Hans Kristian Mikkelsen

**Cahiers de Lexicologie. Revue internationale de lexicologie et de lexicographie. Vol. 56-57, 1990, 1-2:** Actes du Colloque franco-danois de Lexicographie, Copenhague, 19 et 20 septembre 1988. 314 pp.

September 19-20, 1988 a French-Danish Colloquy on lexicography was held at the Copenhagen Business School on the occasion of the French-Danish cultural year. The papers are now available in print, collected in a double volume of the journal *Cahiers de Lexicologie*. Generally speaking, the Danish contributors take A. Blinkenberg and P. Høybye's legendary Danish-French dictionary (DF) as their point of departure. Jens Rasmussen, editor of the book and organizer of the colloquy, is the head of the on-going work on a new edition of this dictionary. The foreign participants supplement the book with contributions less bound to concrete dictionaries. The book is divided into four parts in accordance with the programme of the colloquy, and following each of these the editors have chosen to print the contributions to the discussions as well. The coherence of the book is furthermore underscored by a conclusion made by four participants at the end of the book.

**Bilingual lexicography**

In the general discussion of bilingual lexicography it is remarked that the contributions exclude anything but the printed dictionary. According to B. Quemada, its importance will be superseded by the electronic dictionary in the future, especially when it comes to the large general lexicographic works. B. Al foresees that future dictionaries will be individually adapted selections of enormous, non-goal-oriented databases. If that turns out to be true, quite a lot of the problems dealt with in the bilingual section will turn out to be superfluous. As the only one of the four topics, bilingual lexicography is almost exclusively represented by Danes. There are at least two good reasons for this. Firstly, there is the present work on a new edition of the DF, and since this dictionary is intended to be a printed one, there is also a good explanation for the bias of the articles towards this
medium. Secondly, it is especially in the small countries that the need for bilingual dictionaries is felt.

**H.-P. Kromann's** article “Selection and presentation of translational equivalents in monofunctional and bifunctional bilingual dictionaries” is an exegesis of the bilingual lexicographic principles for which HPK stands; he stresses the claim that optimal bilingual dictionaries should be pragmatic as well as contrastive. The pragmatic aspect focuses on the central position of the user's mother tongue profile, such that the lexicographer must always have in mind, whether the intended user has the SL (source language, the left side of the dictionary) or the TL (target language, the right side of the dictionary) as his/her L1 (mother-tongue), or L2 (foreign language). The combination of these two dimensions, SL:TL and L1:L2, is the basis for the idea that there should be four dictionaries for each language pair, i.e. the so called “active/passive principle”. As compared to earlier works on the same subject a certain softening in HPK's points of view can be traced. He accepts that a dictionary may be conceived for both L1-profiles at the same time, e.g. a Danish-French dictionary for Danes and Frenchmen. But that is not the same as saying that the lexicographer can forget all about the active/passive principle. On the contrary, it is still essential to remember that one of the languages in a bifunctional dictionary is a foreign language from the point of view of the user.

**A. Duval's** article “Nature et valeur de la traduction dans les dictionnaires bilingues” concerns two rather different problems. On the one hand, AD discusses the translator's difficulties in identifying the translation unit, on the other hand, he provides examples to show that a perfect translation is not always obtainable. As far as the first question is concerned, AD takes it for granted that the translator imagines that the SL text consists of components which are to be changed to corresponding components in the TL, so that if the translator combines these components, an equivalent TL text will evolve. It is a well-known fact that translation is seldom only a question of replacing one word in one language with one word in the other. With regard to the second question, the equivalence relationship between *massacre des bébés-phoques* and *seal cull* is debatable. Both expressions represent the neutral way to put the same thing in English and French. According to AD, there is no other way to express this phenomenon. Translatability is, therefore, a relative concept. Unfortunately, these translation theoretical thoughts are not really put into a lexicographic perspective. However, AD's approach to translation is one which it is possible to carry out with the help of the existing bilingual dictionaries, as it focuses on
translation units, typically corresponding to words and their collocations.
And such entities are typically the points of reference in a dictionary.

