Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

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language, all based on the 100 million. ^ l^word British National Corpus, the 30 ^ -' million word Longman Lancaster Corpus, ^ ^ the only corpus of British and American speech, and the 5 million word ^ongman - Learner's Corpus.
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- The only dictionary to recognize the V - Importance of spoken English, showing;the words and phrases used to comitiunicate f nattiirally in spoken English. \
f^EWi frequency information sfThe most frequent words in spoken and ¦viritten English are marked, to show learners which words are'important. Over 150 graphs compare tlie freqj^pncy of words in spoken and written English, British and American-usage, and frequency of collocations, grammar pa^erns and synonyms.- ^
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Fülszöveg

L(ji\G.ViAN
DICTIONARY OFt,
conteniporary"






This new dictionary ravcaU for tho first "" time the ricliness of th* Engiifh « ^
lar-nuage, from naturai informal ' ^
:^xonversation to literature and business
language, all based on the 100 million. ^ l^word British National Corpus, the 30 ^ -' million word Longman Lancaster Corpus, ^ ^ the only corpus of British and American speech, and the 5 million word ^ongman - Learner's Corpus.
^NEW Spoken English 1
- The only dictionary to recognize the V - Importance of spoken English, showing;the words and phrases used to comitiunicate f nattiirally in spoken English. \
f^EWi frequency information sfThe most frequent words in spoken and ¦viritten English are marked, to show learners which words are'important. Over 150 graphs compare tlie freqj^pncy of words in spoken and written English, British and American-usage, and frequency of collocations, grammar pa^erns and synonyms.- ^
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^ NpW. Colour illustrations j-y .Over 2300 words illustrated,; including 24 pages of full colour.' ' ' ' ^
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There are two core features of a dictionary in terms of which its degree of excellence and achievement must be measured:
• coverage
• definition
As regards coverage, readers have to bo assured that the words they need to understand and use are included, and that such inclusion reflects up-to-date occurrence in material from a wide range of English-speaking countries and from sources dealing with a wide range of subject matter. The subject matter must embrace technology and scholarship as well as sport, leisure, and social activity; and the sources must include not only the printed record and its contemporary teletext surrogates but also the ubiquitous oral language of everyday experience.
The advent of computerised corpora enables us to achieve a greatly enhanced coverage, and the team led by Delia Summers has been in the vanguard both in developing such corpora and in exploiting such material for lexicographical purposes. Ms Summers has been especially involved in masterminding the Spoken English Corpus which has been put to prominent use for the first time in this new edition of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. In consequence of new initiatives on coverage, the new LDOCE is about one-fifth larger than its predecessor.
The second core feature I specified was definition. At the heart of definition lies semantic analysis, with lexicographers ensuring that every major sense of a word as it occurs in contemporary use has been dissected by minds as delicately sharp as any surgeon's scalpel. Each of these senses has then to be explained to the user of the dictionary. And how better to explain than to do so within the justly famous LDOCE defining vocabulary, now still further refined and improved? With every definition expressed within a vocabulary of around two thousand basic and familiar words, all learners - even those with as yet only a modest command of English - can readily understand all the meanings of the many thousands of head-words in the dictionary.
Take marital status: this rather pompous and bureaucratic phrase is now straightforwardly defined as "an expression used on official forms to ask whether someone is married or not."
Nor is the defining vocabulary of value only to LDOCE users. It is also a significant check on the lexicographers themselves, obliging them to push their semantic analysis to the limit and enabling them to be sure that no aspect of the meaning is left out, still less left vague or woolly.
But lexical coverage and definition are not enough to satisfy the lexicographers responsible for LDOCE. They keep in the forefront of their minds the knowledge that the users of their dictionary are learners of English: learners in a myriad of countries, with a myriad of interests, and with a myriad of linguistic needs. These needs include stylistic and pragmatic guidance; and the example oi marital status illustrates how they are met. The very definition shows the learner that it is a formal, written phrase used by officials - and they thus get the tacit warning that they should not inquire about the 'marital status' of someone they meet at a party! Vissza