The topic of the lecture was computational lexicography and how to create a dictionary. During the lecture we also came across concordances and the KWIC concordance.

Quiz

1. What is a KWIC concordance?
2. Which are the two main components of lexicon construction based on empirical data?

1. KWIC concordance is aspecial kind of corpus-based dictionary. For each word of a corpus is given its context of occurrence (e.g. left/right contexts)
2. Data acquisition (especially if it is a dictionary or a database of a hardly explored language or of a special dialect) and external lexical evaluation (you have to evaluate the utility for the user)

This lecture dealt with semantics. First, the main types of definition (e.g. syntagmatical and paradigmatical definitions) and microstructure were revised again, then we went on to standard dictionary definitions and semantic relations.

Homework

• semantic components
• semantic relations
• semantic fields
• definitions

Ginger Beer

Fermentation has been used by mankind for thousands of years for raising bread, fermenting wine and brewing beer.
The products of the fermentation of sugar by baker's yeast
Saccharomyces cerevisiae (a fungus) are ethyl alcohol and
carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide causes bread to rise and gives effervescent
drinks their bubbles.
This action of yeast on sugar is used to 'carbonate'
beverages, as in the addition of bubbles to champagne.

examples for semantic components:

• Saccharomyces cerevisiae (a fungus)

• "champagne", "wine" and "beer" are co-hyponyms of the hyperonym "beverage"
• Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a synonym to "fungus"

• "fermentation", "fermentation of sugar", "fermenting""products of fermentation", "beer", "wine", "champagne", "beverage", "brewing", "ethyl alcohol"
• "carbon dioxide", "to carbonate"
• "effervescent", "bubbles"

• "Fermentation has been used (...) for raising bread, fermenting wine,and brewing beer"
• "Carbon dioxide causes bread to rise and gives effervescent drinks their bubbles"

The contents of this session were all referring to the major topic of syntax: syntactic categories (e.g. parts of speech), structural and semiotic relations and text structure on examples of various texttypes (recipe, website,...)

On December, 12 a guest lecturer did a lecture about Toolbox, which is a kind of a database designed for field work purposes. "Toolbox" analyses and stores text and converts it into an ordered dictionary.

The lecture was dedicated to pronunciation, representation and description of sounds.

Homework

• List
• consonants of German which do not occur in English
• consonants of English which do not occur in German
• vowels of German which do not occur in English
• vowels of English which do not occur in German
• List
• characters of German which do not occur in English
• characters of English which do not occur in German
• 5 English graphemes containing more than one character
• 5 German graphemes containing more than one character

• German consonants not occurring in English:
• sch
• ch (pronounced like in "Chemie")
• English consonants not occurring in German:
• the "th"-sound
• the English "r"-sound
• vowels of German not occurring in English:
• "ö", "ä", "ü"
• "eu"
• "ei"
• vowels of English not occurring in German:
• "ou" (like in "our")
• "a" (as in "fat")
• "au" (as in "laugh")
• German characters not occurring in English:
• "ä", "ü", "ö"
• "ß"
• English graphemes with more than one character:
• "th"
• "ch"
• "ea" (--> "head")
• "gh" (--> "laugh")
• "ti" (--> "exception")
• German graphemes with more than one character:
• "sch"
• "ch"
• "eu"
• "ie"
• "tsch"

The lecture dealt with the surface and deep structure of dictionaries. Since semasiological dictionaries have a table as a basic form (with rows represented by lexical entries and columns representing lexical information) the next topic was dedicated to tables and how to make and format them in word processors and HTML.

This lecture's topic was "Applied Linguistics" and how to apply text theory e.g. by formatting a text.

Homework

1. What are text objects? Name two and give typical properties.
2. What are document objects? Name one and give typical properties.
3. What are paragraph styles? Name two types of paragraph. For each type, give their typical properties.

1. characters: properties of characters are font, size, colour; characters can also be underlined, made bold or be written in italics.
   tables: properties of tables include borders, number of rows/columns, spacing, head-row and also properties of the characters which fill out the cells
2. page: properties of a page are the size, the margin, header and footer
3. Paragraph styles in word processors format paragraphs by giving a clear structure to them. Paragraph properties are e.g. headings and subheadings (heading 1, heading 2,...), spacing, indentation. In word processors these properties are usually predefined in the "Default"-settings, but a user can alter these settings to make them more appropriate for his purpose.

The lecture on January, 18 dealt with lexical and sentence semantics, semantic components and semantic relations.

Tasks

1. Find examples of at least 3 appraisive expressions in German and English
2. What would be a prototypical
• car
• dog
3. Make your own definition for "casting show"
4. Describe the meaning of
• The Scissor Sisters sing
• Today the Scissor Sisters sing

1. English:
   • ... the greatest event...
   • absolutely boring
   • beautiful
   German:
   • super
   • total gut
   • langweilig
   
   
2. prototypical car: depends on the country from where you are or for people from which country you have to find this prototype; e.g. in Germany/for Germans you probably would name VW or Mercedes
   prototypical dog: e.g. a shepherd


3. A "casting show" is a show which searches for talented singers/actors/dancers/...


4. • The Scissor Sisters sing: general statement
   • Today the Scissor Sisters sing: a statement referring to a special date

Previous week's topic ("Structure") was continued. During the first part of this lecture we looked again on structural relations. After this revision followed the introduction of semiotic relations and of the sign hierarchy. Afterwards we looked at the text structure of several examples (e.g. a recipe, a website, an instruction).

Homework

1. Identify the syntagmatic relations in the following constructions:
• “department store detective”
• “three people saw a woman and her dog in the shop”
2. Identify the paradigmatic relations in the following sets (describe similarities and differences):
• {/p/, /t/, /k/}
• {“object”, “furniture”, “chair”, “table”}
• {“walk”, “drive”, “run”, “ride”}

1. In " department store detective" there is a syntagmatic relation between "department", "store" and "detective". This relation determines the word order: you cannot say e.g. "store department detective" or "store detective department", at least not without changing the meaning.
   The syntagmatic relations in "three people saw a woman and her dog in the shop” "glue" together the nouns and the verb as subject/object and predicate.
2. The items all belong to the same category: {/p/, /t/, /k/} are devoiced consonants. "Paradigmatical relations" mean relations of choice, which in turn means that you can "replace" e.g. /p/ with /t/ and the result would still make sense ("pool" vs. "tool"), however, the meaning can be different. The same is with the other sets: {"object”, “furniture”, “chair”, “table"} and {“walk”, “drive”, “run”, “ride”} belong to the same wordfield ("furniture"/ "verbs of movement") and are replaceable by each other with possible change in meaning.

The lecture introduced the topic of syntax with the subtopics "Structure" and "Structural relations", "Parts of speech" and "Phrasal categories".