Populating sub-entries in dictionaries with multi-word units from concordance lines

Abstract

Lexicography is primarily concerned with the representation of words and their senses in dictionaries. By words most dictionary users and lexicographers refer to a combination of characters delineated by spaces on both sides. This article discusses the weakness of this approach in the selection of dictionary entries. Through an inspection of concordance lines generated from a multi-million Setswana corpus, it is argued and demonstrated how multi-word units (MWUs), also known as multi-word expressions (MWEs), may be extracted from concordance lines to supple-ment dictionary entries. It is illustrated how both monolingual and bilingual Setswana dictionaries may be enhanced by the addition of MWEs as sub-entries.

Keywords: setswana, lexicography, multi-word unit, corpus, concor-dance, multi-word expression, collocation, word, sub-entries, dictionary