such as call as "[T +obj+ n/adj]" as in She called me stupid, it shows that the verb may be followed by a direct object, which is a functional category, followed by a noun or an adjective, a formal category. Similary, as Herbst points out, by using the functional codes "O" and "C" along with indications of formal categories such as "ADJ," "PREP" and "+FO-LNF" COBUILD also mixes levels in giving verb complementation. Another general dictionaries have less elaborate means of indicating verb complementation. The CULD marks prepositions that are used with verbs, e.g. "disagree...3 ( w i t h with) (of food) to be unsuitable (to someone) and cause pain: Onions disagree with me". However, it doesn't explicity mark whether or not verbs are followed by -ing or ίο-infinitive phrases; often examples of these are given in example sentences in the entries, e.g. to enjoy: I like gardening; She likes going to the cinema" in contrast to "enjoy...1 to find pleasure in: I enjoy skating; He enjoyed the book; He enjoyed the meal." A learner might infer from the examples after enjoy that this verb is followed by verbs only in the -ing form, but the same could be incorrectly inferred from the examples following like. Besides the general ESL dictionaries, other ESL dictionaries, even those such as the idiom and collocational dictionaries which do not focus so much on

91 individual words, proffer some information on verb complementation. The collocational dictionary the BBICDE classifies verb complementation into nineteen main patterns, which it designates with the upper case letters "A" through "S" under the general verb collocational category "G8." It provides a detailed explanation of these verb patterns in the introductory part of the dictionary, followed by a one-page summary chart of the patterns which bears a striking resemblance to the summary chart of verb patterns in the OALDCE3 with its lower case abbreviations s, ν, o and c (for subject, verb, object and complement). In one of its verb patterns, the BBICDE classifies verbs followed by toinfinitive and -ing constructions as falling under collocational patterns "G8 E" and "G8 G" respectively, with some verbs falling under both patterns. Moreover, in its introductory section the dictionary distinguishes between verbs that have no changes in meaning when followed by io-infinitive or -ing constructions (e.g. begin) and those that do (e.g. remember). When the meaning does change this is indicated in the entries for the verbs by means of a usage note, e.g. "remember v...A. (E) she ~ed to buy a newspaper 5. (G) she ~ed buying the newspaper...USAGE NOTE: The sentence she didn't remember to buy a newspaper means 'she forgot to buy a newspaper'. The sentence she didn't remember buying a newspaper a newspaper means 'she had no memory of buying a newspaper', whether she bought one or not" (cf."begin v....2. (E) she began to work 3. (G) she began working", where there is no change in meaning). However, this usage note comes at the end of the entry, following the other senses of remember (there are 9 in all), and being so far removed from the crucial senses 4 and 5 one wonders if the usage note would always capture the attention of a user looking at definitions 4 and 5. The BBICDE marks verbs followed by obligatory prepositional phrase complements as falling under its collocational category "G8 D d," the upper case letter D indicating the possibility of prepositional phrase complementation and the lower case letter d showing that the complementation is obligatory. As explained below, the dictionary marks obligatory prepositional complementation of adjectives with the label "(cannot stand alone)"; thus with these two disparate means of marking complementation the dictionary seems to miss a generalization about complementation. In another of its verb patterns ("G8 N"), the BBICDE also marks verbs followed by a noun or pronoun and an object complement, which can be an adjective, past participle or noun, as in the examples she dyed her hair red, the soldiers f ound the city destroyed and we appointed Bob secretary. In the entries for verbs in this pattern, the specific kind of complement required is marked with the labels "(used with an adjective)," "(used with a past participle)" or "(used with a noun)." In addition, the BBICDE has a pattern "G8 P" for verbs that are followed by an obligatory adverbial, e.g. fare: *we fared/we fared well. (In other analyses of grammar, e.g. that of Quirk et al. 1985, such "obligatory adverbials"

92 are called "adjuncts.") And the BBICDE also has a verb pattern for intransitive copular verbs, "G8 S." However, in the introductory section that discusses this pattern, it is explained that the verbs marked with this code are followed by a predicate noun or a predicate adjective, yet nowhere is mentioned the important fact that these "predicate nouns and adjectives" modify the subjects of the sentences and thus are subject complements (unless the users are supposed to understand that this is the meaning of "predicate"). The idiom dictionary the ODCIE VI uses a system of codes both to label the part of speech of its idiomatic entries as well as to give other grammatical information about them. The codes consist of two main parts, a capital letter (either "A" or "B," signifying an intransitive or transitive pattern respectively) and a numeral ("1," "2" or "3," indicating if what follows the verb is a "particle" or a preposition or if both follow the verb). Further refinements come from the use of abbreviations such as nom and pass to indicate, for example, if an entry for a phrasal or prepositional verb may be nominalized or used in the passive voice. In the very long introductory part of the dictionary, these codes are explained with discussions showing the grammatical rules for these "transformations" and giving examples. The ODCIE V2, mainly because it handles a wider range of idioms than simply phrasal and prepositional verbs, has a much more transparent scheme of indicating parts of speech and other grammatical information, e.g. "[V + 0 +Comp]" which represents a verb plus object plus complement pattern in an idiom, as in The children drive their mother mad, "[AdjP]" for an idiom in the form of an adjective phrase, such as all too brief, and "[n + n]" representing a noun plus noun pattern in an idiom, as in body and soul. However, as might be expected with both the ODCIE VI and the ODCIE V2 since these are dictionaries that specialize in the largely fixed expressions called idioms, these dictionaries provide little in the way of other information about verb complementation.

2.2.1.2. Noun complementation The complementation of nouns, like the complementation of verbs, is another area of English grammar that is troublesome for learners of English and is also an area that receives some attention in ESL dictionaries. What is meant by noun complementation is the range of structures, e.g. prepositions, prepositional phrases, clauses, and verb phrases, that may follow a noun. The rules governing the complementation of individual nouns might seem particularly unpredictable and idiosyncratic to the learner, and therefore the necessity of including such information in ESL dictionaries would seem obvious. However, information on noun complementation in ESL dictionaries is often lacking or appears to be insufficient.

93 T h e m e a n s of indicating the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n of verbs has been discussed above, and the similarities with the means of indicating the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n of adjectives and nouns have been noted t h e r e ; some topics relating specifically to noun c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n are discussed in this section. The LDOCE2 indicates in its introductory part that both adjectives and nouns can be followed by "sentence patterns," as examples of which it includes not only that- and wh- clauses (the codes f o r which are "[ + that]" and "[ + wfi-]" respectively) but also fo-infinitive phrases (code "[ + fo-v]"), as in afraid to tell her and a decision to leave. Since the infinitive phrases are not in a strict sense sentences (nor clauses) as they lack explicit subjects and finite verbs, it is puzzling and potentially confusing f o r the l e a r n e r that they are classified as such in the LDOCE2's introductory section. Moreover, the code "[ + w h - ] " is not fully explained in the introductory section but only in the removable g r a m m a r codes key included with the dictionary. The explanation in the removable key reads: "[+ wh-] shows that a word can be followed by a word beginning with wh- (such as where, why, or w h e n ) or by how: He didn't know what to do/how to do if | I'm not sure where to go." The examples given h e r e seem to suggest that the wh- word can only be followed by a fo-infinitive construction. However, u n d e r the entry for the adjective clear, sense 6 is labeled "[+w/i-]" and followed by the examples I'm still not quite clear how it works/which button to press. O n e way in which the BBICDE provides information on noun c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is with the noun collocations it classifies as "G2" collocations. In this category, nouns are specified as being followed by fo-infinitive complements. The BBICDE classifies the nouns of this collocational category as falling into five distinct "syntactic patterns" designated by a n u m b e r and exemplified in the explanatory section of the dictionary as follows: 1. It w a s a pleasure (a problem, a struggle) to do it. 2. They h a d t h e / ore sight (instructions, an obligation, permission, 3. They f e l t a compulsion (an impulse, a need) to do it. 4. They m a d e an attempt (an e f f ort, a promise, a vow) to d o it. 5. H e wis a fool (a genius, an idiot) to d o it.

the right)

to do it.

T h e only clue to the basis f o r discriminating between the p a t t e r n s in this way is the explanation that "some nouns can also be used with a verb form in -ing: it's α pleasure to work there = it's a pleasure working there = working there is a pleasure (= to work there is a pleasure). Such nouns usually occur in the first syntactic p a t t e r n listed above." This explains the distinctive f e a t u r e of the first p a t t e r n , but nothing else is said concerning the justification f o r creating the f o u r other p a t t e r n s . U n d e r its category "G3," the BBICDE includes those nouns that "can be followed by a fhaf-clause," i.e. those taking a f f t a f - c l a u s e as a c o m p l e m e n t as in we reached an agreement that she would represent us in court. Moreover, the dictionary proceeds to make a distinction between relative clauses and thatclauses by pointing out that in the f o r m e r "that can be replaced by which." This

94 would a p p e a r to be a u s e f u l distinction that is not o f t e n m a d e in English pedagogical grammar. In a d d i t i o n to t h e codes of t h e COBUILD m e n t i o n e d in t h e p r e c e d i n g section (e.g. "REPORT CL") t h a t can be p l a c e d next to n o u n s as well as v e r b s to show n o u n c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n , the COBUILD has a code "SUPP" which i n d i c a t e s t h a t a n o u n n e e d s some type of c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n or m o d i f i c a t i o n , e.g. by p o s t m o d i f y i n g p h r a s e s or by attributive a d j e c t i v e s . T h e p r o b l e m with t h e use of this code is t h a t w h e n it is given with c e r t a i n nouns, as it is with a sense of t h e n o u n hunting, t h e r e is no i n d i c a t i o n of exactly what kind of c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is n e e d e d except as suggested t h r o u g h the e x a m p l e s e n t e n c e s in the entry. T h e COBUILD i n d i c a t e s a type of obligatory n o u n c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n t h a t is not i n d i c a t e d in o t h e r d i c t i o n a r i e s . This c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is of c e r t a i n n o u n s t h a t r e q u i r e p r e - or p o s t m o d i f i c a t i o n by a n o t h e r noun in the genitive case or by a possessive p r o n o u n . T h e COBU I LD has a code "POSS" which is u s e d in e i t h e r the code "N WITH POSS" or "POSS + N." W h e n a n o u n is l a b e l e d with t h e f i r s t code, t h e COBU I LD i n d i c a t e s t h a t t h e n o u n must be p r e c e d e d by a "possessive p r o n o u n as d e t e r m i n e r , " "a n o u n or n a m e with an a d d e d 's ( a p o s t r o p h e 's)" or "a p r e p o s i t i o n a l g r o u p following t h e noun"; when a n o u n is l a b e l e d with t h e second code, it may be p r e c e d e d by a possessive p r o n o u n or an 's genitive. A n e x a m p l e of a n o u n l a b e l e d with t h e first code is growing pains, which has t h e code "N PLURAL: USU WITH POSS," and an e x a m p l e with l a t t e r code is diary, which is l a b e l e d "N C0UNT:USU POSS + N."

This section will conclude with a survey of t h e i n f o r m a t i o n on t h e c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n of two nouns, pleasure and decision, p r o v i d e d in E S L dictionaries. A. General ESL dictionaries 1. For advanced learners CELD has no indication nor example of complementation in its entry for decision; for pleasure, there is again no explicit indication of complementation rules but there are two example sentences for the first sense that illustrate complementation: "It gives me much pleasure to be here" and "He takes pleasure in listening to music."

COBUILD has two senses for decision: it labels the first, "A decision is a choice that you make about what you think should be done or about which is the best of various alternatives," with the grammar code "N COUNT:IF + PREP THEN on/about." The second sense has two subsenses, whose definitions read "[Decision is] the act of deciding something or the need to decide something" and "[Decision is] the ability to decide quickly and definitely what to do"; the COBUILD does not indicate any complementation rules for either sense and none of the examples it gives shows complementation of decision. Surprisingly, none of the senses of the COBUILD's entry for pleasure is labeled with a code that indicates complementation rules. This is true even though

95 some of the examples it gives show pleasure being used with complementation: "McPherson could scarcely conceal his pleasure at my resignation," "They take pleasure in their children's accomplishments," "I'd travel a thousand miles just for the pleasure of meeting you,"the pleasures of choral singing, "Mr and Mrs Oliver Barrett request the pleasure of your company at the wedding of their daughter, "May I have the pleasure of this dance?" and "Perhaps you ΊΙ do me the pleasure of joining me in a drink."

CULD has no formal indication of complementation in its entry for decision, and in the five examples of the noun given there is only one that shows complementation: "They have finally come to a decision about the child's future." Similarly, in the CULD's entry for pleasure there is no formal indication of complementation, but there are some examples that illustrate it: "the pleasures of country life," "I get a lot of pleasure from listening to music" and "It gives him pleasure to see children enjoying themselves," though again the last could be seen as an example of a subject extraposition transformation.

LDOCE2 has two senses for decision, and gives complementation information only for the first; it indicates with the code "[ + to-v]" that the noun can be followed by fo-infinitive clause. The LDOCE2 has an entry for pleasure but does not provide complementation information directly, i.e. with grammar codes; it does, however, have several examples of the noun followed by a complement: "It gave me no pleasure to have to tell them that they were fired," "I take no pleasure in ( =do not enjoy) such things, "It's been a great pleasure to talk to you," "May I have the pleasure of the next dance with you?", "I had the pleasure of meeting your parents yesterday" and "Is it your pleasure that I sign the minutes of the last meeting as correct?"

OALDCE4 has two senses for decision and has this complementation information before the first sense: (on/against sth); ~ (to do sth)." However, its entry for pleasure has no such direct indication of complementation. There are some examples given which illustrate complementation: "It gives me great pleasure to welcome our speaker," "the pleasures of living in the country," "It's been a pleasure meeting you" and "Is it your pleasure that I cancel the arrangements?" In addition, the OALDCE4 lists two idioms in its entry for pleasure, have the pleasure of sth /doing sth and take (no/great) pleasure in sth/doing sth, these entries both illustrating the complementation of pleasure.

2. For intermediate learners LDAE does not formally indicate the complementation that decision or pleasure take; it does have one example sentence for decision that illustrates complementation, "Who made the decision to go there?", and three examples of the complementation of pleasure, "It gives me no pleasure to have to tell you this," "He took great pleasure in (=greatly enjoyed) telling me that my team had lost" and "It's been a pleasure to talk to you."

96 NHLD doesn't systematically indicate noun complementation; under decision, it has an example with "the decision to." Under pleasure, there is only one example illustrating complementation, "He found pleasure in listening to music."

OSDAE2

and

OSDCE

both have an entry for pleasure, in which examples of complementation are given: "It gave me much pleasure to hear of your success, May we have the pleasure of your company f or lunch, Some boys take great pleasure in teasing their little sisters, the pleasures of friendship"·, however, there is no systematic indication of rules for complementation. Both dictionaries also have an entry for decision, but with only one example showing complementation: "give a decision on a case."

3. For beginning learners BDAEU has an entry for decision, but in the entry there is no indication of the complementation it takes, and in the examples of the use of the noun there is none that illustrates complementation. The BDAEU has pleasure as a run-on entry under please; it gives three example sentences containing pleasure, only one showing complementation: "it gives me great pleasure to be here today." However, this may be seen not as an example of complementation of pleasure, but it could be seen as an example of a sentence with pleasure being able to undergo the movement of a f o-infinitive subject with placement of a dummy it in the subject position.

EAED has decision and pleasure but no rules nor examples for complementation

LHLD has entries for decision and pleasure but no indication of complementation and no example sentences with complementation

OELDE has an entry for decision with one example sentence, which shows complementation: His decision to leave school was a surprise to his parents. The OELDE's entry for pleasure has only one example of complementation, and that is for the idiom take pleasure in which is listed in the entry (the form of the idiom itself does show the complementation): I take pleasure in gardening. In both entries, there is no other indication of complementation rules.

97 Β. Specialized ESL dictionaries 3. Other specialized dictionaries BBICDE gives several examples of the complementation of pleasure in its list of the collocations for this word: "1. to afford, give ~ (it gives me great ~ to present the next speaker) 2. to feel^ind, take ~ in 3. to derive ~ from 4. to forgo a ~ 5. a genuine, real; rare ~ 6. a ~ to + inf. (it's a ~ to work with them = it's a ~ working with them = they are a ~ to work with; it is a ~ to teach these children = it is a ~ teaching these children = these children are a ~ to teach)" Again, some of these examples could arguably be seen as examples only of the transposition of the io-infinitive subject with dummy it. Similary, the BBICDE gives several examples of complementation in the list of collocations in its entry for decision: "[...] 7. a ~ about, on 8. a ~ to + inf. (we made the ~ to accept their offer) 9. the ~ that + clause (we applauded the ~ that taxes would be cut)"

The CAS, DAI, EAI, HAIIU, LDOEI, NTCAID, CPGPV, DEPVI, DTWVSE, LDOPV and the ODCIE nor idioms containing them as separate entries.

