Lexicographic Approaches to Sense Disambiguation in Monolingual Dictionaries and Equivalent Differentiation in Bilingual Dictionaries Summary

&e article discusses methods of sense disambiguation in monolingual dictionaries and equivalent di'erentiation in bilingual dictionaries. In current dictionaries, sense disambiguation and equivalent di'erentiation is presented in the form of speci%ers or glosses, collocators or indications of context, (domain) labels, metalinguistic and encyclopaedic information. Each method is presented and illustrated by actual samples of dictionary articles taken from monoand bilingual dictionaries. &e last part of the article is devoted to equivalent di'erentiation in bilingual decoding dictionaries. In bilingual dictionaries, equivalent di'erentiation is often needed to describe the lack of agreement between the source language (SL) and target language (TL). &e article concludes by stating that equivalent di'erentiation should be written in the native language of the target audience and sense indicators in a monolingual learner’s dictionary should be words that the users are most familiar with.


Introduction
One of the problems encountered in (general) lexicography is the problem of polysemy.e question posed by lexicographers is how to tackle polysemy in a way that is most user-friendly.Is it enough to split di erent senses without giving any more detailed information on the meanings themselves?Does information supplied in brackets help dictionary users to nd the sense they are looking for?Is it necessary to make additional information typographically visible?Should the same criteria be observed in short and in long entries?Are the same principles equally suitable for both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries?ese are some of the questions that need to be answered before starting any lexicographic work.e problem of polysemy has been addressed by numerous scholars who deal with lexicography and it is dealt with in all important lexicographic works (cf.Landau 2001;Béjoint 2000;Cowie 1999;Hartmann 2001;Jackson 2002;Svensén 2009).Ascertaining how many senses a lexeme has and in what order to arrange them are di cult decisions for a lexicographer to make, and dictionaries may di er quite markedly in their respective policies.e area of sense disambiguation (also referred to as demarcation of meaning) has an immediate impact on lexicography.If we take, for example, the context surrounding the noun hand as the part of the body at the end of the arm, we can see that it di ers from the context surrounding the hand as a part of a clock or watch that points to the numbers.It seems sensible to try to devise principles to distinguish between them.
In a bilingual context, the problem of equivalent di erentiation is even more complex, since we are dealing with two di erent languages and only in rare cases does the distribution of meaning coincide exactly.For that reason, it is especially important to describe the lack of agreement between the SL and TL (cf.Svensén 2009, 261-2).is can be done by adding certain distinctive features on the side where the meaning range is wider or the degree of stylistic or other marking is lower.Such comments have an important role in equivalent di erentiation (also called equivalent discrimination) -that is, they provide a more detailed speci cation of usage and shades of meaning in order to guide the user towards the correct equivalent. is article is aimed at discussing ways of sense disambiguation in monolingual dictionaries and equivalent di erentiation in bilingual dictionaries -a piece of information present in all modern dictionaries and an element that helps the user to locate the information he/she is looking for.

Sense Disambiguation and Equivalent Differentiation in Existing Dictionaries
Modern dictionaries use several means of sense disambiguation and equivalent di erentiation.A more implicit way is the de nition, since the de nition itself often suggests the context (e.g.hand -a person who does physical work on a farm or in a factory; underlined by the author of the contribution).Besides this implicit way of including semantic information, more explicit ways can be found in di erent dictionaries.In mono-as well as bilingual dictionaries, sense indicators (also called sense discriminations by some scholars) are used.Sense indicators can also be referred to as equivalent di erentiation or equivalent discrimination in bilingual dictionaries.
ey are realized by speci ers or glosses, collocators or indication of context, (domain) labels and metalinguistic and encyclopaedic information.
In sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4, the above-mentioned techniques used for sense disambiguation and equivalent di erentiation are explained in greater detail.

Specifiers or Glosses
Speci ers or glosses (cf.Atkins and Rundell 2008, 214-6;Svensén 2009, 262-3) may consist of expressions having a certain (content-)paradigmatic relationship to the headword whose meaning is to be speci ed.ey can contain many di erent types of information, such as superordinates (e.g.wolverine below), 1 synonyms, co-hyponyms, typical modi ers and paraphrases (e.g.corridor below).In monolingual learners' dictionaries, speci ers are now used in the form of signposts, guidewords, short cuts or items in a menu (as they are variously called in di erent dictionaries) and are dealt with in detail in section 3. is is the reason for the absence of an example from a bilingual dictionary.

Collocators or Indications of Context
Collocators2 or indications of context (cf.Atkins and Rundell 2008, 217-8;Svensén 2009, 263-4) are an entry component and are thought up by lexicographers to help a user choose the appropriate sense of the headword or the appropriate translation equivalent.ey are words that represent a lexical set, i.e. a group of words which belong to the same wordclass and which are similar in meaning.ey show typical textual surroundings of a certain lemma.e grammatical relationship of collocator to headword depends on the wordclass of the lexical unit.For example, collocators of adjectives are usually nouns typically modi ed by the headword (e.g.sti below).

