The Usefulness of the Definitions of Abstract Nouns in OALD7 and NODE

• Authors: Marta Grochocka
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper presents a study aiming at comparing the usefulness of the definitions of abstract nouns in a pedagogical dictionary (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, OALD7) and a nativespeaker dictionary of English (The New Oxford Dictionary of English, NODE). It starts with a brief description of the subclass of abstract nouns which is conceived of as a prototypically-structured category composed of members exhibiting different degrees of resemblance to the prototype. Moreover, the most prototypical members of the subclass of abstract nouns are proposed and a comparison of the definitions of abstract nouns from the two dictionaries is made. The paper then reports on the empirical study which investigated the usefulness of the definitions of abstract nouns from the two dictionaries on a group of 60 dictionary users whose level of English oscillated between upper intermediate and advanced. Finally, the results of the study are discussed and an attempt is made to set out the possible reasons for the final outcome of the study.

Keywords

EN

Abstract nouns; definitions; OALD7; NODE

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 44
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 469-501

Dates

published

2008-12-01

online

2009-01-23

Contributors

author

Marta Grochocka

• Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10010-008-0024-9