The Corpus and the Meaning of Words

John Sinclair
The Tuscan Word Centre
Azienda Casanova, Vellano
Pescia, Italy
e-mail: jms@twc.it

A lot of confidence is placed in the ability of a corpus to demonstrate, through usage, the meaning of words. By collecting a number of instances of a word in use, the meaning should emerge - at least to a competent user of the language, or it should be deducible.

This assumption is put to the test, using a set of instances of an uncommon, but not esoteric, word in English; a word that most educated users would recognise, even if they could not provide an adequate definition of it.

Users report (if they are honest) that they are aware of a number of words whose meanings they are not sure of, although the words are familiar. If the evidenc of a large corpus (in today's dimensions) is also not adequate to pinpoint the meaning, we must ask if there is a mechanism for determining, preserving and transmitting meaning which coexists with our experience of language; an aspect of lexicography which persists without reference to usage. Such a mechanism is overt in the area of terminology, but is not generally recognised in the central vocabulary.

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