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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Polish Word Sketches, Adam Radziszewski, Adam Kilgarriff, Robert Lew Nov 2011

Polish Word Sketches, Adam Radziszewski, Adam Kilgarriff, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

Word sketches are one-page automatic, corpus-based summaries of a word's grammatical and collocational behaviour. They were first used in the production of the Macmillan English Dictionary (Rundell 2002). At that point, word sketches only existed for English. Today, the Sketch Engine is available, a corpus tool which takes as input a corpus of any language and corresponding grammar patterns and which generates word sketches for the words of that language. It also automatically generates a thesaurus and 'sketch differences', which specify similarities and differences between near-synonyms. A web corpus of Polish was morpho-syntactically tagged and loaded into the Sketch Engine. …


Jaki Słownik Wybrać?, Robert Lew Jan 2004

Jaki Słownik Wybrać?, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

No abstract provided.


How Do Polish Learners Of English Rate Bilingual And Monolingual Dictionaries?, Robert Lew Jan 2004

How Do Polish Learners Of English Rate Bilingual And Monolingual Dictionaries?, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

The topic of this paper is the evaluation by Polish learners of English of bilingual and monolingual dictionaries used by those learners. Data for the paper come from 712 Polish learners of English representing a broad range of EFL proficiency levels. Subjects were asked to rate two dictionaries: their dictionary of first choice and their dictionary of second choice. The effect of choice as a predictor variable is also explored. A tendency is revealed for the mid-level competence learners to give the lowest ratings to their dictionaries. Monolingual dictionaries were given significantly higher ratings than bilingual dictionaries. Subjects rated dictionaries …


Designing Relational Database Structures For Storing And Processing Language Questionnaire Data: Example From A Study In Dictionary Use, Robert Lew Jan 2003

Designing Relational Database Structures For Storing And Processing Language Questionnaire Data: Example From A Study In Dictionary Use, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

The author discusses a methodological approach to storing, structuring, and processing complex data for a large-scale dictionary use study.


Questionnaires In Dictionary Use Research: A Reexamination, Robert Lew Jan 2002

Questionnaires In Dictionary Use Research: A Reexamination, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

The present paper re-examines the usefulness of questionnaires in dictionary use research, using Glynn Hatherall's well-known criticism of questionnaires as a starting point. It is argued here that charges directed at questionnaires apply equally easily to the alternatives suggested by Hatherall. It is claimed that some research questions require a questionnaire approach. It is also demonstrated through example that unreliability of questionnaire-based studies may well result from design factors unrelated to questionnaires themselves. Use of multiple methods and careful design is advocated. Finally, suggestions are offered for improving questionnaire design in dictionary use research.


A Study In The Use Of Bilingual And Monolingual Dictionaries By Polish Learners Of English: A Preliminary Report, Robert Lew Jan 2002

A Study In The Use Of Bilingual And Monolingual Dictionaries By Polish Learners Of English: A Preliminary Report, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

The paper presents a selection of results from a study investigating dictionary use by 712 Polish learners of English representing a variety of FL competence levels and backgrounds. Data from Learner Survey, experiment, and Teacher Survey are brought in to test hypotheses relating to a variety of aspects of dictionary use. Here two aspects have been selected for presentation. First, frequency with which learners seek different types of information in their dictionaries is analyzed. It is found that the need for meaning and equivalents dominates over non-semantic information at all levels but the highest. At the advanced level, interest in …


Differences In The Scope Of Obstruent Voicing Assimilation In Learners' English As A Consequence Of Regional Variation In Polish, Robert Lew Jan 2002

Differences In The Scope Of Obstruent Voicing Assimilation In Learners' English As A Consequence Of Regional Variation In Polish, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

No abstract provided.


Towards A Taxonomy Of Linguistic Jokes, Robert Lew Jan 1997

Towards A Taxonomy Of Linguistic Jokes, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

A classification system for linguistic jokes is proposed: (1) verbal, (2) syntactic, (3) phonological, (4) orthographic, (5) deicitc reference, (6) specific vs nonspecific interpretation, (7) pragmatic ambiguity, (8) type of modality, & (9) multiple ambiguity. Under (3), it is noted that dialect differences can contribute to the relative success or failure of these jokes. In discussing (4), it is noted that this type may increase in popularity, due primarily to the pervasiveness of electronic communication & Internet access. Additionally, it is maintained that (4) should be considered a subtype, because other categories may also apply, making this a weaker taxonomic …


Ambiguity-Generating Devices In Linguistic Verbal Jokes, Robert Lew Jan 1996

Ambiguity-Generating Devices In Linguistic Verbal Jokes, Robert Lew

Robert Lew

The paper argues that ambiguity is a desirable and purposeful element of linguistic verbal jokes and explains and illustrates the mechanisms which support ambiguity.