Multi-word Lexical Units in General Monolingual Explanatory Dictionaries of Slavic languages

Abstract

In the article, the typology and the macro- and microstructure positioning of multi- word lexical units in general monolingual explanatory dictionaries of five Slavic languages (Slovenian, Croatian, Slovak, Polish and Russian) are analysed. The research showed that MLUs in these dictionaries are most commonly treated on the microstructural level (with the exception of the newest general monolingual explanatory dictionary of Polish language), where typologically comparable or similar MLUs are treated in various microstructural sections, most commonly among dictionary examples and in various types of MLU sections. The differences in the treatment of MLUs can arise also from the specifics of the medium in which a dictionary was first published. The dictionaries built primarily for web and other digital environments are based on structured machine readable databases, therefore the MLUs are regarded as equivalent to single-word lexical units in the sense that they require as systematic and comprehensive a dictionary description as single-word lexical units. Consequently, the same types of data are normally afforded to these units. At the same time, such a shift in the treatment of MLUs can also be attributed to the development of lexicology, lexicography and meta-lexicography. In the newest dictionaries, the treatment of MLUs is influenced also by the research on user perspective and the possibility to incorporate a dictionary into language portals, while the comprehensive treatment of MLUs is motivated also by the potential of the dictionary data for the linguistic research, and the development of language technologies and natural language processing. With regard to the findings about the typology and positioning of MLUs in these dictionaries, the article also focuses on the treatment of MLUs in eSSKJ: The Dictionary of the Slovenian Standard Language, 3rd edition, the new monolingual general explanatory dictionary of the Slovenian language. In this dictionary, MLUs are treated in a similar way to single-word lexical units and are given relative autonomy in the dictionary structure.