Re: [Corpora-List] Incidence of MWEs

From: Will Fitzgerald (will.fitzgerald@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Mar 16 2006 - 01:05:47 MET

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    Really, all I was trying to say was that, for certain purposes,
    especially dictionaries for native speakers, rules for interpreting
    MWEs allow the users to understand many of them without resorting to
    the dictionary; perhaps this accounts for the 'bias against MWEs' that
    Robert Amsler sees.

    I notice that m-w.com has 'light pen' in its lexicon, but with the
    older definition. It has none of the others John Sowa mentions. It
    does have 'geoduck' (a kind of big clam) but not 'littlejack' (a kind
    of little clam). It does have 'littleneck,' "also called 'littleneck
    clam'." It has 'butter clam,' 'hard clam', and 'hard-shell clam.' So,
    another explanation of the putative bias against MWEs in dictionary
    resources is just lack of coverage in general--as well as out of
    dateness, which Amsler noted.

    But this is pretty much off topic at this point, so perhaps I'd best clam up.



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