From ‘Possible’ to ‘Probable’: The Description of Objects of Transitive Verbs in the Three Editions of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

Yuri Komuro

Accurate description of the range of application of a word is the key to successful definitions. This paper aims to show an improvement that the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English has been making through its three editions, focusing on the description of the range of possible direct objects taken by transitive verbs. The three editions are compared in terms of their definition styles and the amount of semantic information contained in them.

The findings are: (1) user-friendliness has been increased by the change in definition style, (2) description of the collocational range has become more concrete and detailed by providing typical collocates, and (3) the amount of semantic information has also been increased. The computational analysis of large corpora and lexicographers’ introspection and intuition are considered to have brought about these welcome changes.