NTCDAS, ODCIE V2, PDEI, VI do not treat decision, pleasure

2.2.1.3. Adjective complementation Adjective c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is a third type of c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n that is especially difficult f o r learners and which is generally given a t t e n t i o n in ESL dictionaries. An i m p o r t a n t aspect of adjective c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is the f a c t that some c o m p l e m e n t s of adjectives are obligatory while others are optional. F u r t h e r m o r e , among e l e m e n t s that are optional, a distinction must be made between what are truly optional c o m p l e m e n t s of a p a r t i c u l a r adjective and what are in f a c t f r e e or p e r i p h e r a l e l e m e n t s that may cooccur with a wide range of constituents, not just certain adjectives. An analysis of this type is p r e s e n t e d by H e r b s t 1984a, in which it is pointed out that with Dennis in the sentence Judith is friendly with Dennis must be r e g a r d e d as an obligatory prepositional p h r a s e c o m p l e m e n t of friendly. Evidence f o r this is the f a c t that friendly in the above sentence does not have exactly the same m e a n i n g as in the sentence Judith is friendly, and f o r friendly to have this meaning it must be obligatorily followed by a prepositional phrase h e a d e d by with. By contrast, in the sentence Judith is friendly to Dennis, to Dennis is an optional c o m p l e m e n t that does not affect the meaning of friendly, whose meaning is the same as if the adjective were used with no c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n . And in the summer in the sentence Judith was friendly in the summer would be a p e r i p h e r a l c o m p l e m e n t since such a prepositional

98 phrase f u n c t i o n i n g as an adverbial of time may be freely added to this and o t h e r structures. A n o t h e r illustration of p e r i p h e r a l complements that H e r b s t gives is in the sentence Alcoholic drinks are not available to people under eighteen. In this sentence, available is followed by an optional c o m p l e m e n t with to, and, as Herbst argues, a dictionary's entry f o r available should indicate both that this adjective may be followed by a prepositional phrase c o m p l e m e n t h e a d e d by to and that this c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is optional (1984a:3). However, in the sentences A l c o h o l i c drinks a r e available at the bar. A l c o h o l i c drinks a r e available in the c a f e t e r i a . Alcoholic drinks are available on the boat.

the prepositional phrases at the bar, in the cafeteria and on the boat are p e r i p h e r a l complements, as evidenced by the f a c t that the prepositions heading the phrases are d e t e r m i n e d not by available but by the nouns governed by the prepositions (1984a:3). On the basis of this, H e r b s t argues that dictionaries of English should focus on indicating only the obligatory and optional c o m p l e m e n t s of adjectives and need not indicate the p e r i p h e r a l ones, since these are not lexically connected with particular adjectives (1984a:5). T h e logic of this argument is obvious, since if ESL dictionaries a t t e m p t e d the latter the grammatical information contained in them would be hopelessly complicated due to the sheer volume of the material. Herbst f u r t h e r argues that the information on adjective c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n in ESL d i c t i o n a r i e s - e v e n among those that p u r p o r t to provide exhaustive information on adjective complementation—is i n a d e q u a t e , as the dictionaries not only usually fail to indicate the full range of obligatory and optional c o m p l e m e n t s of adjectives but also often do not clearly indicate the optional or obligatory character of the complements that are listed. This is true, he points have out, even though dictionaries such as the LDOCE1 and the OALDCE3 clear m e a n s to indicate optional and obligatory c o m p l e m e n t s and do so in a number of cases (in fact, the current versions of both dictionaries, not yet available when H e r b s t was writing, have even clearer m e a n s of indicating c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n , e.g. f o r optional and obligatory prepositional phrase c o m p l e m e n t s h e a d e d by to, the LDOCE2 has the symbols (+to) and + to respectively and the OALDCE4 has the symbols ( - t o ) and - t o respectively). He bases his conclusions about the general inadequacy of adjective c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n information in part on his analysis of c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n information f o r 555 English adjectives in the LDOCE1 and the OALDCE3, in which he f o u n d that these dictionaries provide less than half of the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n possibilities of English adjectives (1984a:9). A n o t h e r p r o b l e m Herbst f i n d s is that while dictionaries o f t e n give examples of adjective c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n , many of these examples are of p e r i p h e r a l c o m p l e m e n t s but not optional nor obligatory complements, which, as noted above, are more particular to the adjectives. T h e r e f o r e , H e r b s t suggests that in their examples

99 ESL dictionaries should strive to provide examples of obligatory and optional complements instead of p e r i p h e r a l ones, especially where space limitations prevent t h e m f r o m using more f o r m a l means (e.g. codes and abbreviations) to indicate the full range of c o m p l e m e n t s of an adjective or a noun (1984a:6). On the other hand, Herbst recognizes the impracticality of including all or nearly all possible complements, especially those with restricted register, in an ESL dictionary. Nevertheless, he makes the point that ESL dictionaries can be not only tools f o r progressing l e a r n e r s but also r e f e r e n c e works f o r teachers of English who are not native speakers, who t h e r e f o r e may consult these dictionaries on o f t e n obscure m a t t e r s of English usage a b o u t which they may be unsure (a similar a r g u m e n t is m a d e by H e a t h (1982:96) and by H e r b s t again in 1987 and 1989b). For this reason, H e r b s t argues, ESL dictionaries should in fact "aim f o r comprehensiveness" but can make concessions to practicality by labeling c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n that is rare, informal, etc. (1984a:6). Most ESL dictionaries indicate adjective c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n in a way similar to that by which they indicate verb and noun c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n . In the LDOCE2, f o r example, the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n of the adjective fraught is given by including the label "[F+with]" with the adjective, the code "F" signifying predicative-only adjective and " + w i t h " meaning that this adjective is used with a following prepositional phrase h e a d e d by with. The LDOCE2 also indicates optional c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n , as with the adjective careful which is followed by the code "[(with)]," the with in p a r e n t h e s e s indicating that a prepositional phrase h e a d e d by with following the adjective is optional. The BBICDE, which as shown above can mark verb and noun c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n as thoroughly as conventional ESL dictionaries, marks adjectives that are followed by obligatory prepositional phrase c o m p l e m e n t s through the use of the label "cannot stand alone," e.g. "fond adj. (cannot stand alone) - o f (she is ~ of him)." As this example illustrates, the dictionary indicates which prepositions must be used with these adjectives by placing them immediately a f t e r the tilde which r e p r e s e n t s the headword. T h e BBICDE also indicates adjective collocations that are followed by ί/ιαί-clauses with the designation "G7," e.g. nice whose third sense is given as "...3. ~ that + clause (it's ~ that we could all get together)". Some ESL dictionaries that indicate adjective c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n can also indicate cases in which a particular type of c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n changes the meaning of an adjective (as in the examples with friendly q u o t e d earlier in this section). This is accomplished through placing the notation f o r the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n directly b e f o r e the definition of a p a r t i c u l a r sense of an adjective, thereby indicating to the user that such c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is used only with this sense of the adjective. An example is the entry f o r the adjective intent in the OALDCE4: (...) adj 1 (of looks, attention, etc) full of eager interest and concentration: watch with an intent gaze, look, expression, etc. 2 [pred] - on/upon sth/doing sth (a) having the stated firm intention: He's intent on getting promotion, and no one's going to stop him! (b)

100 occupied in doing sth with great concentration: I was so intent notice the time..

(up)on

my work that I didn

Ί

This entry tells the user that intent when used with a prepositional phrase headed by on or upon changes the meaning of the adjective, i.e. it has one of the two subsenses given under sense 2. On the other hand, complementation information that is given at the beginning of the entry for an adjective (usually preceding the numeral "1" that marks the first sense) is meant to be used for all senses of the adjective (however, see Bolinger (1990:144) for a discussion of some inconsistencies in the way the OALDCE4 treats adjective and noun complementation). This section will also conclude with a survey of the information on the complementation of two adjectives, afraid and friendly, provided in ESL dictionaries. With the latter adjective, it is hoped to examine if and how the dictionaries indicate that the meaning of the adjective can be altered by the kind of complementation it takes. A. General ESL dictionaries 1. For a d v a n c e d l e a r n e r s CELD In this dictionary's entry f o r afraid, t h e r e is no explicit means of indicating complementation, but there a r e two examples that show it: "The travellers were afraid that they would be robbed" and "The small boy was afraid of the dark." And remarkably, the CELD has an entry f o r f r i e n d l y that has the part of speech label "adv" (there a r e no example sentences).

COBUILD has t h r e e senses f o r afraid; the first has the g r a m m a r code "ADJ QUAUT:PRED, IF + PREP THEN of/FO-INF" and t h e second has "ADJ QUALIT-.PRED + REPORT-CL/ÍO-INF/O/," these codes giving a good idea of the range of complementation afraid may take in the two senses. T h e third sense, whose definition reads "You use expressions such as 'I'm afraid', 'I'm afraid not', and 'I'm afraid t o say' in order to express politeness or regret, f o r example when you a r e apologizing or disagreeing with someone," has the g r a m m a r code "ADV SEN, OR CONVENTION"; this code does not indicate complementation, even though some of the examples given f o r this sense (as well as those cited in the definition) f e a t u r e complementation: "I'm afraid I can't agree" and "I'm afraid so." The COBUILD has eight senses f o r f r i e n d l y (one of them a noun). Only the third adjective sense, whose definition reads "You say that people a r e f r i e n d l y to someone when they support or encourage them," has a g r a m m a r code that indicates complementation: "ADJ QUALIT+ to." T h e codes f o r the other senses do not indicate complementation, but again some of the examples show it: "The women had been friendly to Lyn," "You need to be on friendly terms with him" and "A salesman got friendly with him."

101 CULD has two scnsesfor afraid but there is no formal indication of complementation for either. There are, however, examples that illustrate complementation: for the first sense, there are the examples "He's afraid of his mother," "He is afraid of going out alone," "The child is not afraid of the dark" and "She was afraid to go," a n d f o r the second sense "I'm afraid I don't agree with you" and "I'm afraid the cat is dead." Similary, the CULD's entry for afraid has no formal indication of complementation but there are examples that show it: "She is very friendly to everybody" and "They have been friendly (with each other) for many years."

LDOCE2 has four senses for afraid. The first has the grammar code "[(of, for)]" which shows that in this sense the adjective may be optionally followed by a prepositional phrase headed by of or for·, in addition, inside the entry for the first sense are the grammar codes "[ + fo-v]" and "( + (ίΛΰί)]" followed by examples with this type of complementation. The second sense has the code "[(of)]" and included in the entry is the code "[ + to-v]" followed by an example of this complementation. The third sense begins with the grammar code "[ + (fA«/)]", and the fourth sense is the idiom afraid of one's own shadow, illustration complementation by a prepositional phrase. Moreover, the LDOCE2's entry for afraid ends with a usage note discussing the use of the phrase I'm afraid and within the note examples of the complementation of this phrase with so, not and l/iaf-clauses are given. The LDOCE's entry for the adjective friendly has five senses. The first begins with the grammar code "[(to, towards)]"; the second sense, "having the relationship of friends (with)," has the grammar code "]F (with)]," the "F" indicating that in this sense friendly is only used in predicative position; the third sense has the grammar code "[F + to]" indicating obligatory complementation by a prepositional phrase headed by to\ and the fifth sense has no grammar code nor do the examples illustrate complementation of friendly.

OALDCE4 has two main senses for afraid, but the first has three subsenses which begin with the respective complementation information (of sb/sth); ~ (of doing sth/to do sth)," of doing sth/ ~ that..." and for sth/sb." In addition, the second sense lists the idioms be afraid of one's own shadow and I'm afraid that... which further illustrate the complemenation possibilities of afraid. One could raise an objection to the OALDCE4's method of indicating complementation by of doing sth/to do sth on the grounds that these phrases are not strictly substitutable, i.e. they might seem to suggest only transitive verbs may follow o f , oí course, one can say afraid of dying/to die with no "something" after the verb. Information on complementation is not given directly in the OALDCE4's entry for friendly, although there are examples given, "The children here are quite friendly with one another" and "It wasn't very friendly of you to slam the door in his face," that illustrate complementation.

2. For intermediate learners LDAE has two senses under its entry for afraid; the first sense, "full of fear; F R I G H T E N E D " has the grammar code "[ + to-v/(that)/of]" which shows the complementation this sense of the adjective may take and the second, "sorry for something that has happened or is likely to happen" has the grammar code "[ + (tAaf)]". Under its entry for friendly, it has three senses with only the

102 first, "acting or ready to act as a friend," having a grammar code showing complementation: "[to, with]."

NHLD has one sense for afraid but gives no complementation information, just an example sentence with complementation, "/ am afraid of big dogs." It has only one sense of friendly, "kindly," with no complementation information nor examples.

OSDAE2 and OSDCE The OSDAE2 and OSDCE both list one sense of friendly, "acting, or ready to act, as a friend; showing or expressing kindness: be ~ with/be on ~ terms with her." But both dictionaries do a better job of indicating the complementation of afraid: "1 frightened: There's nothing to be ~ o f . 2 doubtful or anxious about what may happen: I was ~ of hurting his feelings/that I might hurt his feelings. 3 be afraid, (with that usually omitted) (a polite way of saying or writing something that may be unwelcome): I'm ~ (that [this variant is in the OSDAE2 only]) we shall be late." In addition, the OSDAE2 specifies the complementation rules for afraid at the beginning of the entry: "afraid (of)/that/to do something."

3. For beginning learners BDAEU gives the first sense of afraid as "to be afraid (of) = to be frightened (by)," evidently indicating optional complementation of both afraid and frightened. The BDAEU has only one sense for friendly but no indication of complementation nor any example illustrating complementation.

EAED has an entry for afraid, and in the one example it gives of this adjective there is complementation: "George is afraid of the dark." The EAED has an entry for friendly but no indication nor examples of complementation. LHLD Below are the senses and the examples of complementation in its entry for afraid: "1 frightened: afraid of the dark 2 sorry for something that has happened or is likely to happen: 'Are we late?' Ί'm afraid so.'" The LHLD has friendly (as a run-on under friend) with two senses, neither of which specifies complementation nor gives examples with complementation.

103 OELDE has two senses for afraid and each has an example sentence that shows complementation: Are you afraid of snakes? and I'm afraid that I have broken you window. The entry for friendly has only one example and this is with friendly in attributive position, hence there is no complementation. The OELDE has no formal means of indicating adjective complementation.

B. Specialized ESL dictionaries 1. Idiom dictionaries EAI and

NTCAID

both have an entry for the idiom afraid of one's own shadow, which at least indirectly illustrates probably the most common complementation of afraid, i.e. followed by a prepositional phrase headed by of

LDOEI under "AFRAID" this dictionary has an entry for the idiom be afraid of one's (own) shadow (which is cross-referenced to shadow); it has no idioms with friendly

NTCDAS has an entry for the functional expression afraid not, which is labeled "phr"; this of course has a different meaning and function than the general adjective afraid, and it also does not take the same complementation

ODCIE

V2

only has friendly in the entry for the idiom your friendly neighbourhood policeman etc; in all the examples of the use of this idiom, friendly is used attributively and therefore has no complementation

3. Other specialized dictionaries BBICDE has an entry for afraid which has examples of complementation: "[...] 2. ~ of (the child was ~ of the dark) 3. ~ to + inf. (he was ~ to dive from the high board) 4. ~ that + clause (we were afraid that he would find out)" The BBICDE

also has an entry for friendly:

"friendly adj. 1. ~ of (that was ~ of you) 2. ~ to, towards, with 3. ~ to + inf. (it was ~ of him to offer his help)"

104 Again, the last example can be analyzed as showing that a sentence with friendly can accept a transformation in which the io-infinitive subject can be moved to the end of the sentence with insertion of dummy it in subject position.

The CAS, DAI, HAIIU, PDEI, CPGPV, DEPVI, DTWVSE, LDOPV and the VI do not treat afraid, friendly nor idioms containing them as separate entries.

ODCIE

2.2.2. W o r d order Another type of syntactic information provided by some ESL dictionaries is information on word order. Not surprisingly, the dictionaries most likely to include information on word order are those that specialize in lexical units that consist of more than one word, i.e. idiom and collocational dictionaries. The ODCIE VI's explanations of the transformational possibilities of various words are often vague, however; for example, under the explanation of the code "[B2]" we find statements such as (b) In many cases, an adverb or adverbial phrase can be placed between the Direct Object and the prepositional phrase. This may be possible even when the item is idiomatic 2 The governor made an example, only last week, of these prisoners. all his problems, year in and year out, on his unf ortunate 5 Peter foists

friends.

(c) When the object is relatively long and the prepositional phrase relatively short, they are often transposable, as follows: 10 The instructor

put o f f driving

every student

(d) Sometimes a long Object can be divided, the prepositional phrase: 9 I don't

hold

past failings

against

who came his

way.

with part of it—usually a relative clause—following

him for which

he can't really

be held

responsible.

In these statements, nor apparently anywhere else in the dictionary, are there any clear and useful guidelines as to the precise meanings of the expressions "many cases," "relatively long...short" and "sometimes." This imprecise diction in the ODCIE VI is largely carried over in the ODCIE V2 with explanations such as "When the direct object is relatively long and the adjunct relatively short, they can sometimes be transposed: ...A doctor has to put first his poorer patients and their families" and "In a few cases the final adjunct (whether adjective or adverb) can be moved into initial position in its own clause: ...How wide have you cast your net?, I notice how wide you have cast your net....How hard did Janet take everything?" In idioms which consist of conjoined elements of the same part of speech, the

105 ODCIE V2 also notes w h e t h e r or not the o r d e r of the e l e m e n t s can be inverted by the codes "[rev]" and "[non-rev]," as in fair and square which is marked "[adj + a d j non-rev]" and day and night which is labeled "[...η + η rev]." Most other dictionaries fail to give any indication of the reversibility or non-reversibility of such conjoined structures. As pointed out by Iannucci (1987:274), one dictionary in which one would expect a full t r e a t m e n t of the word o r d e r possibilities of idioms and collocations, namely the BBICDE, gives no indication of these possibilities even though the incorrect transposition of the e l e m e n t s of a fixed combination is a common error among l e a r n e r s of English (and among l e a r n e r s of other languages that have fixed o r d e r combinations). Some i m p o r t a n t rules f o r word o r d e r as p e r t a i n to adjectives are given in the COBUILD. As m e n t i o n e d above (in Section 2.1.3.2.), this dictionary has t h r e e m a i n c o d e s f o r a d j e c t i v e s : "ADJ CLASSIF," "ADJ COLOUR" a n d

"ADJ QUALIT."

These codes not only indicate the general type of adjectives and their gradability but also indicate their relative position when they premodify nouns in attributive position: adjectives labeled as "ADJ QUALIT," such as big and terrific, are specified as occurring b e f o r e "ADJ COLOUR" adjectives, and "ADJ CLASSIF" adjectives such as dead and wollen, are specified as occurring a f t e r both of the other types of adjectives. A n o t h e r example of a code f o r adjectives in the COBU I LD is "ADJ AFTER N" which does not indicate a predicate-only adjective but, as the boxed explanation of the code makes clear, indicates those few English nouns such as galore and elect that follow the nouns they modify, e.g. the president elect and There are empty houses galore. T o conclude this section, the t r e a t m e n t of a word o r d e r rule in ESL dictionaries is surveyed. T h e rule is the reversibility of the noun constituents of a common idiom, day and night, and the dictionaries are surveyed to see whether or not they show that that this idiom may be used as night and day. It is also hoped to see if those dictionaries that do indicate the reversiblity of the idiom list it under night as well as day, which would be a desirable practice regardless of w h e t h e r day and night or night and day occurs more f r e q u e n t l y . A . General ESL dictionaries 1. For advanced learners CELD has an indented idiom entry (by) night and day under its main entry for night but no indication of the reversibility of its constituents (there is no similar idiom under day)

COBUILD lists the the idiom day and night under its entry for day; the definition that includes the idiom shows its reversibility: "If something happens day and night or night and day, it happens all the

106 time without stopping." In addition, the idiom is given under the entry f o r night with the same definition.

CULD doesn't list day and night/night and day in its list of idioms f o r day and f o r night. However, in the entry f o r day there is an example with the idiom, "She sat by his bedside day and night"·, there is no indication of the reversibility of this idiom.

LDOCE2 lists the idiom day and night in its entry f o r day; there is no indication here of the reversibility of the constituents. However, in the entry f o r night, the dictionary has "night and day also day and night."

OALDCE4 does not list the idiom day and night under day, but there it does list the idiom night and day which is cross-referenced to the entry f o r night. At night is listed "¡night and ' d a y / , d a y and 'night," showing the reversibility of the constituents in the idiom and also showing that the stress pattern remains the same regardless of the order of the constituents.

