Corpus-Driven Approaches in Contemporary Lexicography

The paper presents corpus-driven approaches in 21st century lexicography as a basic methodological paradigm that forms the basis of modern dictionary compilation and description. Corpus data, in this respect, are not just supplementary illustrative material but an empirical basis from which lexicographic decisions can be made at all dictionary-making stages: lemma selection, sense discrimination between similar meanings and usages of a word or phrase, usage labeling of senses (e.g. register notation), and example extraction etc. This study is based on the premise that leveraging the insights gained in corpus linguistics and usage-based linguistic theory makes it possible to represent lexical items more accurately, dynamically and context-sensitive using large-scale electronic corpora. It pays particular attention to frequency-based modelling, collocational profiling and the treatment of variation and change in present-day English. This analysis proves that corpus-driven lexicography facilitates the transition from prescriptive norm-oriented models to empirically based descriptions of how language is used, thus increasing the descriptive adequacy and cognitive relevance of contemporary dictionaries.