De tospråklige ordbøkers begrensninger

Resumé

The defects of bilingual dictionaries can be divided into the anthropogenic ones, i.e. due to lexicographers as persons, and inherent ones, i.e. due to the nature of dictionaries. The anthropogenic defects occur in the lemma list, dictionruy article and outside matter. The main inherent defect of a bilingual dictionruy is due to the fact that it describes a language (la /angue) while it is used to receive or produce speech, texts (le parole). Other ones are its restricted dimensions, time limits and discrepancy between a lexicographer' s aspiration for scientific presentation of facts and many users' lacking knowledge oflinguistic theory. There are mutatis mutandis two kinds of lexicography theory. The first one lectures what the ideal dictionaries should be, the other one is the art of the possible.