2. For intermediate learners LDAE does not list day and night under its entry for day, but under night it has "night and day also day and night"

NHLD lists neither day and night nor night and day

OSDAE2

and

OSDCE

list several idioms with day second example of the noun and night/night and day under their e n t r i e s f o r night,

in the entry for this word, but not day and night; however, the features this idiom and shows its reversibility: "We travelled day without stopping." Also, both dictionaries have night and day but there is no indication here that it's reversible

3. For beginning learners BDAEU doesn't list the idiomi day and night nor night and

day

107 EAED lists no idioms with day nor night, nor apparently does it list any idioms

LHLD has several idioms as run-ons in the entries for day and night; however only under night is there "night and day also day and night"

OELDE does not list the idiom day and night in its entry for day; however, night and day is listed in the entry for night but there is no indication that the constituents can be reversed.

B. Specialized ESL dictionaries 1. Idiom dictionaries DAI has an entry "day and night or night and day adv."

LDOEI In this dictionary, the idiom day and night is cross-referenced by the use of an arrow to the the idiom "NIGHT and day" (the small caps show that this idiom is.found under "NIGHT" with other idioms featuring this word. At the end of the entry for "NIGHT and day" following the part of speech label "[Adv]," there is the note "Also: day and night." NTCAID has "day and night AND night and day." Also, there is an entry night and day which is crossreferenced to theformer entry: "See day and night."

ODCIE

V2

has an entry for day and night which has the function code "[Α (η + η rev)]"; by "rev" it shows that the order of the nouns in this idiom may be reversed (but the ODCIE V2 has no entry for night and day cross-referenced to day and night)

3. Other specialized dictionaries BBICDE In the BBICDE's entry for day, the eleventh collocational entry, which lists miscellaneous collocations, includes and night ('all the time')." There is no indication of reversibility here, and in this dictionary's entry for night there is no listing of the collocation night and day

108 The CAS, EAI, HAIIU, NTCDAS, PDEI, ODCIE V2 do not treat day and night/night

CPGPV, DEPVI, DTWVSE, and day as separate entries.

LDOPV

and the

2.2.3. Transformations As noted above (in Section 1.), although the p r e s e n t a t i o n of g r a m m a r in ESL dictionaries is highly traditional, i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t syntactic t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s is included in some dictionaries and in fact t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s are usually explicitly r e f e r r e d to in these places. T r a n s f o r m a t i o n s are o f t e n handled under verb patterns, i.e. the discussion of a verb p a t t e r n in a dictionary will indicate w h e t h e r or not the verbs in the p a t t e r n may, may not or usually do not allow a certain t r a n s f o r m a t i o n . In the great majority of cases, the only t r a n s f o r m a t i o n that is m e n t i o n e d is the passive t r a n s f o r m a t i o n , and, as noted above (in Section 2.1.2.1.1.) many dictionaries simply mark individual verbs that may or (more usually) may not be used in the passive. A n o t h e r t r a n s f o r m a t i o n that is given some a t t e n t i o n in ESL dictionaries is dative movement. This refers to the t r a n s f o r m a t i o n by which (according to some analyses of English g r a m m a r ) a sentence like He gave her a book is derived f r o m a d e e p structure resembling He gave a book to her through the application of a t r a n s f o r m a t i o n that "moves" the dative element, or indirect object, to a position immediately following the verb. T h e OALDCE4 indicates the possibility of dative movement f o r verbs followed by an indirect and a direct object by marking some of these verbs with the code "[Dn:pr]," which stands f o r a transitive v e r b followed by a noun or p r o n o u n and a p r e p o s i t i o n a l phrase. Moreover, in the explanation of this code the OALDCE4 also indicates that the prepositional p h r a s e may be h e a d e d by for instead of to when "the indirect object r e f e r s to s o m e o n e who is expected to berief it f r o m the action of the verb," in contrast to constructions with to in which "the indirect object r e f e r s to s o m e o n e who receives something." T h e choice of preposition is also indicated in the entries f o r individual verbs, e.g. "bake... ν 1 [I,Τη, Dn-n, Dn-pr] ~ s t h ( f o r sb)." T h e BBICDE also indicates w h e t h e r certain verbs do or do not allow dative movement. Moreover, it points out that t h e r e are d i f f e r e n c e s between British and A m e r i c a n English in the application of this t r a n s f o r m a t i o n , specifically in the acceptability of the t r a n s f o r m a t i o n with certain verbs (e.g. recommend) and the g r e a t e r acceptability of the t r a n s f o r m a t i o n in British English when both the indirect and direct objects are pronouns, e.g. he sent it him. In addition, the dictionary marks verbs that allow the p l a c e m e n t of the object of the p r e p o s i t i o n for a f t e r the verb and b e f o r e the direct object, e.g. she bought a shirt for her husband ~ she bought her husband a shirt. T h e BBICDE points out a semantic connection a m o n g the verbs that allow this t r a n s f o r m a t i o n , namely that they have the basic meaning of to make or to

109 create, especially in regard to "culinary operations," though it admits that it includes only the most frequently occurring of these verbs. Some dictionaries also indicate whether the so-called "í'í-insertion" transformation is possible for sentences having certain verbs and adjectives, e.g. seem. The application of this transformation would derive a sentence such as It seems strange that he would come from the sentence That he would come seems strange. One dictionary that includes information on this transformation is the LDOCE2, as with the verb depend which is marked with the label "[if + T + wh-]" and also has the example sentence You can buy them in all sizes--it depends how much you're prepared to spend (the prepositional verb depend on/upon is given a separate subentry). Another dictionary, the ODCIE VI, indicates if sentences having phrasal verbs in the passive voice allow the "í'í-insertion" transformation, e.g. We worked out that we should need 100 pounds alternating with It was worked out that we should need 100 pounds.

2.2.4. Subject-verb concord Learners of English often need guidance as to the special rules of verb concord or agreement, i.e. the selection of the morphological form of a verb to match the number of its subject noun or noun phrase. Problems in verb concord for learners usually involve nouns that although appearing to be morphologically plural take singular verbs or, conversely, morphologically singular nouns that take plural verbs. Such nouns, e.g. economics and people, sometimes pose problems for native speakers of English as well and are thus often given attention in dictionaries for native speakers; for example, in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the definition of mathematics is preceded by the usage note "Plural in form, used with a singular verb." However, ESL dictionaries tend to provide more consistent and thorough indications of the special rules involving subject-verb concord. The COBLJILD, for example, labels nouns that take plural verbs and nouns that take singular verbs with the codes "N PLURAL" and "N SING" respectively. Even idiom dictionaries pay some attention to concord. The LDOEI uses the code "PI" to mark idioms that are plural in form and take a plural verb, and, as mentioned above (in Section 2.1.1.1.), it uses the codes "N" and "Nm" to mark countable and uncountable nouns (or noun phrases), respectively, and it states explicitly that the latter take a singular verb. However, ESL dictionaries are not always consistent or accurate in marking subject-verb concord. Heath, in his comparison of the treatment of concord in the LDOCE1, OALDCE3 and CULD, notes that in the OALDCE3 the nouns for games bowls and darts, which take singular verbs, are given only under the headwords bowl and dart, which could lead the user to infer that these words in their plural forms with -s would take plural verbs (1985:341). Another problem

110 noted by Heath concerns nouns ending in -ics, which as mentioned above are of one of the noun classes whose concord rules are difficult often even for native speakers; in this area Heath found many inconsistencies: Schwerigkeiten können polyseme Lexeme verursachen, die in einer Bedeutung im Singular verwendet werden, in einer weiteren Bedeutung aber eine Pluralvorstellung hervorrufen, zum Beispiel Statistics is a branch of mathematics/The road accident statistics are reliable. Hier wirkt sich im CULD nachteilig aus, daß politics bei nur einer Definition noun singular and plural markiert ist. In nicht wenigen Fällen weicht die Numerusmarkierung dieser Substantive von Wörterbuch zu Wörterbuch ab: athletics und mathematics können mit einem Pluralverb verwendet werden, laut ALD [i.e. OALDCE], das dagegen bei classics keine Numerusmarkierung bietet. Nach dem LDOCE darf economics je nach Bedeutung mit einem Singular- oder Pluralverb verwendet werden, im ALD und CULD finden wir nur eine Singularmarkierung. Laut ALD erfordert gymnastics ein Pluralverb, für LDOCE und CULD ein Singularverb. (1985:341-342)

Nor are the latest editions of the LDOCE and the OALDCE free from problems in their treatment of concord. In the OALDCE4, there is the code "[sing v]" which marks "plural verbs with singular nouns," such as measles, billiards and physics. In the explanation for this code, it is noted that "measles, mumps, etc. can be used with the or a lot of/much/less." It is not certain if users would be able to interpret "etc" here accurately; this is apparently meant to refer to other physical ailments such as the bends or the shakes. Moreover, in the entries for measles and mumps in the main part of the dictionary, no mention is made of the fact that these nouns can be used with the definite article, which would seem to be an important piece of information to iterate in the entries. In the LDOCE2, these nouns are labeled with the code "(the)" which signifies that they may be optionally preceded by the definite article, and they are also marked as uncountable nouns with "[U]." The user is apparently to infer that these nouns are therefore used with singular verbs; the explanation for the code "[U]" in the introductory part of the dictionary does not state this explicitly, so presumably the user is also expected to understand the basic rule in English grammar that only plural, i.e. countable, nouns take plural verbs (yet, as ESL teachers are well aware, this would seem to be a risky assumption especially for learners whose native languages, e.g. Japanese and Chinese, show almost no inflection for number). The OALDCE4 also uses the code "[sing or pi v]" to represent plural nouns taking singular or plural verbs such as barracks and headquarters·, in the LDOCE2 these nouns are both marked "[C + sing./pi. v.]." In the LDOCE2 the code "[ + sing./pi. v]" stands for "nouns representing a group or organization, which can be used with a singular or plural verb when the noun is singular. (This use is common in British English but rare in American English.)" It may be true that headquarters in some of its senses may be considered a group or organization, but it does not appear that the same may be said of barracks. While it is laudable that the LDOCE2 pays attention to a rather difficult problem in English subject-verb concord, the aforementioned

Ill explanation is almost uninterpretable; what is the "use" that is "rare in American English"? The explanation of this code is accompanied by example sentences, The committee has reached a decision and The committee have reached a decision, from which the user might be able to figure out that the latter example would be with the plural verb have agreeing with the singular noun committee "rare in American English," but if the explanation for the code is difficult for native speakers to understand, learners, except perhaps those with considerable linguistic sophistication (who would probably be in a clear minority), could be expected to have difficulty with it as well. The OALDCE4 also deals with this problem through the use of the code "[CGp]" which stands for "countable group noun." Like the LDOCE2, it points out the concord behavior of such nouns with an example, The committee have not yet chosen their chairman and The committee has not yet chosen its chairman (commendably including possessive adjectives to emphasize the contrast). The dictionary also points out the semantic difference between the two choices: "...when used in the singular form, a CGp noun can agree with a plural verb as well, thus suggesting the individuals that make up the group rather than the group itself." Unlike the LDOCE2, however, the OALDCE4 makes no mention of American usage in this area. The OALDCE4 also has a code "[Gp]" for another categorial distinction it makes, namely that of "group nouns," which it describes as "mostly place names such as Whitehall, the Kremlin, etc, used to refer to groups of people who govern, manage, etc in those places. They are used in the singular form only, but they can agree with a singular or plural verb: The Kremlin are studying the President's letter. Whitehall was quick to react." It is interesting to note how the LDOCE2 handles these words: in the case of Kremlin, it simply marks this noun (or more accurately the sense of "the government of the Soviet Union") with the code "[ + sing./pi. v]" and does not indicate that this noun is uncountable (thereby implying that it is); with Whitehall, there are no grammatical labels at all except for the "[*•&«]" (no definite article) code. The OALDCE4 also has a code "[pi v]" with which it marks "singular nouns with plural verb" such as police and clergy and adjectives used as nouns such as the wounded. The dictionary also notes that "such nouns can be used with many/few/several." The LDOCE2 marks such words with the code "[P]"; the only explanation of this code is "plural noun; used only with a plural verb or pronoun." Other ESL dictionaries have less systematic, though arguably no less effective, means of indicating subject-verb concord. The CELD indicates special concord rules for nouns through the use of usage notes in the entries for the nouns, e.g. measles...η u illness, which can be caught from another person, causing fever with red spots appearing on the skin. Noie.'followed by a sing verb.

112

police...'! (always followed by a pi verb) 1.... This

section

will c o n c l u d e

with

a

survey

of t h e w a y s

in w h i c h

other

ESL

dictionaries i n d i c a t e - d i r e c t l y or indirectly-- the special verb concord rules for

police.

A. General E S L dictionaries 1. For advanced learners COBU1LD marks both of the subsenses of the noun police with the code "N PLURAL" which as noted above is the code with which the dictionary indicates nouns that take plural verbs (and pronouns)

COLD gives its entry for police the part of speech label "n pi"; the CULD's definition of this abbreviation is "This is short for noun plural. A noun labelled in this way is one which is plural in form and is accompanied by a plural verb, e.g. scissors." Though police takes a plural verb, it is not plural in form, a fact that might confuse a user who reads the above definition.

LDOCE2 labels the noun police with the grammar code "[(fAe) PJ"; in the LDOCE2, "[P]" stands for "Plural noun: used only with a plural verb or pronoun"

the grammar code

OALDCE4 its entry for police has the grammar code "[pi v]" which indicates that this is a "singular noun with plural verb." However, the noun has the part of speech label "n" which may indicate to a user that it is a countable noun (see Section 2.1.1.1. above) and hence that it has a plural form.

2. For intermediate learners LDAE for its entry for the noun police, the LDAE has the grammar code "[the P]" ; the code "P," according to the explanation of the LDAE's grammar codes, indicates "a noun that is used with a plural verb, and that has no singular noun form"

NHLD has an entry for police in which there fs no code or usage note indicating that this noun is followed by a plural verb. However, there is one example sentence that begins "The police are..."

113 OSDAE2

and

OSDCE

both have the usage note "(always sing in form, used with the and a pi verb)" in their entries for police

3. For beginning learners BDAEU gives the noun police with the part of speech label "noun (usually plural)" There is no usage note concerning verb concord, but there are examples showing the noun taking a plural verb. Yet, for some nouns such as mathematics the BDAEU does explicitly state the rules of verb concord through usage notes: the usage note for mathematics reads "Note: the verb is in the singular: mathematics is an important subject."

EAED has an entry for police but no indication of verb concord rules

LHLD in this dictionary, the noun police has the grammar code "[P]" which, according to the section where the LHLD's grammar codes are explained, indicates "plural: a noun that is used only with a plural verb or pronoun, and that has no singular form: These trousers are too tight"·, there is no example sentence given for the noun police

OELDE has an entry for police which is labeled "n. (pi.)." The abbreviation (pi.) is used in the OELDE to show nouns that are "always plural"; beyond this, there is no explicit indication that a plural verb must follow police, nor are there any example sentences given for the noun.

B. Specialized ESL dictionaries 3. Other specialized dictionaries BBICDE has an entry for police with the part of speech label "n." but there is no indication of any kind in the entry of rules for verb concord

The CAS, DAI, EAI, LDOE1, NTCAID, DEPVI, DTWVSE, LDOPV and the ODCIE as separate entries.

NTCDAS, ODCIE VI do not treat police

V2, PDEI, CPGPV, nor idioms containing it

114

2.2.5. Syntactic functions of phrases Many ESL dictionaries list not only individual words but phrasal units consisting of more than one word, with idiom dictionaries specializing in these units. The dictionaries that include lexical units of more than one word invariably give definitions or synonyms for these phrases, and some even attempt to assign them parts of speech when this is possible. This last fact is a recognition that such phrases may function as individual constituents in sentences, and it is also true that as constituents they, like single words, may have special syntactic or discourse properties. This last feature of phrases is not always acknowledged in learner's dictionaries, however; even those dictionaries that include and give part of speech labels for phrases often do not give any indication of the possibilities for or restrictions on their use in sentences. One ESL dictionary that attempts to give an idea of the syntactic properties of phrases is the LDOEI. To noun phrase idioms the dictionary assigns one of three codes, "NI," "N2" and "N3," to indicate that the idiom may serve as the subject of a sentence, the object of a verb or preposition, or as a subject complement following a linking verb, respectively. In some cases, however, the LDOEI's treatment of the syntax of phrases is largely positional rather than functional; for example, it classifies adverb phrases into three types, "Adv 1," "Adv 2" and "Adv 3"; these codes indicate if an adverb phrase can occur initially, medially or anywhere in a sentence or clause (the last category being perhaps too broad). While the LDOEI is justified in treating idioms that are structurally prepositional phrases, e.g. from A to Z, as adverbs because of their syntactic function, there is almost no attention paid to the discourse or other syntactic functions of these phrases. The LDOEI also has a code "Compi" for "Complement," which is "the part of a sentence that comes after verbs like be, feel, seem, become, grow, etc. For example, tired in I feel tired or a mother in she became a mother." However, there is in this dictionary no other explanation of the crucial syntactic function of complements, i.e. their relation to the subject of the sentence, a relation that users may or may not infer from the examples if they did not understand complements beforehand. The LDOEI also includes a code "Obj" for "object," which is used to indicate that an idiom typically occurs as the object of certain verbs, which are often specified; for example, the idiom what makes © t i c k is labeled "[Obj after find out, know, discover, etc. or used alone as a question]." Another ESL idiom dictionary that marks syntactic functions of phrases is the ODCIE V2. In this dictionary, idioms that function as noun phrases are labeled "[NP]"; furthermore, noun phrase idioms that function as the direct object of a verb are marked "[O (NP)]," as the complement of a clause "[Comp(NP)]," as either a complement or object "[Comp/O]" and as the object of a preposition "[o (NP)]." Similarly, idioms that are adjective phrases are labeled "[AdjP]," and

115 those that function as the complement of a clause are labeled "[Comp (AdjP)]" and those functioning as complement or adjunct "[Comp/A(AdjP)]." Prepositional phrases are marked "[PrepP]," and those that function as an adjunct modifying a verb are marked as "[A (PrepP)]," as a complement or adjunct as "[Comp/A (PrepP)]," as a disjunct as "[Disj (PrepP)]" and as a conjunct "[Conj (PrepP)]." The term "disjunct," like the term "conjunct," is apparently taken from the grammatical analysis in Quirk et al. 1972 and explained in the ODCIE V2 as "a phrase which indicates the speaker's judgement of the value of his statement. Concerning the latter, Cowie (1987:191) argues for special attention in learner's dictionaries for conjuncts, since according to him these have special grammatical and collocational properties that might pose problems for learners. In addition, adverbial phrases in the ODCIE V2 are marked "[AdvP]," and those that function as adjuncts (i.e. as "modifiers of a verb", which according to the dictionary they do "in almost every case") are marked as "[A (AdvP)]." Conjoined noun phrases are marked "[n + n]" and this code is given when noun phrases are used in a variety of functions, but when they are limited in function they are marked with some of the other codes listed above. Similarly, conjoined adjective phrases are labeled "[adj + adj]" and this code normally means that a conjoined adjective phrase serves as the complement of linking verb, except when the phrase functions as an adjunct in which case it is labeled with "A." One general ESL dictionary that attempts to indicate the syntactic functions of the phrases it includes is the COBUILD. This dictionary has a grammar code "PHR" by which it labels idiomatic phrases. Further, this code may be postmodified by a phrase including another grammar code, as in "PHR: USED AS A" and "PHR: USED AS C" which indicate respectively that a phrase so labeled is used as an adjunct and as a complement, respectively. (But Herbst (1989:1383) wonders if the term adjunct "may presuppose too much familiarity with linguistic theory to be useful to many users of the dictionary.") Examples of phrases in the COBUILD given these labels are for life which is labeled "PHR: USED AS A" meaning that it can only be used as an adjunct and a blessing in disguise which is labeled "PHR: USED AS C" showing that this idiom is used as a subject or object complement (i.e. not as the subject of a sentence). Furthermore, the COBU I LD indicates when a constituent of an idiom may inflect; for example, the code for the phrase to keep tabs on is "PHR: VB INFLECTS" which indicates that finite forms of keep may occur before tabs (but this noun may only occur in its plural form as indicated by the lack of a code "N INFLECTS").