In "La valence des verbes sous l'aspect contrastif: les verbes "inaccusatifs" comme problème lexicographique" M. Herslund presents a Danish-French contrastive problem and draws some lexicographic conclusions for Danish-French and French-Danish dictionaries. His introducing utterance "Le dictionnaire bilingue est l'étude contrastive par excellence." (p. 35) is in fine harmony with the thorough structuralist approach which he displays not only in relation to the concrete topic, but also to the role of the dictionary. This means that the dictionary articles must provide the relevant information about syntagmatics and paradigmatics. He analyzes one of the few important syntactic differences between French and Danish, namely the categorial opposition between what he describes as intransitivity and inaccusativity, expressed lexically in French (e.g. *travailler* vs *exister*) and syntactically in Danish (e.g. *er gået* vs *har gået*). To MH the lexicographic consequence is that the lexicographer ought not to start enumerating all the possible equivalents, but to indicate a syntactic pattern which the dictionary user can then fill out himself, among other things with the aid of appropriate examples. This strengthening of the grammatical description clearly gives a much more comprehensive account of contrastive relations, i.e. the relation between the two language systems. For a learner's dictionary this seems to be a promising initiative. However, it is not necessarily the case that a translation dictionary will benefit from such an approach. Firstly, it must be investigated, whether the characteristic structural difference between the two languages in question makes up a translation problem at all and therefore deserves the elaborate description. Secondly, the approach seems to remove the information in the dictionary from the concrete textual connection in which the translation process is carried out, and thereby to reduce the possibilities of finding a communicatively optimal equivalent.

The two last articles about bilingual lexicography are tightly bound to
the work on a new edition of DF. In "L'information syntaxique dans les
dictionnaires bilingues" G. Boysen provides examples of the need for
more syntactic information, partly in order to strengthen the equivalent se-
mantization, partly in order to advance correct use – i.e., a receptive as
well as productive goal. He sees two ways of presenting the syntactic in-
formation: either as rules or as examples. The former are to be used with
simple cases, the latter with more complex ones. What remains, then, is a
definition of "simple" and "complex". In "Les informations du diction-
naire bilingue: équivalents ou champs sémantiques?” N. Soelberg takes it for granted that the active/passive principle is generally accepted – although he clearly understands something else by this principle than does Kromann. And that gives me an opportunity to criticize the use of the designations “active” and “passive” in connection with dictionaries. To Kromann it is another way of expressing whether the mother tongue is the SL (active) or the TL (passive), while to NS it is a question of whether the dictionary is to serve productive (active) or receptive (passive) goals. NS’s interpretation, in contrary to Kromann’s, does not imply that there are two languages, so a monolingual dictionary may just as well be active or passive. If we go back to Scerba, who is the one who launched the idea about the four dictionaries per language pair, we do not find the terms “active” and “passive” at all in connection with dictionaries (see Mikkelsen in print), but only together with the vocabulary. A dictionary may support the active or the passive vocabulary – and that goes for mono- as well as bilingual dictionaries. In consequence, Scerba is of the opinion that L1>L2 dictionaries must treat the L2 vocabulary which the user needs to know actively, while the L2>L1 dictionary is supposed to cover the L2 vocabulary which he has to know passively.

NS concentrates on the difference between large and small dictionaries, understanding by size the number of lemmata and the number of equivalents. He focuses on the latter, expressing a preference for a situation where small and large dictionaries were characterized by different functions instead of either giving too little information about equivalents or too much, so that the equivalent literally drowns among other words. The small dictionary should be reserved for learners, while the large one should presuppose an L2 knowledge on the level of a translator and provide the user with information for different types of translation, including that of literary text. The small dictionary needs only offer information about equivalents, whereas the large one should give more systematical information about the equivalent and the other words in its semantic field (“semi-equivalents”). It is a positive fact that NS distinguishes between different functions, especially different types of translation. It must be doubted, however, to what extent the literary translation – and its possible demands for creativity in the TL text – can and ought to dealt with in a bilingual dictionary because literary translation is typically not made from the L1 to the L2.
## Monolingual lexicography

The section on monolingual lexicography in general is introduced by an article, "Le monde étrange des dictionnaires (7). Logique linguistique et logique botanique: problèmes posés par la définition d'une classe de mots dérivés français", by **P. Corbin**, who makes it a point of honour to remain as descriptive as possible in relation to his material, leaving it to the practising lexicographers to draw the lexicographic conclusions. The article is the longest one in the book and presents a piece of basic metalexicographic research. The topic is the way in which five large contemporary French monolingual dictionaries treat derivation, especially the relationship between nouns with the suffix -ier(e), designating plants, and the corresponding primary (basal, motivating) nouns, e.g. *pommier* vs *pomme*. What makes the plant designations even more interesting is that two different logics are at stake. On the one hand there is the linguistic logic, making it natural to define derived words by means of their motivating words, e.g. *pommier* by means of *pomme*. On the other hand, there is the botanic logic defining the fruit departing from the plant, i.e. *pomme* by means of *pommier*. PC is specifically interested in analysing, whether there is any difference in the definition approaches in linguistic dictionaries compared to encyclopaedic ones. In the conclusions PC states that no principal difference can be found in the two types of monolingual dictionaries. On the other hand, there is a growing tendency for the definitions to become more encyclopaedic, i.e. to focus more on the referential meaning.

