| Abstract |
The definition of numbers involves a complexity that is often overlooked in dictionaries. Their double nature-both grammatical and semantic-means that on one hand they constitute part of a formal language-ex. arithmetic, and on the other, their morphological behaviour means they are no different from any other types of words. This complexity is accentuated by the way they can be considered either nouns or adjectives. On the other hand, words like one, two, three, etc. present the distinction that they can be written in two different ways: one / 1, two / 2, etc., i.e. either using a linguistic or an arithmetical sign. Additionally, their different forms, dependent on whether they are cardinals, ordinals, fractions, multiplicative, distributive, collective, etc., involve differentiated lexical forms. Numbers also frequently possess figurative meanings or appear in an abundance of set phrases. Dictionaries have dealt with this problem in a variety of different ways. If we look at the design of Spanish dictionaries since the 18th century, we find a certain amount of vacillation that persists until the matter was more firmly established in the 20th century. Nor were there any major differences between dictionaries in different languages. This study presents the state of the question on the basis of an examination of popular Spanish general dictionaries, and proposes certain principles that could improve the coherence of dictionaries in the way they deal with this class of problem. |
| BibTex |
@InProceedings{ELX08-118,
author = {Francesc Rodríguez Ortiz, Cecilio Garriga Escribano},
title = {El tratamiento de los números en el diccionario},
pages = {1199-1202},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th EURALEX International Congress},
year = {2008},
month = {jul},
date = {15-19},
address = {Barcelona, Spain},
editor = {Elisenda Bernal, Janet DeCesaris},
publisher = {Institut Universitari de Linguistica Aplicada, Universitat Pompeu Fabra},
isbn = {978-84-96742-67-3},
} |