2.3. Discourse grammar information One of the few examinations of information on grammatical rules in discourse available in ESL dictionaries is Cowie 1987. In this paper, Cowie argues that

116 grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n in ESL dictionaries is largely confined to the word and sentence level, and i n f o r m a t i o n on larger units of discourse—which are o f t e n the most i m p o r t a n t in a l e a r n e r ' s success in c o m m u n i c a t i o n - a r e usually inadequately handled, most likely because of the lack of space in these dictionaries that an a d e q u a t e t r e a t m e n t would likely require. Cowie finds that one of the basic principles of discourse g r a m m a r , the a n a p h o r i c r e f e r e n c e of pronouns, especially personal pronouns, is given sufficient t r e a t m e n t in ESL dictionaries, but since this aspect of g r a m m a r is one which most l e a r n e r s master (or come close to mastering) early in their study of English ( p e r h a p s because the use of p r o n o u n s is a linguistic universal), the advantages of its inclusion in more advanced ESL dictionaries is questionable (1987:190). O t h e r s have argued f o r m o r e a t t e n t i o n to discourse g r a m m a r in ESL dictionaries. L e m m e n s and W e k k e r (1991:12), f o r example, p r o p o s e that dictionaries f o r l e a r n e r s include i n f o r m a t i o n on when "shifts of focus," realized by devices such as cleft sentences and existential sentences, are possible; they are vague as to m e a n s f o r doing so, saying only that "somehow these aspects should be kept t o g e t h e r under 'verbs'" but such a f e a t u r e would seem to have merit f o r its communicative value. Some ESL dictionaries include other i n f o r m a t i o n on discourse g r a m m a r . In the ODCIE VI, a code emph is used to indicate the possibility of some v e r b plus p r e p o s i t i o n a l p h r a s e constructions being t r a n s f o r m e d in such a way that the p r e p o s i t i o n a l p h r a s e may occur first in the sentence, e.g. Of his aristocratic connections he makes rather too much. The note in the introductory section explaining this code and the e m p h a t i c construction describes the stylistic and communicative reasons f o r using this structure (a kind of explanation not commonly f o u n d in ESL dictionaries): "In some of the examples, a contrast may be implied between a noun etc in the p r e p o s i t i o n a l phrase and other unspecified words. T h e s e words may be m a d e explicit. Consider: To the attack on Mr Mackay we take strong exception (though not to your other remarks)...In some cases a d j u s t m e n t s in vocabulary and style will affect the extent to which the e m p h a t i c t r a n s f o r m a t i o n can be acceptably applied. C o m p a r e : *Of its prey warning cries cheated the cat. Of all these benefits a sudden fall in share values cheated the hopeful investors." Such explanations of the f u n c t i o n a l use of o t h e r t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s , e.g. the passive t r a n s f o r m a t i o n , are usually not given in the ODCIE VI or, if they are, not explained clearly, as is the case with the explanation of the code "[Al emph]" in which it is noted that "in some sentences in which the subject is a noun, or noun phrase, it may p r e c e d e the verb: Down the snow came, In the sun went." T h e r e is no explanation h e r e of any syntactic, semantic, stylistic or lexical bases f o r this restriction except f o r the explanation that "when the subject of the ' e m p h a t i c ' sentence is a pronoun, however, it must p r e c e d e the verb: Down they came." Also in the ODCIE VI is a discussion of the use of relative clauses with phrasal and p r e p o s i t i o n a l verbs, and in one of these cases, stylistic i n f o r m a t i o n

117 is included as it affects the choice of a grammatical construction. This involves the relative transform for prepositional verbs, as in Aristocratic connections of which he makes rather too much. In the discussion of this structure, it is said that "restrictions on relativization... often have to do with the formality of the item. A colloquial expression (whether highly idiomatic or not) would not be relativized as in this example: *The written papers through which special coaching got me... though it might be used as follows: The written papers which special coaching got me through..." The inclusion of such stylistic information would seem to be a desirable feature for other ESL dictionaries, even though a complete treatment would probably be impractical. Another ESL dictionary that provides some information on discourse grammar, specifically the role of "new information," is the OALDCE4. In its discussion of the code "[Dn-pr]," which is the code for transitive verbs followed by a direct object and a prepositional phrase headed by to introducing an indirect object, it is said that when the indirect object provides new information (eg in answer to a question), this pattern is preferred to [Dn - n] [i.e. the code for transitive verbs followed by an indirect and a direct object noun phrase], and the main stress falls on the last noun or pronoun: Who did Henri teach French to? Henri taught French to the 'children. [Dn - pr] But when the direct

object refers to information that is new, Dn n is preferred:

What did Henri teach the children? Henri taught the children 'French.

Such a discussion of "new information" in discourse and its effect on choices in grammar is rare in ESL dictionaries, but in light of its usefulness to learners for communicative purposes the inclusion of more such information would be welcome. Perhaps more than any other ESL dictionary, the COBUILD pays a great deal of attention to the discourse functions of individual words. For example, the there is a separate entry for the adverb luckily which has the "functional" definition You can add luckily to a statement to say that it is very fortunate that something happened or is the case, because otherwise the situation would have been embarrassing, unpleasant, or dangerous. EG Luckily, Saturday was a fine day...Luckily, Joly came to my rescue...Luckily f or you, I happen to have the key.

In addition, the COBU I LD pays attention to the discourse functions of words such as if which are normally regarded as not content but function words. As the COBU I LD shows, some of these words have a range of discourse-sensitive lexical functions; as Carter (1989:36) explains,

118 a word such as i f , for example, is shown by the very detailed specification it receives to be more than just an item in a grammatically predetermined slot. It is shown to operate in environments which suggest, on the basis of the cited naturally occurring examples, that there is no neat division between grammar and discourse. If is shown to operate in ways which are discoursesensitive across boundaries which are normally regarded as the upper limits of grammar. There is not space to illustrate this but a comparison of LDOCE and COBUILD entries for the word are instructive. In the COBUILD dictionary reference to actual use shows how a normally 'empty' word without propositional content is lexicalised in a range of quite 'normal' discourse functions. It must be the case that either simple introspection or the limited data base did not provide Longman lexicographers with such information.

2.4. Semantico-grammatical information Up to this point, this study has examined the ways in which ESL dictionaries treat mostly autonomous grammatical information, i.e. information that deals fairly strictly with the surface morphological and syntactic properties of words. However, as decades of research on grammar and syntax have shown, the role of semantic factors in the choice of and/or restrictions on syntactic phenomena must also be taken into consideration. Perhaps in the selection of potential subjects, objects and other clause elements is the role of semantic information most obvious. Most verbs in English (and in other languages) can be used only with a restricted set of subjects and objects, namely those with appropriate semantic features. By and large, however, ESL dictionaries appear to provide little information on what may be called the semantic subcategorization features of English verbs and other parts of speech. Standop (1985:99) expresses the problem succinctly: Das [Wörterbuch] muß z.B. darüber Auskunft geben, daß ein Verbum wie to open ein persönliches Agens als Subjekt haben kann ( J o h n opened the door), aber auch ein Instrument (the key opened the door easily), daß aber auch das Objekt des Öffnens zum Subjekt eines intransitiven Verbs to open werden kann (the door opened = 'notional passive'). Bezüglich des Objekts muß deutlich werden, daß dies auch abstrakter Natur sein kann ( J o h n opened the opened, meeting). Ferner ist die Frage der obligatorischen Ergänzung zu klären (the door aber nur the book sold well, at a certain price), und schließlich wären in diesem Rahmen metaphorische Gebrauchsweisen zu erwähnen (the result opened John's eyes, a vista of arches opened before us). Es ist wenig einleuchtend, etwa dem Verbum to sell eine Bedeutung 'cause to be sold' in The author's name alone will sell many copies oder gar eine Bedeutung 'to betray' in to sell one's country beizulegen: in Wirklichkeit geht es allein um die Frage, was als Subjekt bzw. Objekt von to sell möglich ist. Das Problem der Integration dieser linguistisch weitgehend geklärten Erscheinungen im normalen [Wörterbuch] ist bisher ungelöst.

For this reason, many scholars, including Standop, Herbst, and Whitcut (1986:119), have advocated the incorporation of grammatical information in ESL dictionaries in accordance with theories of grammar such as valence grammar that deal with the matter of semantic selectional features. The principal feature of valence grammar is the specification of grammatical information in terms of "valences" that specify the semantic arguments (subjects,

119

objects and/or complements) that a verb, adjective or noun may take. This school of grammar thus has affinities with transformational grammar and case grammar, especially in its dependence on subcategorization features. Learner's dictionaries incorporating such a valence approach to grammatical information have been produced for other languages, especially in Germany for learners of German (Herbst 1987). As Herbst argues, such a valence learner's dictionary for English could be of use not only to students but also to teachers of English who are not native speakers, serving as both a production dictionary and a "nativespeaker substitute" when teachers themselves are unsure of the acceptability of certain constructions they encounter in the production of a learner (1987:42). The deficiencies of currently available ESL dictionaries in their attention to valence grammar, especially in their indication of possible subjects of verbs or restrictions on them, have been noted. In the words of Jain (1978:281), "...it is not sufficient to build information on selection restrictions into illustrative sentences in the EFL dictionary; it has to be given to the learner explicitly." As Herbst (1984b:153-154) also illustrates, Eine weitere Quelle für Fehler ergibt sich dadurch, daß die Form der einzelnen Ergänzungen in beiden Wörterbüchern [i.e. the LDOCE and the OALDCE] in manchen Fällen nicht ausreichend beschrieben wird. Die Beschriebung des Patterns X 9 des DCE spricht da für sich selbst: X bedeutet "verb with one object + something else" und 9 ist erklärt als "needs a descriptive word or phrase". Auch ein Pattern wie VP 14 im ALD "subject + transitive verb + noun/pronoun (DO) + preposition + noun/pronoun" ist nicht sehr aufschlußreich, solange nicht spezifiziert wird, welche Präposition bei einem bestimmten Verb steht. Eine solche Information fehlt beispielsweise bei adapt. Zwar werden Beispiele mit to, for und from aufgeführt, aber es ist keineswegs ersichtlich, ob nicht auch andere Präpositionen stehen konnten. Das DCE gibt bei adapt als Patterninformation Τ 1 (to/for) und führt die folgenden Beispiele auf: (37) We adapted ourselves to the hot weather (38) He adapted an old car engine to drive his boat. Einerseits ist dabei zu fragen, ob (38) nicht auch Pattern V 3 zugeordnet werden müßte und andererseits geht aus dem DCE-Eintrag nicht hervor, daß (37) und (39) He adapted an old car engine for his boat zwar akzeptabel sind, (40) *He adapted an old car engine to his boat und (41) *We adapted ourselves for the hot weather hingegen nicht. Die Tatsache, daß Sätze wie (40) und (41) aus den Patterninformationen des DCE ableitbar sind, macht deutlich, daß in Hinblick auf die lexikalische Füllung der Patterns auch semantische Faktoren mit einbezogen werden müßten.

120 However, some proponents of valence grammar in language teaching such as Moulton (1986:68) point out that the OALDCE comes closest to a general valence dictionary of English. The OALDCE indicates valence-like information not only through its comprehensive use of verb patterns but also by specifying the potential objects of verbs and prepositions as sb ("somebody") and sth ("something"), thereby distinguishing between animate and inanimate objects. Like most dictionaries, however, the OALDCE does not use a similar scheme to specify potential subjects, except, as many other dictionaries do, to begin some definitions of verbs with material in parentheses that give some indication of the kind of nouns that are usually used as the subjects of the verbs; for example, the first sense of the verb palpitate is defined as "(of the heart) beat rapidly." In addition, the COBUILD, as Carter (1989:35) points out, can indicate possible subjects and objects of verbs through its sentence definitions; for example, the dictionary defines the verb exempt as "to exempt a person or thing from a particular rule, duty or obligation means to state officially that they are not bound or affected by it." Carter explains that "here the fronting of the infinitive and dependent items as clausal subject serves simultaneously to illustrate typical colligational and collocational properties as well as to indicate that the range of possible direct objects is restricted."

Chapter A research project utility of grammatical

three:

into the information

interpretability in ESL

and dictionaries

123

1. Description of the research project The empirical study of the ways in which learners interpret and use the information in monolingual learner's dictionaries can be said to be still in its infancy. However, s o m e studies of the use of E S L dictionaries by learners have b e e n done, e.g. Tomaszczyk 1979, Baxter 1980, Béjoint 1981 and MacFarquhar and Richards 1983. In addition, a large-scale research project on the use of dictionaries by learners which would examine many aspects of dictionary use has b e e n proposed (Atkins, Lewis, Summers and Whitcut 1987). Overall, however, relatively little research has b e e n done in this area, as the paucity of r e f e r e n c e s to this topic and to the analysis of grammatical information in E S L dictionaries in Ripfel 1989 makes clear. In this chapter, a research project undertaken to examine the interpretability and usability on the part of learners of grammatical information in ESL dictionaries will be described. The project was based in part on the abovem e n t i o n e d studies yet differs f r o m them in principle in that these studies were concerned mainly with general dictionary use; where they examined the use of grammatical information in ESL dictionaries, they did so in a very cursory fashion. This research project also adapted some of the proposals contained in Atkins, Lewis, Summers and Whitcut 1987, although since this proposed research project is intended to examine many aspects of dictionary use by learners, no attempt was made to duplicate it exactly in the project to be described here. However, this project did attempt to elicit some information about general dictionary use, and in this area the project drew upon in particular the proposals of Atkins, Lewis, Summers and Whitcut and on the survey conducted by Béjoint ( B é j o i n t 1981). The project consisted of the administration of a two-part questionnaire to students e n r o l l e d full- and part-time in English as a second language classes at the Intensive English Institute of the University of Maine. The first part of the questionnaire was designed to elicit general information on dictionary use by learners of English and is reproduced in Figure 1. Q u e s t i o n s 1, 2 and 3 of Part I of the questionnaire were obviously meant to gather background information about the respondents. Q u e s t i o n s 4 and 5 were meant to distinguish b e t w e e n the use of bilingual dictionaries and the use of monolingual dictionaries; the words bilingual and monolingual could of course have b e e n used in the phrasing of these questions but were not b e c a u s e it could not be presumed that most students would be familiar with these terms. Question 6 was meant to give s o m e indication of the ways in which students use not only monolingual dictionaries but dictionaries in general; Question 6 a) concerned the use of dictionaries in what is referred to in this study as decoding, and Question 6 b) concerned what is referred to here as encoding (and once again the terms decoding and encoding were not used in the phrasing of the question since it was assumed that most students would be unfamiliar with these terms). The last part of Q u e s t i o n 6 was meant to discover if students used their dictionaries more to d e c o d e or to

124 encode (actually, this question sought the students' own evaluations of their use of dictionaries). The second part of the questionnaire was intended to test students' abilities to interpret and apply actual grammatical information provided by ESL dictionaries. As discussed earlier in this study, grammatical information in ESL dictionaries is included primarily for the purposes of production; hence an ideal examination would be to have students apply the information in the production of new sentences. However, in planning this research project it was felt that to make students produce new sentences from, for example, a group of unrelated words might introduce irrelevant variables into the study, e.g. variables such as students' unfamiliarity with the meaning or use of some of the words and minor problems or errors in constructing the sentences, and these might cause problems unrelated to the specific grammar point presented in the grammatical information. Therefore, it was decided that in Part II students would instead judge the acceptability of complete sentences on the basis of the grammatical information from ESL dictionaries presented, the intention being that the only variable in the students' judgement of the acceptability of the sentences would be the proper interpretation and application of the particular grammatical rule. Of course, it would be impossible to be certain that the students' judgements were based solely on their interpretation of the grammatical information. Previous knowledge of the particular grammar point on the part of some of the students, or difficulties in understanding or misinterpretations of the rules or of the example sentences could also be factors in the students' performance on the survey questions. For this reason, both the presentation of the grammatical information and the formulation of the test sentences were intended to be as straightforward as possible (though it should be emphasized that the wording of the grammatical information from the ESL dictionaries was kept almost as exactly as it appears in these dictionaries). To increase the validity of the data to be taken from Part II of the questionnaire, the questionnaire focused on more than one grammar point. In fact, four distinct types of information were incorporated into the second part of the questionnaire. However, in planning the project it was felt that having the students both read through the explanation of the grammar point and judge the acceptability of the sentences for each of the four items would be an obstacle to participation in the survey. Therefore, it was decided that the questionnaires to be distributed to the students would have four versions; all of the questionnaires would have the same Part I, but each questionnaire would have only one of the four items as its Part II (the four items of Part II would be distributed among all the questionnaires equally). Also to increase the validity of the research, it was attempted to make sure that in Part II students would be encountering a dictionary's particular code or style of incorporating grammatical information for the first time, or at least encountering a code or style with which they were not too familiar. Therefore, no information from the LDAE was included in Part II, since many of the