1
The English-Slovene sample entries are taken from an ongoing project aimed at the compilation of a general English-Slovene dictionary.

(Domain) Labels
Domain labels are one of the most common methods used for sense disambiguation.

Special Feature Used for Sense Disambiguation in Monolingual Learners' Dictionaries
A feature relatively newly introduced into monolingual learners' dictionaries to aid users with the disambiguation of polysemous items is called signposts (LDOCE5), guidewords (CALD3), short cuts (OALD7) or items in a menu (MED2, COBUILD5).e di erence between signposts, guidewords and short cuts on the one hand and menus on the other is that signposts, guidewords and short cuts are placed at the beginning of de nitions within entries, whereas menus are placed at the top of entries.ey all give the core meanings of highly polysemous words.None of the ve dictionaries under scrutiny use the two devices conjointly.A comparison between the previous editions of LDOCE and COBUILD and the current editions shows that the two dictionaries have inverted their strategies: LDOCE has abandoned the combined use of menus and signposts in favour of signposts alone, while COBUILD has replaced signposts by menus.
A signpost 4 is a particular type of speci er which is increasingly used in monolingual learners' dictionaries.Signposts help the users to make mental connections with the word in the context in which they have encountered it.Signposts do not replace the full de nition, but rather form a quick menu for the user's eye to scan.ey guide the user quickly to the meaning he/she wants and are often realized by a synonym or paraphrase of the headword (pool, OALD7, senses 1, 4 and 5) but may also o er a superordinate of the headword (pool, OALD7, sense 6) or an indication of the domain or subject matter (pool, OALD7, sense 7).For example:  It should be pointed out that in many cases the context in which the user has met an unknown word will prompt the choice of signpost.Consequently, users should usually be able to select the right sense paragraph to read fully without having to read all the details in several other paragraphs rst.

Equivalent Differentiation in a Bilingual Decoding Dictionary
So far, various methods of sense disambiguation in mono-as well as bilingual dictionaries in general have been presented, while monolingual learners' dictionaries have been dealt with more speci cally in the previous section.At this point, I would like to focus on the purposes of the inclusion of equivalent di erentiation in a bilingual dictionary for decoding.Careful indication of the meanings of the word being handled is necessary for various reasons and it is important especially in complicated and complex entries.It may make a look-up process quicker and easier in long entries but very often it is necessary because of partial equivalence, lexical gaps or culturespeci c items.
Another dilemma faced by compilers of bilingual dictionaries only is which language to use for sense disambiguation.Is it appropriate to use the source language or the target language of the dictionary?Or should the native language of the user be chosen as the metalanguage of the dictionary, thus also for equivalent di erentiation?ese questions should be answered before starting work on a bilingual dictionary.Without a shadow of a doubt, it is the target users and their needs that are of the utmost importance.Consequently, it can be claimed that the metalanguage should always be the target users' mother tongue.
I would now like to present some sample entries from a bilingual English-Slovene dictionary intended for decoding purposes.All these entries employ at least one method of equivalent di erentiation but very often several of the types of equivalent di erentiation will have to cooperate in order for the desired result to be achieved.
Equivalent di erentiation is used in highly polysemous entries.e primary purpose of equivalent di erentiation is to help the user quickly identify the translation equivalent that ts his/her context.Equivalent di erentiation can be included in the form of indications of context: In sense 2, the indication of context implies that this sense is restricted to a person, sense 3 to a characteristic, sense 4 to a son or daughter and sense 5 to a tone.Indications of context may indicate typical referents or reference domains.Apart from the indication of context, the domain labels (GLAS.= MUSIC, ZASTAR.= ARCHAIC) are used and sense 5 illustrates equivalent di erentiation by cooperation of a domain label and indication of context.e example that follows illustrates the entry for nanny goat, whose translation equivalent in Slovene is koza.e noun koza is a polysemous word in Slovene (in the Dictionary of Standard Slovene it has 5 senses) and the gloss in brackets that precedes the translational equivalent tells the user that in this particular case it refers to a female goat -a piece of information that is helpful even though it is perhaps not absolutely necessary if we take into account that the user comes across the word in context.ere are several common types of gloss, i.e., a (near) synonym of the lemma, a short paraphrase of the particular (sub-)sense of the lemma, a hyperonym of the lemma or a typical hyponym.In the above example, the gloss used is a hyperonym of the lemma.e same holds true of sense 1 (woman, mother) of the sample entry below (old woman), whereas the gloss provided in sense 2 (cowardly man) is an example of a short paraphrase.Very often, indications of context suggest possible collocations (cf.lay, senses 2-6, 8-10).Another factor that has to be highlighted is that one sense in a monolingual dictionary does not necessarily correspond to one sense in a bilingual dictionary.For example, lay may be de ned as 'to put sth down, especially on the oor, ready to be used' (OALD7, sense 2).e examples of use that illustrate this particular sense are: to lay a carpet/cable/pipe e foundations of the house are being laid today.
ey had laid the groundwork for future development.e collocates (carpet/ cable/pipe, foundations, groundwork) of the English lemma produce quite di erent Slovene translations because of collocational requirements in Slovene.We can see that the rst example is translated by means of the verb položiti (sense 1), whereas the second and the third ones are translated in the same way, i.e. as postaviti (sense 3).It is helpful for users to include additional information in some entries (e.g., nouns denoting animals) although this is already a piece of information that can be regarded as an encyclopaedic one.But in this way the user quickly learns more about the lemma (e.g.anchovy is a sh (= riba) rather than a mammal, bird, snake, etc.).Encyclopaedic information is also necessary in culture-speci c items where the concept of the SL lemma is unknown to the TL speaker.For example:  e encyclopaedic information in brackets following the translation equivalent tells the users that, rstly, there is a di erence between this unit for measuring liquid in Great Britain and in the USA, and, secondly, the users learn the unit of measurement it equals.
Similarly, encyclopaedic information is provided in some other culture-speci c items.e translation equivalents o ered in the entries National League and Sally Army can certainly be used in context, but the encyclopaedic information helps the users who are not familiar with what the National League (i.e. one of the two leagues in the United States-based professional Major League Baseball organization) and the Sally Army (i.e. the international Christian organization that helps the poor) are to understand the meaning of these two entries.A kind of encyclopaedic information may also be represented by di erent symbols (e.g. a symbol used in email addresses) shown in brackets after the translation equivalent.As has been seen from the above examples, di erent ways of equivalent di erentiation are a powerful force in matching equivalents across languages, and therefore including di erent types of equivalent di erentiation are an absolute must in bilingual dictionaries.

