A Perspective on the Lexicographic Value of Mega Newspaper Corpora — The Case of Afrikaans in South Africa

Abstract

The aim of this article is to assess the potential use of a mega newspaper corpus, the Media24 archive, in the absence of large balanced and representative corpora, for the compilation of major general dictionaries for Afrikaans. Firstly, an evaluation of Media24 against the lemmalists of both a major single-volume and a multi-volume monolingual dictionary for Afrikaans is under-taken to determine to what extent Media24 correlates with the lemmalists of major dictionaries. Secondly, the strength/suitability of Media24 for lemma selection in categories other than newspa-pers is evaluated. Finally, it is determined what the contribution could be of Media24 to lexical sense distinction, selection of examples of usage, and typical collocations.

Keywords: afrikaans, media24 archive, newspaper corpora, balanced corpora, representative corpora, word/lexicographic/lexical sense dis-tinction, lemmalist, corpus design