125 students enrolled in the Intensive English Institute at the University of Maine were required to purchase this dictionary and other students had purchased this dictionary as well, many on the recommendation of instructors or fellow students (it was the only ESL dictionary on sale at the University of Maine bookstore at the time). Furthermore, to enhance the validity of the research and also to attempt to simulate as closely as possible the actual conditions under which learners might make use of grammatical information in dictionaries, the grammar points chosen as topics in Part II were selected to represent relatively advanced rules, i.e. points which, in the author's judgement, were not likely to have been acquired by students at the beginning or intermediate levels. One item that served as a Part II of the questionnaire is reproduced in Figure 2 on the next page, and this will henceforth be designated as Item 1. Item 1 was based on information in the LDOEI and was meant to test students' interpretation of information on tense and aspect restrictions on verbs (here actually a verb that is part of a larger idiom). The question here was whether students would understand "Pres" to mean only the simple present tense, or whether this also would be understood to include the present progressive or even the present perfect (or, the latter could even be considered as a tense referred to by "Past" if students did not pay enough attention to the examples for "Past" which are all in the simple past tense). It was hypothesized that some students might induce that "Pres" refers only to the simple present based on the examples given for "Past" (the LDOEI gives no examples for the "Pres" code, only the explanation "present tense" as reproduced in Item I). To test their interpretations, the students were asked to examine four example sentences and decide which of them demonstrated the correct and which the incorrect use of the idiom while the going is good based on the labeling of this item in the sample dictionary information given. The sentences feature the use of the simple present, the present perfect, the simple past and the present progressive of not just the verb is in the idiom but also the verb try of the main clause. A second item included as a Part II is reproduced in Figure 3, and this will henceforth be referred to as Item 2. This item, whose topic is verb complementation, is based on information from the OALDCE 4. The item was meant to determine if students could understand the conventions involving the use of parentheses for indicating optional and obligatory complements and for indicating animate and inanimate objects that are in use in this dictionary, conventions which are similar to those in other ESL dictionaries. Also, the results from this item were hoped to show if the information presented in this form in the entry might in fact lead students to produce a usually unacceptable sentence with provide followed only by an animate direct object, which the information sb (with sth)" in this entry apparently could lead students to do. In other words, the first sentence on which the students were to make an acceptability judgement, They provided the man, is normally not acceptable except in special contexts, e.g. The manager asked them to bring out the

126 man who had filed the report, so they provided the man. These acceptability judgements are those of the author, who is a native speaker of English. However, it may be possible that other native speakers may find such a use of provide to be normally acceptable; yet this should not invalidate the purpose of the study, i.e. to examine whether the grammatical information provided by ESL dictionaries may in fact lead learners to produce sentences unacceptable to at least some native speakers. The third item included as a Part II item is reproduced in Figure 4, and this will henceforth be called Item 3. This item was based on information in the LDOCE2 and was meant to test students' abilities to understand the dictionary's means of indicating positional restrictions on certain classes of words. It also was meant to test their abilities to induce relevant grammatical rules from the less than explicit information provided in this dictionary. It should be noted that in this item certain adaptations were necessary to make the information in the sample entry more compatible with American English (which was the variety of English emphasized in the English instruction at the Intensive English Institute of the University of Maine, as at most other centers of English instruction in the United States; this is not to say, of course, that most students studying in the United States are more familiar with the American than the British variety). The LDOCE2, which since it was produced in the United Kingdom focuses for the most part on British English, has three entries for homographs of treble, the first of which the dictionary labels as a predeterminer·, however, its entry for triple has only two homographs, the first of which is labeled as a verb and the second an adjective. Therefore, it was necessary to present a modified entry in which the American English triple is labeled as a predeterminer. It should also be noted that the LDAE does not include the part of speech category predeterminer and marks triple as an adjective; as a result, Item 3 would most probably represent new information for the students. The last item appearing as a Part II is reproduced in Figure 5, and this item will henceforth be called Item 4. This item was based on information in the CULD and was meant to test students' understanding of this dictionary's presentation of information on a transitive prepositional verb. The main objective here was to see if students could understand and apply the dictionary's definition of such verbs. The first sentence tested whether or not students understood a n d / o r paid attention to the terms transitive and intransitive. It was also hoped to examine how much the students understood the CULD's definition of the ways in which prepositional verbs are distinct from phrasal verbs; the third sentence whose acceptability the students were asked to judge features the use of to reckon on as if it were a phrasal verb. Finally, this item was also meant to show if students might become confused over information on stylistic levels and register that is often provided along with grammatical information; the students were asked to judge the acceptability of the last sentence which features the use of the formal variant to reckon upon.

127

DICTIONARY USE QUESTIONNAIRE Part

I

1. W h a t is y o u r native l a n g u a g e ? 2. Did you study English in your c o u n t r y ?

How long?

3. H o w long have you s t u d i e d English in the U n i t e d S t a t e s ? 4. D o you use d i c t i o n a r i e s that give w o r d s in y o u r l a n g u a g e and in English? 5. D o you use d i c t i o n a r i e s that give w o r d s and d e f i n i t i o n s only in E n g l i s h ? If yes, w h a t a r e the n a m e s of t h e s e d i c t i o n a r i e s ?

6. D o you use d i c t i o n a r i e s a) to look u p English w o r d s t h a t you d o n ' t u n d e r s t a n d w h e n you r e a d or h e a r them? b) to f i n d English w o r d s to use w h e n you write or s p e a k E n g l i s h ? D o you do "a)" or "b)" m o r e ?

Figure 1: Dictionary Use Questionnaire, Part I

128 Part

II

Suppose that you want to use the idiom while the going is good, which means "while things are good" or "while the situation is good," in a sentence. If you look up this phrase in one dictionary, you find while the going is 0 good [usu. Pres or Past] The circle after is means that the information between "[ ]" refers to is. "usu." means "usually." If you look up "Pres" and "Past" in the introduction to the dictionary, you find: Past: past tense This refers to the simple form of the past, e.g. she cried, he hit the ball.

they went, or

Pres: present tense With this information, indicate with an X which of the sentences below show the correct or incorrect use of while the going is good: Correct

Not Correct

I try not to w o r r y while the going is g o o d . I ' v e tried not to w o r r y w h i l e the going has been good. I tried not to w o r r y w h i l e the going w a s g o o d . I'm trying not to w o r r y w h i l e the going is being good.

Figure 2: Dictionary Use Questionnaire, Part II Item 1

129 Part

II

Suppose that you want to use the verb to provide provide in one dictionary and you find:

in a sentence. You look up

provide v. ~ sb (with sth); ~ sth (for sb) which tells you two ways to use this verb. The symbol stands f o r the v e r b provide, and what comes a f t e r must be used a f t e r this verb. The p a r e n t h e s e s "()" mean that what is inside them may be used with the v e r b but is not necessary, "sb" means "somebody" and r e p r e s e n t s any person, and "sth" means "something" and r e p r e s e n t s any thing. With this information, indicate with an X which of the sentences below show the correct or incorrect use of provide: Correct

Not Correct

They provided the man. They provided with the information. They provided the information for the man. They provided with the information the man.

Figure 3: Dictionary Use Questionnaire, Part II Item 2

130 Part

II

Suppose that you want to say or write a sentence He paid three times as much as his original o f f e r , but you want to make the sentence simpler. You think that you can use the word triple f o r three times as much, so you look up triple in one dictionary and the dictionary says that triple is a predeterminer. If you don't know what a p r e d e t e r m i n e r is, you look up predeterminer in the beginning of the dictionary, where you find:

sign

word class

examples

determiner

determiner

this week my younger

predeterminer

predeterminer

all the half an

brother

students hour

With this information, indicate with an X which of the sentences below show the correct or incorrect use of triple: Correct

Not Correct

H e paid triple his original offer. He paid his triple original offer. He paid his original triple offer.

Figure 4: Dictionary Use Questionnaire, Part II Item 3

131 Part

II

Suppose that you want to use the verb to reckon on in the sentence "I didn't expect a difficult exam" because you have learned that to reckon on means "to expect". Y o u look up reckon on in one dictionary and you find: r e c k o n on/(formal)

upon vt fus

Y o u also look up "vi fus" in the beginning of the dictionary, where you find the explanation: vt fus This is short for verb transitive fused. A fused transitive phrasal verb is a phrase which acts like a transitive verb and whose object can never come between the verb and its accompanying preposition, eg spy on as in Our next-door neighbours are always spying on us. With this information, indicate with an X which of the sentences below show the correct or incorrect use of reckon on: Correct

Not Correct

I didn't reckon on. I didn't reckon on a hard exam. I didn't reckon a hard exam on. I didn't reckon upon a hard exam.

Figure 5: Dictionary Use Questionnaire, Part II Item 4

133

2. Results of the questionnaire The questionnaire described above was administered to students at the Intensive English Institute of the University of Maine during the week of May 7-11, 1990. Most of the students were asked to fill the questionnaires out immediately after they were given them, i.e. they were not allowed to take them out of the classroom and return them at a later time. Of the students in this a u t h o r ' s classes to whom the questionnaires were given, it was his observation that none of the students took more than five minutes to complete the questionnaire. In addition, other students in classes of the Intensive English Institute not taught by this a u t h o r were given the survey by other instructors and asked to r e t u r n the survey to the a u t h o r ' s mailbox a f t e r completing it. These students thus had a little more time to complete the q u e s t i o n n a i r e and p e r h a p s the opportunity to consult outside sources, but t h e r e was no evidence to believe that they did so nor any evidence to believe that the latter m a n n e r of administering the questionnaire served to invalidate the results in any way. In all cases, it was made clear to students that completion of the questionnaire was optional. Of all the questionnaires distributed, 46 were completed and r e t u r n e d . Of the 46 students who r e t u r n e d the questionnaires, 5 completed only Part I of the q u e s t i o n n a i r e . P e r h a p s these students found Part II too difficult and did not try to answer it or, more likely, they did not realize that t h e r e was a second part to the questionnaire on a s e p a r a t e page even though the pages were stapled together and the first part had the title Part I. Nevertheless, p e r h a p s it might have been b e t t e r if both parts of the q u e s t i o n n a i r e could have been placed on one page.

134

2.1. Answers to Part I Table 1 gives a breakdown of the answers to Question 1 of Part I, What native language ?

is

your

T a b l e 1: A n s w e r s t o Q u e s t i o n 1 of Part 1

Answer

Number of Responses

Percent of Response*

Arabic Chinese French Fon Hebrew Japanese Portuguese Spanish Thai Urdu

2 2 7 1 1 16 1 13 1 2

4.3% 4.3% 15.2% 2.2% 2.2% 34.8% 2.2% 28.3% 2.2% 4.3%

NOTES: 1. Of the seven students who named French as their native language, three of them also named Creole in answer to this question. The explanation is that several students from Haiti were enrolled in the Intensive English Institute at this time. Moreover, it is likely that all of the French speakers in the Institute were from Haiti, as apparently no other students whose native language was French were enrolled in the Intensive English Institute at the time; hence, it is probable that all of the students who answered "French" to Question 1 were from Haiti. 2. One student wrote "Japan" in answer to Question 1; this person was counted as answering "Japanese" as it is highly probable (though of course not absolutely certain) that this person was a native speaker of Japanese.

135 For Question 2, Did you study English in your country?, 38 students or 82.6% responded "yes," 7 or 15.2% responded "no" and 1 student wrote "a little" in response to this question (hence this could be taken as a "yes" answer). For the second part of Question 2., How long?, the students who responded "yes" or "a little" to the first part of the question gave the variety of answers listed in Table 2.

Table 2: Answers to the Second Part of Question 2 of Part I Answer

Number of Responses

15 years 14 years 10 years 9 years 8 years 7 - 8 years 7 years 6 years 5 years 3 years 1 year 5 months 1 year 8 months 3 months one semester

1 1 4 2 2 1 3 10 1 2 1 2 1 1 1

NOTES: 1. Two students responded with approximations: "about 9 years" and "almost 1 year." These responses were counted as the nearest whole year. 2. The responses of two students to this question were illegible, and another student responded "I don't know." 3. Three students who responded "yes" to the first part of the question gave no response for the second part.

The responses to this part have to be viewed in light of the differing ways in which English is taught in different countries, i.e. in some countries even though English may be a compulsory subject from the earliest years of school through the equivalent of American high school, the emphasis in English instruction may be upon neither communicative competence nor fluency but on rote memorization of grammar rules in order to pass standardized tests. In fact, one student who answered the question How long? with "5 years" qualified this response with "(only grammer [sic])." The upshot is that a student who responded "10 years" to this question need not necessarily be deemed more competent in English than someone who had studied English in a different manner for one or two years in his or her own country.

136 Question 3 of Part I, How long have you studied English in the States?, similarly elicited a variety of responses as listed in Table 3.

United

Table 3: Answers to Question 3 of Part I

Answer

Number of Responses

3 years 11/2 years 1 year 10 months 9 months 8 months 7 months 6 months 4 months 3 months 2 months

2 1 1 2 1 18 4 3 6 1 6

NOTES: 1. One student responded to this question with "harf [sic] year"; as this response is ambiguous between a calendar year and an academic year, it was not included in the above tally. 2. Another student wrote "September to May" in response to this question, and this response was counted among the responses of "8 months." 3. Another student responded to this question with "2 quarter [sic]." At the Intensive English Institute of the University of Maine, academic years were divided into four quarters of approximately two months each; hence, this student's response was counted among those who responded "4 months." It is therefore also evident, due to the large number of responses of "8 months" and "7 months," that most of the students had been studying English in the United States for one full academic year. 4. Three students responded with approximations: "less than 2 month [sic]," "almost a year" and "about 2 months." These responses were counted as the nearest whole unit.

For Question 4 of Part I, Do you use dictionaries that give words in your language and in English?, 38 or 82.6% of the students responded "yes" while only 3 or 6.5% responded "no." In addition, one student responded "sometimes," and another student responded "rarely"; if these responses were then counted as "yes" answers, it would mean that 40 or 87% responded to this question affirmatively. Two other students responded "both" to this question; this may be taken to mean that the students use both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, but it may also reflect confusion over the question, so these answers must be disregarded, as should the response of another student who answered this question with "5 months before." For the first part of Question 5, Do you use dictionaries that give words and definitions only in English?, 38 students or 82.6% responded "yes" and 3

137 students or 6.5% responded "no." 2 students responded "sometimes," and if these answers are counted as "yes" it means that 40 or 87% responded affirmatively. 3 students did not answer this question; of these, one student answered Question 4 as "both" (which could then indicate that this student used both bilingual and monolingual dictionaries), another student answered "yes" and a third answered "yes sometimes" to Question 4. Of the 40 students who responded affirmatively to Question 4, 35 or 87.5% responded affirmatively to the first part of Question 5 as well. In addition each of the 3 students who answered "no" to question Question 4 answered "yes" to the first part of Question 5, and each of the 3 students who answered "no" to the first part of Question 5 answered "yes" to Question 4. And disregarding the 1 student who answered "both" to Question 4 and did not answer the first part of Question 5, all of the 45 other students responded affirmatively to either Question 4 or the first part of Question 5, indicating that almost all of the students occasionally use a dictionary of some kind. The second part of Question 5 elicited a variety of responses. As mentioned above, many of the students at the Intensive English Institute of the University of Maine were required to purchase the LDAE and other students had done so upon the recommendation of instructors or other students. As a result, this dictionary was mentioned the most frequently as an answer to the second part of Question 5. 5 students unambiguously named this dictionary (though one student spelled it "Logman [sic] Dictionary of American English"). 22 students responded to the second part of Question 5 with names that included forms of the name "Longman", e.g. "Longman Dictionary," "Longman English-English Dictionary" or just "Longman." Based on such imprecise answers, it is conceivable that the dictionary some of these students wished to name may have been the LDOCE1 or LDOCE2 (or even the Longman Photo Dictionary (Rosenthal and Freeman 1987), since many of the students who enrolled in the Intensive English Institute and through placement testing were found to have low levels of proficiency in English were required to purchase this dictionary; however, its utility to these same students at the time the questionnaire was administered is doubtful) In all probability, however, the dictionary intended was the LDAE for the reasons given above; support for this likelihood can be seen in the response of one student who wrote, "I don't remember but its color is yellow. You can buy [sic] in UMO's bookstore." (The cover of the LDAE was mostly yellow, but then again so were the covers of other dictionaries on sale at the time in the University of Maine bookstore.) One student responded to the second part of Question 5 with "English for the Advanced Learner-Oxford (green book)"; this is apparently a reference to the OALDCE3 whose cover was partly green in color (but not the OALDCE4, whose cover colors were red and blue). Similarly, another student responded "Oxford dictionaries" but in this case there is even less of a firm basis to speculate that the student intended any one of the learner's dictionaries published by Oxford.

138 An interesting finding from the responses to the second part of Question 5 was that many of the students named monolingual English dictionaries for native speakers. These responses were "Webster" (3 responses), "Webster's Dictionary" (2 responses), "Random House" (3 responses), "The American Heritage Dictionary" (1 response) and "American family dictionary" (1 response). It is assumed that the dictionaries named in these responses are all English dictionaries for native speakers since this author knows of no English learner's dictionaries published by the companies referred to in the responses. Other answers to the second part of Question 5 included "any kind of EnglishEnglish dictionary," "Langenscheidt," which may be the name of a bilingual or a monolingual dictionary, "American Dictionary," which could be a corruption of Longman Dictionary of American English or a shortened version of American Family Dictionary, and "Thesaurus." 5 of the students listed two dictionaries in answer to the second part of Question 5 (in all but one of the cases the response was a dictionary for native speakers in addition to a form of "Longman"). 7 students did not supply the name of a dictionary at all to answer this question, including 4 who answered "yes" to the first part of Question 5. In answer to the first part of Question 6, Do you use dictionaries a) to look up English words that you don't understand when you read or hear them?, 32 students or 69.6% answered "yes" while only 1 student responded "no" with 6 students not answering this part of the question. The response of one student was partly illegible but appeared to be "yes." In addition, 2 students responded "sometime [sic]," 2 others responded with check marks in the blank space, one wrote an "x" and another drew a small circle. If these responses are all interpreted as affirmative responses, it means that 39 or 84.8% responded to part a) of this question affirmatively. As for the second part of the question, to find English words to use when you write or speak English?, 34 students or 73.9% responded "yes" while only 1 student or 2.2% responded "no," with 4 students giving no answer to this part of the question and one student writing "a" in answer to this question. The response of one student to part b), like that of the same student to part a), was partly illegible but appeared to be "yes." In addition, 3 students wrote a check mark in the answer blank for this question, while one student made an "x" mark and another drew a circle. If these responses are taken as affirmative, it means that 40 or 90% of the students responded affirmatively to this question. The last part of Question 6, Do you do "a)" or "b)" more?, elicited a variety of answers, some of them uninterpretable. 13 or 28.3% students responded to this question with "a" and 9 or 19.6% responded "b," with 4 students not answering this question (of the last group, only 1 student had written an unambiguously negative response to the first two parts of Question 6). Also, several students gave both "a" and "b" in their answers: one student wrote "a and b," another wrote "a, b (sometimes)" and 3 students wrote "both." Other answers, which show the difficulty some students had in properly interpreting this

139 question, were "yes" (8 responses), "no" (4 responses, including 1 "no, only sometime [sic]"), 2 check marks and 1 illegible response. The difficulty with the last part of Question 6 may have lain in the wording of the question, specifically in the particular comparative structure used in this question. There may have been a good deal of interlingual difficulty in interpreting this question due to the comparative structure, especially among students from language backgrounds (i.e. non-Indo-European) whose comparative structures differ markedly from those of English. An indication of this may be seen in the fact that only one of the 13 Spanish speakers responded to this question with a "yes" or "no" answer but 7 of the 16 Japanese speakers did so. On the other hand, perhaps the question was too vague, i.e. some students may have interpreted it as "Do you do a) or b) more now than you did in the past ?"

