Dictionary users do look up frequent and socially relevant words. Two log file analyses.

By November 17, 2016,
Page 281-290
Author Sascha Wolfer, Alexander Koplenig, Peter Meyer, Carolin Müller-Spitzer
Title Dictionary users do look up frequent and socially relevant words. Two log file analyses.
Abstract We start by trying to answer a question that has already been asked by de Schryver et al. (2006): Do dictionary users (frequently) look up words that are frequent in a corpus. Contrary to their results, our results that are based on the analysis of log files from two different online dictionaries indicate that users indeed look up frequent words frequently. When combining frequency information from the Mannheim German Reference Corpus and information about the number of visits in the Digital Dictionary of the German Language as well as the German language edition of Wiktionary, a clear connection between corpus and look-up frequencies can be observed. In a follow-up study, we show that another important factor for the look-up frequency of a word is its temporal social relevance. To make this effect visible, we propose a de-trending method where we control both frequency effects and overall look-up trends.
Session Research on Dictionary Use
Keywords research into dictionary use, frequency, corpus, social relevance, log file analysis
BibTex 
@InProceedings{ELX2014-019,
	author={Sascha Wolfer and Alexander Koplenig and Peter Meyer and Carolin Müller-Spitzer},
	title={Dictionary users do look up frequent and socially relevant words. Two log file analyses.},
	pages={281-290},
	booktitle={Proceedings of the 16th EURALEX International Congress},
	year={2014},
	month={jul},
	date={15-19},
	address={Bolzano, Italy},
	editor={Abel, Andrea and Vettori, Chiara  and Ralli, Natascia},
	publisher={EURAC research},
	isbn={978-88-88906-97-3},
	}
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