Conclusion
e function of sense indicators and equivalent di erentiation is to guide the user to the appropriate sense in a monolingual dictionary and to the appropriate translation equivalent in a bilingual dictionary, respectively.For this reason, they are an indispensable part of a dictionary entry, especially a dictionary entry consisting of several senses or providing several translation equivalents, since they enable the user to nd the right sense or the right translation equivalent more quickly.e lexicographers should strive to provide short but informative sense indicators.If sense indicators are used (e.g. in a monolingual learner's dictionary), they should be those words with which users are probably most familiar.If they are used in a bilingual dictionary to disambiguate di erent translation equivalents, they should be written in the native language of Figure 1.Specifiers in a bilingual dictionary.
Figure 4. Shaded examples show part-of-speech labelling.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Metalinguistic equivalent differentiation in the form of explicit constructional information.Encyclopaedic information 3 is useful when dealing with culture-speci c items.For example:
pool ... noun, ... FOR SWIMMING 1 [C] = SWIMMING POOL: Does the hotel have a pool?◊ relaxing by the pool OF WATER 2 [C] a small area of still water, especially one that has formed naturally: freshwater pools ◊ a rock pool (= between rocks by the sea) OF LIQUID/LIGHT 3 [C] ~ (of sth) a small amount of liquid or light lying on a surface: e body was lying in a pool of blood.◊ a pool of light GROUP OF THINGS/PEOPLE 4 [C] ~ (of sth) a supply of things or money that is shared by a group of people and can be used when needed: a pool of cars used by the rm's sales force ◊ a pool car 5 [C] ~ (of sth) a group of people available for work when needed: a pool of cheap labour GAME 6 [U] a game for two people played with 16 coloured balls on a table, often in pubs and bars.Players use cues (= long sticks) to try to hit the balls into pockets at the edge of the table: a pool table ◊ to shoot (= play) pool FOOTBALL 7 the pools [pl.] = FOOTBALL POOLS: He does the pools every week.◊ a pools winner ...
Figure 8. Equivalent differentiation in the form of indications of context and domain labels.
Figure 9. Gloss narrowing down the specific sense of the TL polysemous word.
Figure10.Glosses in the form of a hyperonym and short paraphrase.
Figure 11.Indications of context suggesting possible collocations.
Figure 12.Encyclopaedic information in nouns denoting animals.

National
Figure 14.Encyclopaedic information crucial for the understanding of the culture-specific lemma.

at 2
Figure 15.Encyclopaedic information in the form of a symbol.

new government does not have popular support.), glagol
Apart from part-of-speech labelling, metalinguistic equivalent di erentiation consists of explicit constructional information or notes.For example: government ... noun 1 [C+sing./pl.v.] (often the Government) (abbr.govt) the group of people who are responsible for controlling a country or a state: to lead/form a government ◊ the last Conservative government ◊ the government of the day ◊ Foreign governments have been consulted about this decision.government sam.1. vlada: government forces vladne sile 2. samo edn.vlada, vladanje: be in government vladati 3. JEZ.vezava, rekcija RABA Edninsko obliko samostalnika government lahko v prvem pomenu uporabljamo z glagolom v ednini ali v množini.Glagol v ednini uporabimo, če imamo v mislih vlado kot celoto (npr.e v množini pa uporabimo v primeru, ko imamo v mislih posamezne člane vlade (npr.e