2.2. Answers to Part II 2.2.1. Item 1 Of the questionnaires returned, 11 contained a completed Item 1 as Part II. In the responses to this item, all of the students indicated that the first sentence, I try not to worry while the going is good, was correct. Undoubtedly, the fact that the form of the verb to fee was simple present in the sample dictionary entry for this idiom reinforced the correctness of the choice. For the second sentence, I've tried not to worry while the going has been good, 9 students indicated that this was incorrect, 1 student said it was correct and 1 student did not mark an "χ" under either Correct or Not Correct (this student also did not mark an "x" for the fourth sentence, which a majority of the other students marked as incorrect, but this student did i n d i c a t e w i t h an "x" that the first and third sentences were correct; it may then be that this student's lack of an "x" for the second and fourth sentences meant "not correct"). For the third sentence, I tried not to worry while the going was good, 10 students indicated that this sentence was correct while 1 (who was the only student to mark the second sentence as correct) said it was incorrect. And for the fourth sentence, I'm trying not to worry while the going is being good, 4 marked it as correct while 6 marked it as incorrect (and perhaps the student mentioned above who did not make an "x" for this sentence thought it was incorrect also). Therefore, it seems that the students' interpretation and application of the grammatical rule presented in the sample dictionary entry reproduced in Item 1 were for the most part accurate. The great majority of the students answered the question about the first three sentences as intended with a proper understanding of the grammatical principle. However, the responses to the fourth sentence clearly indicate some confusion; while a majority responded correctly, several students were obviously unsure about or misled by the information provided,

140

specifically the code "Pres" and its explanation. These students probably understood that "Pres" referred to the present progressive as well as the simple present tense. This points to the occasional problems a lack of specificity in information on grammar in ESL dictionaries may cause. Nevertheless, the results of this item show that for the most part the information leads to accurate production.

2.2.2. Item 2 Of the questionnaires returned, 10 contained a completed Item 2 as Part II. Of these responses, 7 indicated that the first sentence, They provided the man, was correct and 3 responded that it was incorrect. 4 students responded that the second sentence, They provided with the information, was correct while 6 responded that the sentence was incorrect. As for the third sentence, They provided the information for the man, 8 said it was correct while 2 said it was incorrect. And on the fourth sentence, They provided with the information the man, 7 said it was incorrect and 3 said it was correct. The results of this item more strongly suggest how learners may be misled by the grammatical information in ESL dictionaries (though the possible variation in acceptability judgements of native speakers regarding this item which was discussed above in Section 1 should be noted again here). This is evidenced in the fact that 7 out of the 10 students who completed Item 2 said that the ungrammatical first sentence, They provided the man, was correct, which is in fact exactly what the complementation information reproduced in this item seems to imply. The students who responded that this sentence was incorrect may have recognized the ungrammaticality of this sentence in spite of the information provided. Another conclusion that may be drawn from these results is that students seem not to grasp fully the meaning of parentheses in showing optional complementation. This is made evident by the number of students (4 out of 10) who responded that the second sentence, They provided with the information, was correct.

2.2.3. Item 3 12 of the questionnaires returned contained a completed Item 3 as Part II. Of these responses, 8 students indicated that the first sentence, He paid triple his original o f f e r , the only sentence in this item which is grammatically correct and accurate based upon the information supplied, was correct and 4 responded that it was incorrect. As for the second sentence, He paid his triple original o f f e r , 5 responded that it was correct and 7 responded that it was incorrect (one student wrote one "x" under the "Not Correct" about mid-way between the second

141 and third sentences, while he or she wrote an "x" directly under the "Correct" column even with the first sentence; this response was interpreted as indicating that the first sentence was correct and the second and third were both incorrect). And for the third sentence, He paid his original triple o f f e r , 4 students responded that it was correct while 8 said it was incorrect. It should also be noted that of the students who responded to this item, 5 or 41.7% marked two of the sentences as correct (but none marked all three correct). What may be concluded from these results is that most of the students could infer and apply the rules presented in the grammatical information reproduced here (although, of course, it is not unreasonable to assume that some of the students might have been aware of the proper usage of predeterminers such as triple before they completed this questionnaire). Nevertheless, the significant number of students who thought that the ungrammatical sentences were correct does suggest these students' problems in interpreting the information reproduced in this item.

2.2.4. Item 4 The remaining 8 surveys that were returned contained a completed Item 4 as Part II. Of the students who completed Item 4, only 2 answered that the first sentence, I didn't reckon on, was correct while the remaining 6 said it was incorrect. All of the students responded that the second sentence, / didn't reckon on a hard exam, was correct, and all but one student responded that the third sentence, I didn't reckon a hard exam on, was incorrect. Finally, for the fourth sentence, I didn't reckon upon a hard exam, 5 students responded that this sentence was correct while 3 said it was incorrect. As hypothesized before the questionnaire was administered, the responses to this question apparently show that some learners may become confused over the purpose and meaning of stylistic labels such as "(formal)" and may then wrongly interpret the grammaticality of sentences containing items so labeled in a dictionary or even avoid producing what may in fact be grammatical sentences with these items. The students' judgements of the first sentence appear to show a clear understanding of the term transitive and of the notion of a transitive multiword verb (it is of course also possible that the students recognized that the direct object in the first sentence was missing and that the sentence was therefore not semantically equivalent to the original sentence, I didn't expect a difficult exam, and on this basis they marked it as incorrect). Furthermore, the overwhelmingly accurate response to the third sentence shows that the students understood this dictionary's definition of an inseparable multi-word verb. Of course, it might also be argued that a separable multi-word verb is a cross-linguistically marked form and thus more likely to seem unacceptable to a learner, even to one who has received instruction in this type of English verb.

142

As a final observation, perhaps it might have been better if many of the answers to the questionnaire requiring a limited response were in the form of multiple choice answers or check-off boxes to avoid the ambiguity that was apparent in many of the write-in answers of this survey. In fact, many surveys, e.g. the proposal of Atkins, Lewis, Summers and Whitcut (1987), have as their primary response type check-off boxes for non-information questions, and especially when a survey is intended for and administered to persons who are not native speakers and have limited proficiency in the language of the survey, such a format seems all the wiser.

Chapter

four:

Conclusions

145

1. Conclusions from the analysis of ESL dictionaries ESL lexicography is still a relatively new field that has developed rapidly in recent years. A distinctive feature of ESL dictionaries, the incorporation of comprehensive grammatical information on individual words, has also made much progress. The compilers and editorial staffs of the various ESL dictionaries have clearly had in mind the special needs of learners in their designs for the incorporation of grammatical information, and the high quality of their designs has been reflected particularly in recent editions of ESL dictionaries. Yet, as demonstrated in this study, the grammatical information included in ESL dictionaries could in fact be augmented and improved in many ways. Regarding the various means by which information on grammar is included in ESL dictionaries, perhaps the most important development is the trend toward greater transparency in the overall presentation of grammatical information. The limitations of space in print dictionaries necessitate that information regarding words be offered in the most concise form possible, and codes or other abbreviated forms are quite efficient in this respect. Moreover, systems that are both economical and almost mathematically symmetrical, e.g. that of the LDOCE1, have the advantage of being easy to design and describe. However, in the use of codes in particular, clarity is often sacrificed for economy, and if learners cannot interpret minimalized and obscure codes the whole purpose of providing codes to provide practical information on grammar is defeated. It has been noted that some ESL dictionaries in their latest editions have made their coding systems more transparent by making the meaning of the individual codes more readily understandable and requiring less dependence on a separate key where the codes are listed and explained. This trend toward transparency is most evident in the latest edition of the LDOCE, whose grammar codes show a marked simplicity from those of the first edition. In fact, it might be said that of all ESL dictionaries the grammar codes of the LDOCE2 are the most transparent and the easiest to use. Nevertheless, the presentation of grammatical information in the form of codes or abbreviations is not an absolute necessity, and, in the case of dictionaries for less advanced learners it is not always the best way. The elegant simplicity of the presentation of grammatical information in the BDAEU is testimony to this; this dictionary doesn't even employ a code to indicate uncountable nouns, yet few could argue that the dictionary is any less efficient in giving this information with the usage note "no plural" at the end of entries. In its indication of other grammatical information, such as the separability of twoword verbs, the BDAEU uses simple but not cryptic usage notes which would seem to be easily comprehensible for users. As argued in Chapter Two, the greatest weakness of most ESL dictionaries may be that in many cases they do not provide sufficient grammatical information for users to use individual words correctly, as paradoxical as it may

146 seem in light of what has b e e n said a b o u t the n a t u r e and p u r p o s e of ESL dictionaries. This f a i l u r e is particularly evident in the case of dictionaries f o r less advanced learners, who are admittedly less likely to be able to profit f r o m a comprehensive, complexly-worded description of the g r a m m a r of particular words or word classes due to their limited proficiency in English. However, even in the advanced dictionaries with the most information on g r a m m a r some information is lacking, especially semantico-syntactic information and information on discourse g r a m m a r . This may in part be a t t r i b u t a b l e to the f a c t that such areas have only recently begun to receive a d e q u a t e t r e a t m e n t in descriptive linguistics in general. A n o t h e r glaring weakness that has b e e n noted by o t h e r researchers is a generally incomplete t r e a t m e n t of c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n , particularly that of adjectives and nouns. V e r b c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n is an a r e a that has also been slighted, and as mentioned above this is in the opinion of several r e s e a r c h e r s a serious deficiency since the syntactic f e a t u r e s of verbs (i.e. their c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n ) is held by t h e m to be central to all sentences. Yet the pioneering contributions of Hornby and the contributions of those who carried f o r t h his work in the incorporation of verb c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n information, the precursor of b r o a d e r information on g r a m m a r , must not be overlooked. However, even if the a m o u n t of information on g r a m m a r in ESL dictionaries is increased, this may not make these dictionaries any more usable and valuable to learners; Carter, referring specifically to the p r e s e n t a t i o n of grammatical information in the COBUILD, asserts that the COBUILD's scheme is innovative and c o m m e n d a b l e but as it stands may be "in excess of its use and ahead of its users." (1989:36) T h e importance of this observation lies in the fact that the COBUILD is arguably the ESL dictionary that o f f e r s the most information on g r a m m a r . And as d e m o n s t r a t e d in the surveys of the various lexical items in C h a p t e r Two, a great deal of inconsistency and inadequacy exists in the p r e s e n t a t i o n of grammatical information in ESL dictionaries. O f t e n , dictionaries show more than minor disagreements on points of g r a m m a r , and even within individual dictionaries the a m o u n t of grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n f o r similar items may vary. This state of affairs can be partly a t t r i b u t e d to the fact that ESL dictionaries, like most dictionaries that have b e e n and are being compiled, are products not of one or a few persons but are the work of many individuals, who, though u n d e r the supervision of one or more editors, still have disparate lexicographical and linguistic abilities.

147

2. Conclusions from the research project R e p o r t i n g on his research on the usage of monolingual English l e a r n e r ' s dictionaries by French university students of English, Béjoint (1981:220) laments that in actuality monolingual l e a r n e r ' s dictionaries are no more useful to learners than monolingual dictionaries m e a n t f o r native speakers since l e a r n e r s do not a p p e a r to take advantage of the special f e a t u r e s of the f o r m e r which would facilitate l e a r n e r s ' dictionary use and language learning. O n e of the special f e a t u r e s Béjoint was referring to, of course, was grammatical information, and since this a r e a has b e e n the focus of the present study, this study would not have b e e n complete without the empirical investigation described in C h a p t e r T h r e e which evaluated the effect of a u t h e n t i c grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n in ESL dictionaries on actual l e a r n e r s of English. A special p u r p o s e of Béjoint's research was to find out if students used dictionaries of all types more f o r encoding than f o r decoding, i.e. did they use dictionaries more to find words when they p r o d u c e d English or more to u n d e r s t a n d English words they h e a r d or r e a d . His conclusions, like those of other researchers, were that a sizeable majority of students used their dictionaries more f o r decoding than f o r encoding. T h e results of the research r e p o r t e d in C h a p t e r T h r e e of this study indicate that among the particular group of students surveyed f o r the project, although a majority still claimed they used dictionaries of all types m o r e f o r decoding, the use of dictionaries f o r encoding was close to that f o r decoding, with 13 students reporting that they used dictionaries more f o r decoding while 9 r e p o r t e d using t h e m more f o r encoding (though of course the questionnaire of this study did not a t t e m p t to elicit any detailed comparison of the actual a m o u n t of time students spent in both activities). Even though the results of the research project show that a majority of students use dictionaries primarily f o r decoding r a t h e r t h a n encoding (and thus in the opinion of some would not be reaping the fullest benefits f r o m ESL dictionaries in particular), the results plainly display extensive use of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries by learners. In the q u e s t i o n n a i r e described in C h a p t e r T h r e e , all but one of the 46 students clearly indicated that they used either a monolingual or bilingual dictionary, and 35 of them indicated that they used both types. This widespread use of dictionaries may be a t t r i b u t a b l e in p a r t to the fact that, as explained in C h a p t e r T h r e e , many of the students who r e s p o n d e d to the q u e s t i o n n a i r e w e r e r e q u i r e d to purchase an ESL dictionary as p a r t of their coursework in English. However, in these students' ESL classes, it can be attested that no special emphasis was placed on dictionary use which might have inordinately encouraged students to use their dictionaries more than normal. F u r t h e r m o r e , the results of the q u e s t i o n n a i r e show that the p r e f e r e n c e f o r bilingual or monolingual dictionaries was roughly equal, though again the q u e s t i o n n a i r e did not seek to yield a breakdown of the actual time students spent using either type of dictionary.

148 Another important finding of the research conducted for this study is that most students appear to be generally able to work with the various means for incorporating grammar employed by ESL dictionaries. For all of the questions in each of the four items of Part II of the questionnaire, a majority of students gave the expected correct response to the questions based upon the information given in the items. Also based on the number of correct responses, the students seemed cognizant of and comfortable with the general conventions of presenting grammatical information in ESL dictionaries, e.g. the use of parentheses to indicate optional elements and the use of the tilde to represent a headword. However, as the responses to the first sentence of Item 2 demonstrate, in some cases learners may be said to understand the conventions too well; it appears that learners can almost mechanically be led to produce ungrammatical sentences based on inaccurate or ambiguous grammatical information in dictionaries, as a majority were led to conclude that the sentence They provided the man is acceptable from the information in the OALDCE 4 reproduced in Item 2.

149

3. Recommendations for ESL lexicography A general conclusion that may be t a k e n f r o m C h a p t e r Two of this study is that ESL dictionaries provide a good deal of information on English g r a m m a r , and a general conclusion that may be m a d e f r o m C h a p t e r T h r e e is that l e a r n e r s are generally able to use this i n f o r m a t i o n correctly in their production of English. H e n c e , it may be said that ESL dictionaries f o r the most part have successfully satisfied their p u r p o s e . However, as also d e m o n s t r a t e d in this study, t h e r e are shortcomings, some serious and some minor, in the p r e s e n t a t i o n of grammatical information in ESL dictionaries—in terms of what i n f o r m a t i o n is or is not o f f e r e d , how it is p r e s e n t e d and how it is i n t e r p r e t e d and used by l e a r n e r s which, it is hoped, will be rectified in f u t u r e editions of current ESL dictionaries or in new ones to be produced. From what has b e e n discussed in this study, some r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s f o r the f u t u r e d e v e l o p m e n t of ESL dictionaries can be made: 1. Comprehensiveness in the p r e s e n t a t i o n of grammatical information should continue to be a f e a t u r e of ESL dictionaries, especially those f o r i n t e r m e d i a t e and advanced learners. No one expects dictionaries to be complete r e f e r e n c e grammars, but dictionaries should strive to provide as many as conveniently possible of the major rules governing the use of individual words listed in them. As H e r b s t (1989b: 108) puts it, "The i n t e r d e p e n d e n c i e s between various grammatical p h e n o m e n a such as valency p a t t e r n s , mood and tense of a sentence etc are beyond any lexicographical t r e a t m e n t . This should not stop lexicographers f r o m a t t e m p t i n g to achieve an o p t i m u m of grammatical information in dictionaries." It is o f t e n true that the more comprehensive the information provided by a dictionary is, the less usable f o r the l e a r n e r the dictionary becomes. A solution f o r this dilemma may be in schemes of dictionary organization which make the i n f o r m a t i o n in dictionaries more easily accessible by dividing the information into macro- and micro-parts, the f o r m e r being the word or synonym level and the latter the level of specific i n f o r m a t i o n f o r individual words. Such a scheme might in fact be m o r e practical with electronic r a t h e r than print dictionaries, in which not all of the parts of a word entry need a p p e a r on a viewing screen at once but are all instantly accessible through a keystroke or other command (e.g. pressing a "button" in some types of software). 2. T h e trend toward g r e a t e r transparency in the r e p r e s e n t a t i o n of grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n through codes and o t h e r means is welcome and should be continued and the degree of transparency improved. T h e more obvious a code's meaning is, the more useable the code will be f o r the l e a r n e r who does not have to turn to a s e p a r a t e table or key when he or she is in doubt as to the meaning. Of course, the danger in this lies in the fact that making codes more t r a n s p a r e n t o f t e n involves simplifying them, which may actually result in making the codes more ambiguous a n d / o r blurring the distinctions between these and other codes and the grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n the codes r e p r e s e n t . This is all the

150 more reason for preferring a system for presenting grammatical information not entirely dependent on codes but occasionally presenting information as directly as practical limitations permit. 3. Even if grammatical information is presented comprehensively and clearly, inconsistent and contradictory information diminishes the value of ESL dictionaries. In describing the surface facts of English usage, there are bound to different analyses, due in no small measure to the tremendous variety that exists in the use of the language. Yet this cannot excuse the often glaring inconsitencies that appear even in individual dictionaries. The compilers and editors of ESL dictionaries must strive to refine their product, and it is not unreasonable to wish that among various dictionaries some common principles and analyses could be adopted. 4. As mentioned in Chapter Two, the recommendation has been made that more information on the so-called valence of individual words should be included in ESL dictionaries, especially in the more advanced ones. There is much to say in favor of this proposal, particularly in the respect that valence information is especially useful in delimiting the possible subjects of verbs, even though most advanced ESL dictionaries do give indications of the possible objects of verbs. In actuality, the debate over valence information is really an aspect of the issue of including more information on complementation in general, an area in which ESL dictionaries have been shown to be rather inadequate. 5. The specific results of the research project described in Chapter Three are quite instructive as to what they suggest about the grammatical information that is contained or should be contained in ESL dictionaries. The results of Part II Item 1 demonstrate the need for precise, unambiguous descriptions of grammatical information. Several students were evidently unclear about the precise tense referred to by "Pres," a problem that could have been resolved through the use of a more specific code or more explanations or examples. Part II Item 2 is a clear example of how learners may be misled by inaccurate grammatical information. The proportion of students who thought that They provided the man was an acceptable sentence accentuates the need for compilers and editors of dictionaries to use care in indicating grammar (and to be mindful of varying acceptability judgements among native speakers). Part II Item J is an example of cases in which terms used in the description of grammar ought to be specified and not left to the inferential skills of users; as the results of the item seem to indicate, these skills are not always well developed. Finally, the results of Part II Item 4 might be taken to support the call for greater standardization in the presentation of grammatical information among ESL dictionaries. Perhaps part of the difficulty some of the students had with the information in this item was interpreting the CULD's term "verb transitive fused." Though this term is explained in the information reproduced in the item, one wonders whether students might have had an easier time understanding the particular grammatical point if the verb type to which reckon on belongs were

151 identified in terms they might have been familiar with, e.g. "transitive phrasal verb" or "separable multi-word verb." G r e a t e r standardization in the general description of grammar, or even in specific schemes of presenting information such as coding systems, might increase the usability of grammatical information in E S L dictionaries for learners. Some standardization or at least common use of familiar symbols already exists among E S L dictionaries, e.g. the use of parentheses to indicate optional elements, but as noted in Chapter Two of this study much variation exists not only in the form in which information is incorporated but also in the range of grammatical information itself. Of course, since most of the E S L dictionaries currently available are compiled by different editorial staffs and published by independent publishing houses, to expect a great deal of standardization may not be realistic. However, the example of some of the Longman and Oxford dictionaries may be taken to show that at least among dictionaries published by the same company the means of incorporating grammatical information can and should be standardized.

