POLÜSEEMIA JA LEKSIKOGRAAFIA
Polysemy and lexicography

Summary/Abstract: Linguists, computational linguists and language technologists all agree that polysemy is not easy to handle, either in theories or in applications. The only discipline dealing with an exhaustive description of semantic relations is lexicography. Although the division of meaning and inventory of word senses has mostly been considered a domain of chance without even dreaming of a theory (not at least until the 1990s), a dictionary is a welcome tool for empirical research, providing a preliminary list of senses. The next step should consist in the comparison of the dictionary data with those of a linguistic corpus, but unfortunately we are still lacking sufficiently large corpora, let alone convenient user interfaces with statistical support. The present paper starts with a comparison of the proportion of polysemy in word inventories of different languages, going on to describe, on the basis of the Defining Dictionary of Standard Estonian, the different ways used to explicate word meanings. The results are compared to the data published on a defining dictionary of English (LDOCE = Procter, P. (ed). Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Harlow and London: Longman Group Ltd, 1978. 3rd edition 1995). Finally, some shortcomings typical of dictionary semantics (sense enumeration) are discussed.

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