Regarding the first question, ordinary dictionaries, whether monolingual or bilingual, split up the meaning into individual entries. Though ordinary dictionaries explain the meaning of a word, their effect is limited when it comes to texts. Furthermore, although modern dictionaries are paying increasing attention to collocations, their effect is hampered by their providing a whole range of information about any word beside its collocations. However, recent collocations dictionaries cover a word and its appropriate collocation. In addition, grammatical information is involved in collocation dictionaries by presenting collocations in their most typical forms in context. For example, in the entry for baby, the collocation be teething reflects the fact that this verb is always used in the progressive tenses, (Oxford Collocations Dictionary, 2002: viii).
Since general learner dictionaries may not provide enough information on semi-fixed expressions, learners' errors in this case are expected to increase, (Hunt, 1997:177). McCarthy (1990 in Hunt, 1997) maintains that when students produce errors like John rescued my life, those dictionaries' entries often do not state clearly that it is preferable to say or write John saved my life, to prevent learners from committing this error. However, it may be unreasonable to expect general learners' dictionaries to cover comprehensively many learners' errors. Such information may be better placed in specialized learners' dictionaries which focus on common errors for a special language group such as with Japanese learners or Arab learners. This would be effective especially when the error is due to literal translation. On the other hand, if certain learners' errors such as rescued my l...
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...1999:123) show some examples of Arabic collocational ranges to illustrate that a SL does not match their English counterparts and vice versa:
Table (12) examples of Arabic collocational ranges
Arabic Collocations (SL)
قسمة و نصيب Destiny
قضاء و قدر Fate
حلال و حرام Lawful and unlawful
زيت و زعتر Oil and thymes (zatar)
English Collocations (SL)
Fish and chips سمك و شرحات بطاطا
Bed and breakfast فطور و مبيت
Alive and kicking حي يرزق
As beautiful as a lark مثل القمر
A school of whales سرب حيتان
The literal translation of some English collocations into Arabic or vice versa may produce unnatural and sometimes comic effects. For instance, the literal translation of Alive and kicking حي و يرفس (hayun wa yarfus), As beautiful as a lark جميلة كالقبرة (jammilatun kalquburah), A school of whales مدرسة حيتان (maddarastu hittan), (Farghal and Shannaq, 1999:123).
Landau, Sidney I., ed. The New International Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Naples: Trident International, 2002. Print.
In “Defending Against the Indefensible” by Neil Postman, he proposes a different way of viewing the English language. He says that our civilization is being manipulated by the ambiguity in English, and students are most easily affected by the school environment. Thus, he proposes seven key ideas that students should remember in order to avoid the dangers and loopholes that twist the original meaning of statements.
Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, College Edition. The World Publishing Company, 1962 ed.
Author(s): Judie Newman Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 98, No. 4 (Oct., 2003), pp. 817-826
Stagni (1987) Slips of the tongue in Arabic. In M. Eid (Ed.), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics: Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, volume I, Salt Lake City, Utah. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
In Johnson’s preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, Johnson argues the importance of preserving language. Other dialects had a produced their own dictionaries, such as the French and Italians. Various writers of the eighteenth century were alarmed at the fact that there was no standard for the English language, since there was no standard it could easily become extinct. Johnson explored many points, such as how and why languages change as well as how many words are formed.
Richards, J. C., Platt, J., & Plat, H. (2000). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied linguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
The stages of language knowledge develop by stages, and it is suggested, each successive stage approach more approximates the grammar of the adult usage.
Fromkin, Victoria, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams. An Introduction to Language. 8th ed. Boston: Thomson, 2007.
Curzan, Anne and Adams, Michael. How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006
The lexical collocation appears in the third paragraph through the use of “secondary school”. Collocation also appears in the fourth paragraph through the use of the words “reading comics”, “magazines”, “newspapers” and “online articles”. The seventh paragraph involves lexical collocation through the use of “boys” and “girls”. In the eleventh paragraph the use of collocation is clear through the use of the words “classic books” and
What is a word? How the translator deals with this gap? What influences his choices? These are few of the question we will try to explain in this paper. We will pay a particular attention to the cultural differences and the translational gaps raised from it. In my opinion the non-equivalence in translation is due above all by the cultural barriers that influence our lifes.
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2003). An introduction to language (7th ed.). Boston: Heinle.
This study is limited to study only one kind of speech acts, namely, the speech act of offering. The researcher will examine the different types and strategies used by the Jordanian Arabic spoken language only. Other Arabic dialects and languages are not investigated.
8. Simpson, J. A., & Weiner, E. S. (1989). The Oxford English dictionary (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press ;.