Faglige oplysninger i monolingvale betydningsordbøger

Abstract

Monolingual defining dictionaries often give the impression of explaining socially
relevant terms from a wide range of different subject fields. In practice, they include
but a fraction of the millions of terms in the various subject fields, of course. At the
same time, however, this particular part of the lemma stock of general-language dictionaries
presents a number of special problems - both to the lexicographer and the
user. Even a major lexicographical staff will not have the necessary encyclopedic
knowledge and the involvement of a number of experts requires extensive and
labour-intensive collaboration. Besides, this would significantly increase the cost of
the entire project. If a general-language dictionary provided very precise encyclopedic
information, however, this information would be difficult to understand for the
intended users. On the other hand, no user would benefit from so rudimentary
explanations that the expert would consider them imprecise. There is no universal
solution to this dilemma, which is closely connected with the theoretical problems
that so far remain unsolved.