153

References Aarts, F. (1991): "OALD, L D O C E and COBUILD: Three Learner's Dictionaries of English Compared". - In S. Granger (ed.) Perspectives on the English Lexicon: A Tribute to Jacques Van Roey. Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain 17:1-3,211-226. Atkins, Β. T., J. Kegl and Β. Levin (1988): "Anatomy of a Verb Entry: From Linguistic Theory to Lexicographic Practice". - In: International Journal of Lexicography 1:2, 84-126. Atkins, Β., H. Lewis, D. Summers and J. Whitcut (1987): "A Research Project into the Use of Learners' Dictionaries". - In: Cowie, A. (ed.): The Dictionary and the Language Learner. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag) 29-43. Baxter, J. (1980): "The Dictionary and Vocabulary Behaviour: A Single Word or a Handful?" - In: TESOL Quarterly 14:3, 325-336. Béjoint, H. (1981): "The Foreign Student's Use of Monolingual English Dictionaries: A Study of Language Needs and Reference Skills". - In: Applied Linguistics 2:3,207-222. Bolinger, D. (1990): "Review of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, Fourth Edition". - In: International Journal of Lexicography 3:2,133-145. Carter, R. (1989): "Review of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary". - In: International Journal of Lexicography 2:1, 30-43. Cowie, A. P. (1987): "Syntax, the Dictionary, and the Learner's Communicative Needs". - In: Cowie, A. (ed.): The Dictionary and the Language Learner (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag) 183-192. Ellegârd, Α. (1978): "On Dictionaries f o r Language Learners". - In: Moderna Sprák 72, 225-242. Fillmore, C. J. (1989): "Two Dictionaries". - In: International Journal of Lexicography 2:1, 57-83. Hall, E. J. (1982): Dictionary of Prepositions f o r Students of English. - New York: Minerva Books, Ltd. Hausmann, F. J. and A. Gorbahn (1989): "COBUILD and L D O C E II: a Comparative Review". - In: International Journal of Lexicography 2:1, 44-56. Heath, D. (1982): "The Treatment of Grammar and Syntax in Monolingual English Dictionaries f o r Advanced Learners". - Linguistik und Didaktik 13:49, 95-107. - (1985): "Grammatische Angaben in Lernerwörterbüchern des Englischen". - In: H. Bergenholtz and J. Mugdan (eds.): Lexikographie und Grammatik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag). Herbst, T. (1984a): "Adjective Complementation: A Valency Approach to Making EFL Dictionaries". - In: Applied Linguistics 5:5,1-11. - (1984b): "Bemerkungen zu den Patternsystems des Advanced Learner's Dictionary und des Dictionary of Contemporary English". - In: D. Goetz and T. Herbst (eds.): Theoretische und Praktische Probleme der Lexikographie (Munich: Max Hueber Verlag). - (1987): "A Proposal f o r a Valency Dictionary of English". - In: R. Ilson (ed.): A Spectrum of Lexicography (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co.). - (1989a): "Dictionaries f o r Foreign Language Teaching: English". - In: F. J. Hausmann, O. Reichmann, Η. Ε. Wiegand and L. Zgusta (eds.): W ö r t e r b ü c h e r / Dictionaries/ Dictionnaires (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter). - (1989b): "Grammar in Dictionaries". - In: M. L. Tickoo (ed.): Learners' Dictionaries: State of the Art (Singapore: S E A M E O Regional Language Centre). Iannucci, J. E. (1987): "Review of The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English". - In: Dictionaries 9,272-275. Ilson, R. (1989): "Present-day British Lexicography". - In: F. J. Hausmann, O. Reichmann, Η. E. Wiegand and L. Zgusta (eds.): W ö r t e r b ü c h e r / Dictionaries/ Dictionnaires (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter). Jackson, H. (1985): "Grammar in the Dictionary." - In: Robert Ilson (ed.): Dictionaries, Lexicography and Language Learning (London: Pergamon Press). Jain, M. P. (1978): "Review of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English". - In: Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4:1,86-104. Landau, S. I. (1984): Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography. - New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Lee, W. R. (1983): A Study Dictionary of Social English. - Oxford: Pergamon Press.

154 Lemmens, M. and H. Wekker (1986): Grammar in English Learners' Dictionaries. - Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. - (1991): "On the Relationship between Lexis and Grammar in English Learners' Dictionaries". In: International Journal of Lexicography 4 : 1 , 1 - 1 4 . MacFarquhar, P. D. and J . C . Richards (1983): "On Dictionaries and Definitions". - In: R E L C Journal 14:1,111-124. McCorduck, E . S. (1989a): "Prescriptive Grammar in E S L Dictionaries". - Unpublished paper, Syracuse University. - (1989b): "What I Hear Versus What I'm Hearing: The Treatment of a Grammar Point in E S L Dictionaries". - Unpublished paper, Syracuse University. Moulton, W. G. (1986): "On the Use of 'Valence' in Foreign Language Teaching". - In: K. R . Jankowsky (ed.): Scientific and Humanistic Dimensions of Language: Festschrift for Robert Lado (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company). Piotrowski, T. (1988): "A Dictionary of Real English Versus the Best Dictionary Available: E F L Lexicography". - In: Dictionaries 10, 21-58. Quirk, R., S. Greenbaum, G. Leech and J . Svartvik (1972): A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman. - (1985): A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. - London: Longman. Ripfel, M. (1989): Wörterbüchkritik. Eine Empirische Analyse von Wörterbüchrezensionen. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag ( = Lexicographica. Series Maior 29). Rosenthal, M. S. and D. B. Freeman (1987): Longman Photo Dictionary. - White Plains, NY: Longman. Scholfield, P. (1982): "Using the English Dictionary for Comprehension". - In: T E S O L Quarterly 16:2,185-194. Sinclair, J . (1987): "Grammar in the Dictionary". - In: J . Sinclair (ed.): Looking Up: An Account of the C O B U I L D Project in Lexical Computing and the Development of the Collins C O B U I L D English Language Dictionary (London: Collins). Standop, E . (1985): Englische Wörterbücher unter der Lupe. - Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Strevens, P. (1987): "The Effectiveness of Learner's Dictionaries". - In: R . Burchfield (ed.): Studies in Lexicography (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Tomaszczyk J . (1979): "Dictionaries: Users and Uses". - Glottodidactica 12,103-119. Underhill, A. (1980): Use Your Dictionary: a Practice Book for Users of Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English and Oxford Students Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, M. P. and J . G. Endicott (1953): The New Method English Dictionary. - London: Longman. Whitcut, J . (1985): "Usage Notes in Dictionaries: The Needs of the Learner and the Native Speaker". - In: R . Ilson (ed.): Dictionaries, Lexicography and Language Learning. (Oxford: Pergamon Press). - (1986): "The Training of Dictionary Users". - In: R. Ilson (ed.): Lexicography, an Emerging International Profession (Manchester: Manchester University Press).

155

Dictionary abbreviations A. General ESL dictionaries 1. For advanced learners (CELD) Carver, D. J., M. J. Wallace and J. Cameron (1974): Collins English Learner's Dictionary. - London: Collins. ('COBUILD) Sinclair, J. (ed.) (1987): Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary. London: Collins. ( C U L D ) Kirkpatrick, E. M. (ed.) (1980): Chambers Universal Learners' Dictionary. Edinburgh: R & W Chambers, Ltd. (LDOCE2) Summers, D. (ed.) (1987): Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. London: Longman. (OALDCE4) Hornby, A. S. (1989): Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. London: Oxford University Press.

2. For intermediate learners (LDAE)

(1983): - Longman Dictionary of American English. - White Plains, NY: Longman.

(NHLD) Shaw, J. R. and S. J. Shaw (1990): The New Horizon Ladder Dictionary of the English Language. - New York: Penguin.* (OSDAE2) Hornby, A. S., D. Harris, and W. A. Stewart (1986): Oxford Student's Dictionary of American English. - New York: Oxford University Press. ( O S D C E ) Hornby, A. S. (1978): Oxford Student's Dictionary of Current English. - London: Oxford University Press.

3. For beginning learners (BDAEU) Collin, P. H., M. Lowi and C. Weiland (eds.) (1986): Beginner's Dictionary of American English Usage. - Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. (EAED) Spears, R. A. (ed.) (1984): Everyday American English Dictionary. - Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. ( L H L D ) Costa, M., S. Crowdy and F. Mcintosh (1988): Longman Handy Learner's Dictionary. London: Longman. (OELDE) Burridge, S. (ed.) (1981): Oxford Elementary Learner's Dictionary of English. London: Oxford University Press.

156 Β. Specialized ESL dictionaries 1. Idiom dictionaries (CAS) Spears, R. Α. (1991): Textbook Company.

Contemporary American Slang. - Lincolnwood, IL; National

(DAI) Boatner, M. T. and J. E. Gates (1975):. A Dictionary of American Idioms. - Woodbury, NY: Barrons Educational Series.* ( EA I ) Spears, R. A. (1991): Essential American Idioms. - Lincolnwood, IL; National Textbook Company. ( H A I I U ) Whitford, H. C. and R. J. Dixson (1973): Handbook of American Idioms and Idiomatic Usage. - New York: Regents Publishing Company.* (LDOEI) Long, T. H. and D. Summers (eds.) (1979): Longman Dictionary of English Idioms. London: Longman. (NTCAID) Spears, R. A. (1987): NTC's American Idioms Dictionary. - Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company.* (NTCDAS) Spears, R. A. (1989): NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions. - Lincolnwood, IL; National Textbook Company.* (ODCIE V2) Cowie, A. P., R. Mackin and I. R. Craig (1983): Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Volume 2: Phrase, Clause and Sentence Idioms. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. (PDEI) Gulland, D. M. and D. G. Hinds-Howell (1986): The Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms. - Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. 2. Multi-word verb dictionaries (iCPGPV) Davidson, G. W. (ed.) (1982): Chambers Pocket Guide to Phrasal Verbs. - Singapore: Federal Publications (S) Pte Ltd. (DEPVI) McArthur, T. and B. Atkins (1974): Dictionary of English Phrasal Verbs and their Idioms. - London: Collins. (DTWVSE) Hall, E. J. (1982): Dictionary of Two-Word Verbs for Students of English. - New York: Minerva Books, Ltd. (LDOPV)

Courtney, R. (1983): Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs. - London: Longman.

(ODCIE VI) Cowie, A. P. and R. Mackin (1975): Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English. Volume 1: Verbs with Prepositions and Particles. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3. Other specialized dictionaries (BBICDE) Benson, M., E. Benson and R. Ilson (1986): The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English. - Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

157 Notes 1. The dictionaries marked with an asterisk are, at least in the claims of their compilers a n d / o r publishers, not intended only for learners but could be used by native speakers as well for general purposes. 2. Some of the above dictionaries are currently out of print but undoubtedly are still in use as the property of individuals, schools or libraries, and therefore their examination in this study is justified.

159

English résumé Grammatical Inf ormation in ESL Dictionaries presents an analysis and critique of the i n f o r m a t i o n on English g r a m m a r that is contained in currently available dictionaries compiled f o r l e a r n e r s of English as a second or foreign language. Dictionaries commonly provide users with basic information such as the spelling, pronunciation and meaning of words; however, when the language whose words are r e c o r d e d in a dictionary is not the native language of a user, this user also requires information on the grammatical f e a t u r e s of particular words to be able to produce acceptable sentences with these words, or sometimes to be able to i n t e r p r e t them in writing or speech. Most dictionaries of English f o r l e a r n e r s claim to be designed to meet this need and have various means of offering users information on the grammatical f e a t u r e s that govern the use of individual words. The book offers a classification of the grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n contained in monolingual dictionaries of English f o r l e a r n e r s ("ESL dictionaries"). Monolingual r a t h e r than bilingual dictionaries are the focus of the study since the f o r m e r are generally able to provide more grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n since they do not use space to list translation equivalents in the second language as do the latter. In the book's classification of the grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n in ESL dictionaries, the accuracy, clarity and utility of the i n f o r m a t i o n on g r a m m a r provided in ESL dictionaries are examined, and related i n f o r m a t i o n that would be beneficial to users if it were also included in the dictionaries is also discussed. The book analyzes not only the aspects of English g r a m m a r given a t t e n t i o n in ESL dictionaries but also the m e t h o d s that the dictionaries use to indicate this i n f o r m a t i o n . A common means of indicating grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n is through the use of coding systems, and the g r a m m a r codes used in various ESL dictionaries are studied and c o m p a r e d . O t h e r means of incorporating grammatical information, such as through definitions, example sentences and usage notes, are also examined and evaluated. T h e dictionaries studied in the book include not only the m a j o r ESL dictionaries f o r advanced l e a r n e r s such as the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and the Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary but also several dictionaries f o r less advanced and beginning students such as the Oxford Student's Dictionary of American English, the Beginner's Dictionary of American English Usage and the Longman Handy Learner's Dictionary. Also, the grammatical information contained in specialized ESL dictionaries such as the Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, the Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs and The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English is examined. The first chapter of the book surveys the field of ESL lexicography and the theoretical and practical issues surrounding the i n c o r p o r a t i o n of grammatical

160 information in ESL dictionaries. It discusses the theory of g r a m m a r in ESL dictionaries and the various linguistic a p p r o a c h e s to g r a m m a r in dictionaries. It then looks at the d i f f e r e n t ways in which grammatical information is i n c o r p o r a t e d in ESL dictionaries; it examines direct means such as usage notes, abbreviations and codes, and explanatory information within entries, and looks at indirect ways such as through examples and in definitions of words. The second chapter of the book presents an analysis of the types of information on English grammar that are given a t t e n t i o n in ESL dictionaries, and the chapter also examines and compares the m e a n s by which the various dictionaries indicate this i n f o r m a t i o n . T h e c h a p t e r begins by examining the ways in which ESL dictionaries treat grammatical information that is common to all types of dictionaries, i.e. part-of-speech information and i n f o r m a t i o n on irregular f o r m s such as irregular verbs and irregular noun plurals; it shows how ESL dictionaries are similar to other dictionaries in this respect but with some important differences, especially in the b r e a d t h of information o f f e r e d . It then discusses the grammatical i n f o r m a t i o n that is particular to ESL dictionaries, classifying this information into f o u r broad types. The first type is morphological and word class information, which deals with the special rules that p e r t a i n to words of a certain grammatical class or to individual words of a class. This type includes i n f o r m a t i o n on nouns such as the countability and the use of articles with nouns; information on verbs such as aspect, voice and tense restrictions on verbs and the labeling of and rules f o r the use of phrasal and prepositional verbs; information on adjectives and adjectival words, including the indication of the gradability of adjectives, the predicative or attributive use of adjectives, the adjectival use of participles and the attributive use of nouns; and i n f o r m a t i o n on the meaning and use of prepositions. T h e second type of grammatical information is syntactic i n f o r m a t i o n ; this includes i n f o r m a t i o n on the c o m p l e m e n t a t i o n of verbs, nouns and adjectives; i n f o r m a t i o n on word o r d e r as it p e r t a i n s to individual words or the order of words within phrases or idioms; i n f o r m a t i o n on t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s , i.e. indication of what t r a n s f o r m a t i o n s if any a certain word or a phrase containing the word may undergo; i n f o r m a t i o n on concord rules f o r nouns when they f u n c t i o n as subjects of a clause or r e f e r e n t s of a p r o n o u n ; and i n f o r m a t i o n on the syntactic f u n c t i o n s of phrases or idioms. The third type of grammatical information is discourse g r a m m a r information, i.e. information on words involving their use in contexts larger than the sentence level. And the f o u r t h type of grammatical information is semantico-grammatical information, which refers to information on grammatical rules that are largely d e p e n d e n t on semantic f e a t u r e s . T h e third chapter of the book describes and presents the results of an investigation the a u t h o r u n d e r t o o k to examine the reactions of actual l e a r n e r s to the grammatical information in ESL dictionaries. In the investigation, l e a r n e r s were asked to judge the acceptability of English sentences based solely on their i n t e r p r e t a t i o n of information on the relevant g r a m m a r rules provided by representative dictionaries. T h e results of the investigation are used to

161 evaluate the clarity of presentation and the utility of the grammatical information in the dictionaries. The fourth chapter summarizes the analysis of grammatical information in E S L dictionaries given in the second chapter and the results of the investigation reported in the third chapter and from these areas presents recommendations for future developments in E S L lexicography. These recommendations include the need for E S L dictionaries to continue to provide comprehensive but usable information on English grammar, the importance of presenting the information in as transparent a form as possible, the need for more consistency in the presentation of grammatical information in E S L dictionaries, and the desirability of including more semantico-grammatical information in E S L dictionaries, with a possible model being information on valence as developed in the approach known as valence grammar.

