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Article In: Australian Review of Applied Linguistics: Online-First Articles

When lexical semantics and word sense disambiguation meet lexicography

A response to issues in lexicographical resources caused by lexical ambiguity

 | Adelaide University
 | Adelaide University
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Abstract
Lexical ambiguity, where a word has multiple related (polysemous) and/or unrelated (homographic) meanings, causes challenges in learning and teaching semi-technical medical vocabulary owing to its lack of consideration in current lexicographical resources, including wordlists and dictionaries. Academic wordlists fail to indicate polysemes and homographs, while conventional dictionaries number multiple meanings of a semi-technical medical word in a vertical format that is unlikely to showcase polysemous and homographic relations. This study focuses on a new lexicographical resource, named SemiMed, which addresses issues in wordlists and dictionaries arising from lexical ambiguity. Hsu, W. (2013). Bridging the vocabulary gap for EFL medical undergraduates: The establishment of a medical word list. Language Teaching Research, 17(4), 454–484. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar Medical Word List (MWL), an academic list of semi-technical medical vocabulary, was selected as a starting point. A qualitative analysis underpinned by lexical semantic theories was conducted to analyse polysemes and homographs of MWL words. Then, a quantitative analysis that employed word sense disambiguation practices calculated MWL word meaning frequency. These analyses resulted in two key features, radial networks of meanings and technicality levels, that are expected to help SemiMed resolve issues in academic wordlists and conventional dictionaries caused by lexical ambiguity.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1Lexical ambiguity in lexical semantics
      • 2.1.1Sources of homography and polysemy
      • 2.1.2Distinctions between homography and polysemy
      • 2.1.3Approaches polysemy
    • 2.2Lexical ambiguity in lexicography
      • 2.2.1Dictionary word sense distinctions
      • 2.2.2Dictionary word sense presentations
    • 2.3Lexical ambiguity in wordlists and word sense disambiguation
      • 2.3.1Wordlists
      • 2.3.2Word sense disambiguation
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Qualitative analysis
      • Step 1. Look up each word in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
      • Step 2. Simplify OED definitions
      • Step 3. Classify OED definitions into polysemes and homographs based on the core meaning
      • Step 4. Visualize core and other meanings (polysemes and homographs) in LCs
    • 3.2Quantitative analysis
      • Step 5. Examine the top 15 collocates in English Web 2020 and the Medical Web Corpus
      • Step 6. Rate meanings on a 4-level technicality scale
      • Step 7. Modify LCs resulting from the qualitative analysis (if necessary) and add the technicality level to the LCs
  • 4.Findings and discussion
    • 4.1SemiMed template
    • 4.2Pedagogical implications
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
References (75)
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