Grammar Labels for Verbs in English Monolingual Learners’ Dictionaries

The labels ‘passive’ and ‘progressive,’ as well as ‘not passive’ and ‘not progressive,’ are those most commonly adopted in English monolingual learners’ dictionaries to indicate the grammatical category of verb headwords. However, it can happen that for specific verbs very different indications are...

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Main Author: Dominic Stewart
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Verona 2020-12-01
Series:Iperstoria
Subjects:
Online Access:https://iperstoria.it/article/view/921
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author Dominic Stewart
author_facet Dominic Stewart
author_sort Dominic Stewart
collection DOAJ
description The labels ‘passive’ and ‘progressive,’ as well as ‘not passive’ and ‘not progressive,’ are those most commonly adopted in English monolingual learners’ dictionaries to indicate the grammatical category of verb headwords. However, it can happen that for specific verbs very different indications are provided from one dictionary to the next, a fact which would appear to derive primarily from diverging interpretations of corpus data on the part of lexicographers, and more specifically, from diverging interpretations of which corpus occurrences qualify as passive and progressive respectively for any given verb. This will lead to the discussion of a suggested conflict of form and function in corpus lexicography. Further, it is striking that the labels passive and progressive are prioritised at the expense of other verb labels such as imperative–used very sparingly in dictionaries–simple present, perfective and first person, which are not used at all. The corpus consulted is primarily the British Web 2007 (ukWac), but comparisons will be made with data from the British National Corpus.
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spelling doaj.art-771ae46f016d4572b4c4c7d5e34599e52022-12-21T18:12:54ZengDepartment of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of VeronaIperstoria2281-45822020-12-0101610.13136/2281-4582/2020.i16.921808Grammar Labels for Verbs in English Monolingual Learners’ DictionariesDominic StewartThe labels ‘passive’ and ‘progressive,’ as well as ‘not passive’ and ‘not progressive,’ are those most commonly adopted in English monolingual learners’ dictionaries to indicate the grammatical category of verb headwords. However, it can happen that for specific verbs very different indications are provided from one dictionary to the next, a fact which would appear to derive primarily from diverging interpretations of corpus data on the part of lexicographers, and more specifically, from diverging interpretations of which corpus occurrences qualify as passive and progressive respectively for any given verb. This will lead to the discussion of a suggested conflict of form and function in corpus lexicography. Further, it is striking that the labels passive and progressive are prioritised at the expense of other verb labels such as imperative–used very sparingly in dictionaries–simple present, perfective and first person, which are not used at all. The corpus consulted is primarily the British Web 2007 (ukWac), but comparisons will be made with data from the British National Corpus.https://iperstoria.it/article/view/921lexicography, corpus linguistics, learners’ dictionaries, frequency of verbs, grammatical categories, passive
spellingShingle Dominic Stewart
Grammar Labels for Verbs in English Monolingual Learners’ Dictionaries
Iperstoria
lexicography, corpus linguistics, learners’ dictionaries, frequency of verbs, grammatical categories, passive
title Grammar Labels for Verbs in English Monolingual Learners’ Dictionaries
title_full Grammar Labels for Verbs in English Monolingual Learners’ Dictionaries
title_fullStr Grammar Labels for Verbs in English Monolingual Learners’ Dictionaries
title_full_unstemmed Grammar Labels for Verbs in English Monolingual Learners’ Dictionaries
title_short Grammar Labels for Verbs in English Monolingual Learners’ Dictionaries
title_sort grammar labels for verbs in english monolingual learners dictionaries
topic lexicography, corpus linguistics, learners’ dictionaries, frequency of verbs, grammatical categories, passive
url https://iperstoria.it/article/view/921
work_keys_str_mv AT dominicstewart grammarlabelsforverbsinenglishmonolinguallearnersdictionaries