Browsing by Author "Hiles, Lorna"

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    Categorising example sentences in dictionaries for research purposes
    (Bureau of the WAT, 2011) Hiles, Lorna
    Examples in dictionaries come in many different forms. They may be sentences or phrases. They may be corpus-based or made up by the lexicographer. They may contain the lemma in its uninflected form or they may contain an inflection of the lemma. In some dictionaries the function of examples is to provide contextual support to the meaning of the headword, and in others the grammatical support that they provide is more important. While there is literature on the usefulness of examples, and on whether examples should be corpus-based or not, there is very little on what makes one example more useful than another. I have set out to find out what sort of examples South African school users identify as most helpful. In this article, I look at whether examples in five South African school dictionaries do provide suitable contextual or grammatical support. I have constructed a table to classify example sentences according to different criteria. I filled in this table with randomly selected words and their examples which have been taken from five different South African school dictionaries. The goal of this research is to present characteristics of examples in a way that makes them easier to analyse and compare. This should help lexicographers in future dictionaries check whether they have written or selected the best possible examples for their users' needs.
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    Examples in South African school dictionaries : from theory to practice
    (Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010-03) Hiles, Lorna; Gouws, R. H.; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Afrikaans and Dutch.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: It is generally accepted that illustrative examples are useful in dictionaries, particularly school and learner’s dictionaries. The South African school situation presents unique challenges to lexicographers, as most learners are being taught in English, which is not their home language, so a monolingual school dictionary is used as a learner’s dictionary, and a bilingual school dictionary may not contain the learner’s first language. This research aims to find out how useful examples are to South African learners, and how one can evaluate the effectiveness of examples in dictionaries. The first method used in this thesis is the development of a table of categories, which is used to analyse, compare and evaluate illustrative examples in five different South African school dictionaries. The data from this table is presented in detail, and the results are discussed and conclusions drawn. The second method makes use of questionnaires given to learners to find out whether they are aware of the supportive functions of examples in dictionaries. The result of the table of categories is a set of guidelines and recommendations for selecting or inventing suitable examples for use in school dictionaries. The table of categories can also be used to analyse and compare the examples in existing dictionaries. The result of the learner questionnaires is that learners do actively look for support for the definition in examples, especially if the headword is new to them, or they do not understand the definition. The conclusion of this thesis is that examples are an important part of a dictionary entry and need to be chosen with care, to provide as much support as possible, within the space constraints of that particular dictionary
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    How school dictionaries treat human reproductive organs, and recommendations for South African primary school dictionaries
    (Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (WAT), 2022-12-07) Morris, Lorna Hiles; Hiles, Lorna
    This paper is a pilot study that investigates options for treating human reproductive organs in primary school dictionaries in South Africa, with particular emphasis on illustrations. The need for this study was made apparent during research into the design of an electronic school dictionary, where some learners expressed concern about younger children being exposed to "inappropriate" illustrations in school dictionaries. This article is placed in the South African context and shows how this is a sensitive and relevant topic in South Africa, due to the different cultures that are represented. The article shows how South African school dictionaries currently treat these words, and investigates whether they should be treated any differently. The study includes interviews with primary school teachers and parents, and contains descriptions of existing school dictionary entries, both electronic and print. Literature on the following aspects is covered: taboo topics in dictionaries, cultural aspects of sex education in South Africa, and sex education in primary schools globally. The article will show why it is important to treat these terms in a school dictionary in a clear and unambiguous way, despite this causing potential discomfort to some users. The article will conclude with recommendations for the treatment of human reproductive organs in primary schools, as well as recommendations for further research in this area.
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    Towards a Southern African English defining vocabulary
    (Bureau of the WAT, 2014) Hiles, Lorna
    Controlled defining vocabularies have been used regularly in lexicography since the 1970s. They are mostly employed in learners' and school dictionaries and have been used to ensure that the definitions are easily understood by the dictionary user, and that the words used to define a lemma are not more difficult than the lemma itself. In my experience, defining vocabularies compiled for English dictionaries for a British or American market are not entirely sufficient for southern African dictionaries. Words which would be well-known and used in southern Africa are not included in a foreign defining vocabulary. With this article, it is my intention to find methods of adapting existing defining vocabularies and to compile one that is more useful for southern African school dictionaries. A complete southern African English defining vocabulary is not part of the scope of this paper, but by providing some suggestions, I hope to make the reader realize that there is a need for a complete defining vocabulary that would cater to the needs of a southern African dictionary and its users. Further research would then be an extension of this paper into a full defining vocabulary (DV) that would be used for southern African dictionaries.