163

Deutsche Zusammenfassung Grammatical Information in ESL Dictionaries gibt eine A n a l y s e und K r i t i k der I n f o r m a t i o n f ü r e n g l i s c h e G r a m m a t i k , die in g e g e n w ä r t i g e r h ä l t l i c h e n W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n e n t h a l t e n ist, w e l c h e f ü r E n g l i s c h s c h ü l e r als z w e i t e oder F r e m d s p r a c h e v e r f a ß t sind. G e m e i n h i n l i e f e r n W ö r t e r b ü c h e r den B e n u t z e r n e l e m e n t a r e I n f o r m a t i o n wie R e c h t s c h r e i b u n g , A u s s p r a c h e und W o r t b e d e u t u n g : j e d o c h w e n n die S p r a c h e , d e r e n W ö r t e r im W ö r t e r b u c h e n t h a l t e n sind, nicht die M u t t e r s p r a c h e des B e n u t z e r s ist, b e n ö t i g t d i e s e r B e n u t z e r auch A u s k u n f t f ü r grammatische Besonderheiten von bestimmten Wörtern, um akzeptable Sätze mit diesen W ö r t e r n zu e r z e u g e n , oder m a n c h m a l diese in Schrift und R e d e zu ü b e r s e t z e n . D i e m e i s t e n E n g l i s c h - W ö r t e r b ü c h e r f u r A n f ä n g e r m a c h e n den A n s p r u c h sie w ä r e n so z u s a m m e n g e s t e l l t , d a ß sie d i e s e n A n f o r d e r u n g e n n a c h k o m m e n und, d a ß sie den B e n u t z e r n durch v e r s c h i e d e n e M ö g l i c h k e i t e n I n f o r m a t i o n f ü r g r a m m a t i s c h e M e r m a l e b i e t e n , die den G e b r a u c h i n d i v i d u e l l e r Wörter bestimmen. D a s B u c h b i e t e t eine K l a s s i f i z i e r u n g der g r a m m a t i s c h e n I n f o r m a t i o n , die in e i n s p r a c h i g e n E n g l i s c h - W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n f ü r A n f ä n g e r ("Englisch als zweite S p r a c h e - W ö r t e r b ü c h e r " ) e n t h a l t e n ist. Im M i t t e l p u n k t der U n t e r s u c h u n g stehen e h e r e i n s p r a c h i g e als z w e i s p r a c h i g e W ö r t e r b ü c h e r , da die e r s t g e n a n n t e n a l l g e m e i n im Stande sind mehr g r a m m a t i s c h e I n f o r m a t i o n zu g e b e n , w e i l sie nicht den R a u m f ü r U b e r s e t z u n g s e q u i v a l e n t e in der Z w e i t s p r a c h e e i n n e h m e n , w i e es mit den l e t z t e r e n der F a l l ist. D i e K l a s s i f i k a t i o n v o n g r a m m a t i s c h e r I n f o r m a t i o n in E S L W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n untersucht die G e n a u i g k e i t , K l a r h e i t und N ü t z l i c h k e i t der g r a m m a t i s c h e n I n f o r m a t i o n , die in E S L W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n a n g e g e b e n ist. B e z ü g l i c h e I n f o r m a t i o n , die f ü r den B e n u t z e r b e h i l f l i c h w ä r e , wenn diese in den W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n auch i n b e g r i f f e n sei, wird hier e b e n f a l l s diskutiert. D a s B u c h analysiert nicht nur A s p e k t e e n g l i s c h e r G r a m m a t i k , auf die die A u f m e r k s a m k e i t in E S L W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n g e r i c h t e t ist, s o n d e r n auch die M e t h o d e n , die die W ö r t e r b ü c h e r v e r w e n d e n , um diese I n f o r m a t i o n a n z u z e i g e n . E i n a l l g e m e i n e s M i t t e l die g r a m m a t i s c h e I n f o r m a t i o n a n z u z e i g e n ist der G e b r a u c h v o n Struktursystemen, und die in v e r s c h i e d e n e n E S L W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n a n g e w a n d t e n g r a m m a t i s c h e n S t r u k t u r e n w e r d e n untersucht und v e r g l i c h e n . A n d e r e M ö g l i c h k e i t e n g r a m m a t i s c h e I n f o r m a t i o n zu i n t e g r i e r e n , w i e durch D e f i n i t i o n e n , B e i s p i e l s ä t z e und A n w e n d u n g s v e r m e r k e , w e r d e n ebenfalls untersucht und a u s g e w e r t e t . D i e W ö r t e r b ü c h e r , mit d e n e n sich dieses B u c h b e f a ß t , b e z i e h e n nicht nur die b e d e u t e n d e n E S L W ö r t e r b ü c h e r f ü r f o r t g e s c h r i t t e n e S c h ü l e r ein, wie das Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, das Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English und das Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary, sondern auch v e r s c h i e d e n e W ö r t e r b ü c h e r f u r w e n i g e r f o r t g e s c h r i t t e n e S c h ü l e r und A n f ä n g e r , w i e das Oxford Student's Dictionary of American English, das Beginner's

164 Dictionary of American English Usage und das Longman Handy Learner's Dictionary. Die grammatische Information, die in spezialisierten ESL Wörterbüchern enthalten ist, wie das Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, das Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs und The BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English wird ebenfalls untersucht. Das erste Kapitel des Buches gibt einen Überblick des Gebietes der ESL Lexikographie und der theoretischen und praktischen Fragen, die die Einfügung von grammatischer in ESL Wörterbüchern einschließt. Es diskutiert die Theorie der Grammatik in ESL Wörterbüchern und die verschiedenen linguistischen Betrachtungsweisen zur Grammatik in Wörterbüchern. Weiterhin betrachtet es auf welche verschiedene Art und Weisen die grammatische Information in die Wörterbücher integriert wird; es untersucht die direkten Methoden, wie Anwendungsvermerke, Abkürzungen und Strukturen, und auch erklärende Information innerhalb der Eintragungen, ebenso betrachtet es indirekte Methoden, wie Beispiele und Worterklärungen. Das zweite Kapitel des Buches gibt eine Analyse der Informationsweise über englische Grammatik, die in ESL Wörterbüchern besonders beachtet werden, und dieses Kapitel untersucht und vergleicht auch die Art und Weise wie die verschiedenen Wörterbücher diese Information anzeigen. Das Kapitel beginnt mit der Untersuchung, wie die ESL Wörterbücher die grammatische Information behandeln, die für alle Arten von Wörterbüchern gemeingültig ist, d.h. Auskunft über Sprachteile und irreguläre Formen, wie irreguläre Verben und irreguläre Substantiv-Plurale; es zeigt, wie ähnlich ESL Wörterbücher gegenüber den anderen Wörterbüchern in dieser Hinsicht sind, aber mit einigen wichtigen Unterschieden, vor allem im Umfang der angebotenen Information. Weiterhin diskutiert es die grammatische Information, die besonders auf ESL Wörterbücher zutrifft, und klassifiziert diese Information in vier allgemeine Gruppen. Zur ersten Gruppe gehört morphologische und Wortgruppeninformation, die spezielle Regeln behandelt, die die Wörter einer bestimmten grammatikalischen Klasse oder individuelle Wörter einer Klasse betreffen. Diese Gruppe erfaßt Information für Substantive, wie Zählbarkeit, und den Gebrauch von Artikeln mit Substantiven; Information über Verben, wie Aspekt, Aktionsart und Tempuseinschränkungen, und die Bezeichnung und Regeln für den Gebrauch von Satz- und präpositionalen Verben; Information über Adjektive und Adjektivwörter, einschließlich der Stufungsfähigkeit von Adjektiven, die prädikative und attributive Anwendung von Adjektiven, die adjektive Anwendung von Partizipien und die attributive Anwendung von Substantiven; und Auskunft über Bedeutung und Anwendung von Präpositionen. Die zweite Gruppe grammatischer Information ist syntaktische Information; diese schließt Information für die Ergänzung von Verben, Substántiven und Adjektiven ein; Information über Wortordnung, die für individuelle Wörter zutrifft, oder die Wortordnung innerhalb von Satzteilen oder Idiomen; Information über Transformationen, d.h. eine Angabe, welchen Transformationen, ob überhaupt, sich ein bestimmtes Wort oder eine Phrase, die dieses

165 Wort enthält, u n t e r z i e h t ; I n f o r m a t i o n ü b e r Regeln syntaktischer Ü b e r e i n stimmung von Substantiven, wenn sie als Subjekte eines Satzes oder Hinweisungen eines Substantivs dienen; und I n f o r m a t i o n über die syntaktische Funktion von Sätzen oder Idiomen. Z u r dritten G r u p p e grammatischer I n f o r m a t i o n gehört die grammatische I n f o r m a t i o n von A b h a n d l u n g e n , d.h. Aufschluß ü b e r W ö r t e r d e r e n G e b r a u c h in Kontexten u m f a n g r e i c h e r als die Satzbene ist. Und die vierte G r u p p e grammatischer I n f o r m a t i o n ist semantischgrammatische Information, die sich auf I n f o r m a t i o n grammatischer Regeln bezieht, welche grösstenteils von semantischen C h a r a k t e r i s t i k e n abhängig sind. Das dritte Kapitel des Buches beschreibt und u n t e r b r e i t e t die R e s u l t a t e einer Untersuchung, die der A u t o r u n t e r n a h m , um die R e a k t i o n e n eigentlicher Schüler auf die grammatische I n f o r m a t i o n in ESL W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n zu p r ü f e n . In der U n t e r s u c h u n g w u r d e n Schüler gefragt, die A k z e p t a b i l i t ä t englischer Sätze zu beurteilen, basiert allein auf ihrer I n t e r p r e t a t i o n der I n f o r m a t i o n von relevanten grammatischer Regeln, die in den r e p r ä s e n t a t i v e n W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n angegeben sind. Die Ergebnisse der U n t e r s u c h u n g werden zur Auswertung von Klarheit der Darstellung und der B r a u c h b a r k e i t der grammatischen I n f o r m a t i o n in den W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n verwendet. Das vierte Kapitel f a ß t die Analyse g r a m m a t i s c h e r I n f o r m a t i o n in ESL W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n zusammen, die im zweiten Kapitel angegeben ist, e b e n s o die R e s u l t a t e der Untersuchung, die im dritten Kapitel berichtet sind, und aus diesen G e b i e t e n b i e t e t es E m p f e h l u n g e n f ü r zukünftige Entwicklungen in der ESL Lexikographie. Diese E m p f e h l u n g e n umfassen die Notwendigkeit f ü r ESL W ö r t e r b ü c h e r weiterhin u m f a n g r e i c h e , jedoch b r a u c h b a r e I n f o r m a t i o n von englischer G r a m m a t i k d a r z u b i e t e n , die Wichtigkeit die I n f o r m a t i o n so t r a n s p a r e n t wie möglich anzugeben, die Notwendigkeit f ü r mehr Einheitlichkeit in der A n g a b e von g r a m m a t i s c h e r I n f o r m a t i o n in ESL W ö r t e r b ü c h e r n , und wünschenswerter mehr semantisch-grammatische I n f o r m a t i o n miteinschließen, als mögliches Muster könnte V a l e n z i n f o r m a t i o n angegeben werden, wie sie im Ansatz zur s o g e n a n n t e n V a l e n z g r a m m a t i k entwickelt w o r d e n ist.

167

Résumé en français Grammatical Information in ESL Dictionaries (Données grammaticales dans les dictionnaires d'anglais comme seconde langue) est un ouvrage qui fait l'analyse et la critique des d o n n é e s de g r a m m a i r e anglaise f o u r n i e s par les dictionnaires existants a l'usage des p e r s o n n e s qui a p p r e n n e n t l'anglais comme seconde langue ou comme langue é t r a n g è r e . De m a n i è r e ge'nérale, les dictionnaires d o n n e n t des r e n s e i g n e m e n t s de base tels que l ' o r t h o g r a p h e , la p r o n o n c i a t i o n et le sens des mots; c e p e n d a n t , lorsqu'il s'agit d'un dictionnaire dans une langue qui n'est pas la langue m a t e r n e l l e de l'usager, ce d e r n i e r a aussi besoin de r e n s e i g n e m e n t s sur les caractéristiques g r a m m a t i c a l e s des mots recherchés, afin de pouvoir les utiliser c o r r e c t e m e n t dans une phrase, ou pour pouvoir c o m p r e n d r e le sens d'un texte ou d'un discours parlé. La plupart des dictionnaires d'anglais comme seconde langue sont conçus pour r é p o n d r e à ce besoin et fournissent, par d i f f é r e n t s biais, des d o n n é e s sur les règles grammaticales qui s ' a p p l i q u e n t aux d i f f é r e n t s mots. Cet ouvrage nous o f f r e une classification des d o n n é e s g r a m m a t i c a l e s c o n t e n u e s dans les dictionnaires monolingues de langue anglaise comme seconde langue (Dictionnaires ESL). L ' é t u d e porte exclusivement sur les dictionnaires monolingues, car ceux-ci f o u r n i s s e n t davantage de d o n n é e s grammaticales que les dictionnaires bilingues, qui consacrent b e a u c o u p plus de place à la traduction p r o p r e m e n t dite. L'analyse des d o n n é e s grammaticales f o u r n i e s p a r les dictionnaires ESL p r é s e n t é e dans cet ouvrage nous renseigne sur l'exactitude, la précision et l'utilité des d o n n é e s g r a m m a t i c a l e s en question et prend é g a l e m e n t en considération les r e n s e i g n e m e n t s c o m p l é m e n t a i r e s é v e n t u e l l e m e n t fournis par ces dictionnaires, selon leur utilité pour l'usager. Le livre s'intéresse non seulement aux d o n n é e s de la g r a m m a i r e anglaise f o u r n i e s par les dictionnaires ESL, mais aussi à la m a n i è r e dont ces r e n s e i g n e m e n t s sont indiqués. Les r e n s e i g n e m e n t s grammaticaux sont g é n é r a l e m e n t f o u r n i s à l'aide de codes; le livre fait une é t u d e comparative des codes grammaticaux utilisés p a r d i f f é r e n t s dictionnaires ESL. L'ouvrage s'intéresse é g a l e m e n t aux a u t r e s m a n i è r e s de t r a n s m e t t r e les r e n s e i g n e m e n t s grammaticaux, tels que l'usage de définitions, d'exemples et de notes d'usage. Les dictionnaires passés en revue dans ce livre incluent non s e u l e m e n t les principaux dictionnaires p o u r l'usager avancé tels que Γ "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English", le "Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English" et le "Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary", mais aussi plusieurs autres dictionnaires à l'usage d ' é t u d i a n t s moins avancés ou m ê m e d é b u t a n t s , tels que le "Oxford Student's Dictionary of American English", le "Beginner's Dictionary of American English Usage" et le "Longman Handy Learner's Dictionary". Les d o n n é e s g r a m m a t i c a l e s f o u r n i e s par les dictionnaires ESL spécialisés tels que le "Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English", le "Longman

168 Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs" et le "BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English" sont également analysées. Le premier chapitre du livre fait une analyse globale de la lexicographie des dictionnaires ESL et des questions théoriques et pratiques concernant l'incorporation de données grammaticales dans les dictionnaires ESL. Il traite de la théorie de la grammaire dans les dictionnaires ESL et des différents approches linguistiques de cette question. Il examine les moyens divers utilisés pour incorporer les données grammaticales dans les dictionnaires ESL et passe en revue les moyens directs tels que l'usage de notes, d'abbréviations, de codes, et d'explications incorporées dans la définition du mot, et les moyens indirects, tels que l'usage d'exemples et de définitions de mots. Le second chapitre du livre fait une analyse du type de données grammaticales abordées par les dictionnaires ESL, ainsi qu'une étude comparative des moyens divers utilisés dans différents dictionnaires pour transmettre ces données. Le chapitre traite d'abord des moyens utilisés par les dictionnaires ESL pour transmettre les données grammaticales communes à tous les types de dictionnaires, comme par exemple la fonction d'un mot et les formes irrégulières telles que les verbes irréguliers et les pluriels irréguliers des noms; il souligne la ressemblance des dictionnaires ESL avec les autres dictionnaires en cette matière, mais aussi leur différence, en particulier en ce qui concerne l'ampleur des renseignements offerts. Il traite des données grammaticales particulières aux dictionnaires ESL et les divise en quatre catégories. La première catégorie recouvre des données sur la morphologie et la nature des mots et s'intéresse aux règles particulières qui s'appliquent aux mots d'une certaine nature grammaticale ou à certains mots de cette nature. Pour les noms, il s'agit entre autre de données sur le nombre et l'utilisation des articles; pour les verbes, il s'agit de données sur les exceptions concernant l'aspect, la voix ou le temps du verbe, et d'énumèration et de règles d'usage pour les verbes prépositionnels et les expressions verbales; pour les adjectifs et les mots adjectivés, les données se rapportent au degré, à l'emploi comme adjectif du participe passé et à l'utilisation du nom comme attribut; pour les prépositions, il s'agit de données sur le sens et l'usage. La seconde catégorie de données est formée de données sur la syntaxe; elle comprend des données sur les compléments de verbes, noms et adjectifs; des données sur l'ordre des mots pour un mot particulier ou dans des expressions et tournures idiomatiques; des données sur les changements éventuels qui peuvent affecter un mot ou une expression contenant ce mot; des données sur les règles d'accord des noms lorsqu'ils sont utilisés comme sujets d'une phrase ou déterminants d'un pronom; des données sur la fonction syntaxique d'une locution ou d'une expression idiomatique. La troisième catégorie de données grammaticales renferme des données grammaticales sur le discours et renseigne sur l'utilisation des mots dans un contexte qui dépasse celui d'une simple phrase. La quatrième catégorie de données grammaticales fournit des renseignements grammaticaux d'ordre

169 sémantique, autrement dit des données ou des règles grammaticales qui dépendent pour la plupart des caractéristiques sémantiques. L e troisième chapitre du livre présente les résultats d'une enquête menée par l'auteur auprès d'utilisateurs des dictionnaires E S L , pour étudier leurs réactions aux données grammaticales fournies par ces dictionnaires. Dans cette enquête, les utilisateurs devaient évaluer la qualité d'un certain nombre de phrases en anglais, en se basant essentiellement sur leur interpretation des données et règles grammaticales applicables trouvées dans les dictionnaires-type. L e s résultats de cette enquête ont été utilisés pour juger de la clarté de présentations et de l'utilité des données grammaticales fournies par ces dictionnaires. L e quatrième chapitre f a i t une synthèse de l'analyse des données grammaticales passés en revue au second chapitre et des résultats de l'étude rapportée au troisième chapitre; à partir de ces données, il présente des recommendations sur l'évolution de la lexicographie E S L . Parmi ces recommendations s'inscrivent le besoin de continuer à f o u r n i r des données nombreuses et utilisables sur la grammaire anglaise dans les dictionnaires E S L , la nécessité de présenter ces données sous une f o r m e aussi simple que possible, le besoin de standardisation dans la présentation de ces données, et le souhait d'inclure davantage de données grammaticales d'ordre sémantique dans ces dictionnaires. L e modèle suggéré pour la présentation de ce dernier type de données est celui des valences grammaticales selon l'approche de la grammaire par valences.