**G. Gorcy** has many years of practical experience from the work within *Trésor de la langue française*, and in the article "La polysémie verbale ou le traitement de la polysémie de sens dans le Trésor de la langue française: discussion à partir des normes rédactionnelles" he is concerned with one of the traditional lexicographic problems. GG himself proposes to give top priority to syntactic polysemy criteria. In the following discussion Quema-da remarks that putting the syntactic relations above the semantic ones makes the polysemous words explode, meaning hereby that the semantic coherence will be lost and the individual meanings or sememes will get a homonymous character. One might add that there is a clear tendency in contemporary dictionaries to avoid sublemmatization in the shape of nests, where related words are treated together. Instead it is often preferred to place each lexicographically treated unit in the same superordinate, typically alphabetical, macrostructure.

With regard to its contents **B. Al's** article "Transfert automatique de données lexicales par le biais d'un dictionnaire bilingue" belongs to the
bilingual section – or perhaps to the edition section – rather than to the
monolingual one. BA is concerned with the question whether and how it is
possible to exploit existing bilingual dictionaries. He tries to show that it
is actually possible to use existing bilingual dictionaries in order to estab-
lish new bilingual ones. In actual fact it concerns the creation of a French-
German dictionary on the basis of a Dutch-French and a Dutch-German
dictionary, both of the active (L1>L2) type. It should be added here that
the basis of the project is van Dale's concept of L1>L2 dictionaries, which
is really founded on an acceptance of the microstructure from a monolin-
gual Dutch dictionary, thereby differing essentially from the thoughts of
Kromann, which I have already referred to. This principle means that all
of van Dale's active dictionaries with Dutch as SL and L1 have the same
polysemy structure! It follows that there will be no problems with coup-
ling more dictionaries. Actually, the effect is a polylingual dictionary,
where Dutch serves as L1 and all the other ones as L2. However, in this
specific project Dutch plays the role of a metalanguage. In order to get rid
of the special bias which French and German get through the Dutch prism,
further sorting and classification is needed – something which BA does
not touch upon, but, on the other hand, he does not doubt either.

In his article “Pour une étude des variantes géographiques et de la
phraséologie du français” **P. Rézeau** treats two very different topics:
dialectisms and phraseologisms. And these topics are viewed with refer-
ence to different (meta)lexicographic goals; as far as the dialectisms are
concerned the establishment of the empirical basis, i.e. the source material
for lexicographic work, and as far as the phraseologisms are concerned the
selection criteria.

In “The Danish Language Council (Dansk Sprognævn)” P. Jarvad re-
views the Danish Language Council’s history, organisation, national and
international cooperation and main tasks: the charting of the development
of the Danish language, the production of The Official Orthographical
Dictionary of Danish, and the Council’s information work. The Council’s
importance for lexicographic work is evident from all these tasks.

Lexicographic editing and computerization

The most practice-oriented contributions to the colloquy are gathered in
this section. The succeeding general discussion considers to what extent it
is possible to re-use lexicographic information. It is generally agreed that
one can use monolingual dictionaries to establish the lemma stock in bi-
lingual lexicography and vice versa. Quemada points out that the history
of lexicography shows that bilingual dictionaries have been exploited in monolingual lexicography, primarily because the two kinds of lexicography have differed decisively by the feature descriptive vs normative. The descriptive bilingual dictionaries have thus generally lemmatized many peripheral words which one did not find in normative monolingual dictionaries. Finally, Al is of the opinion that many collocations, needed in L1>L2 dictionaries, can be found on the equivalence side in L2>L1 dictionaries.

J. Rasmussen's contribution “Sélection des entrées pour un grand dic-
tionnaire bilingue danois-français” examines the problems that turn up in
connection with the edition of older dictionaries, in this case DF (3. ed.
1975). It is obvious that it is not enough to add and correct; it is also nec-
essary to delete information in this kind of work. Otherwise, you will get
a dictionary which does not live up to the contemporary demands. In his
clearly structured article JR discusses the working conditions with which
lexicographers are faced. With regard to the inclusion of new lemmata, he
states that there is a hole in the collection of Danish data in the period
1918-1954, when the large monolingual Danish dictionary, *Ordbog over
det danske Sprog*, was being edited. Even if we had had updated monolin-
gual dictionaries, the selection problem would not have been solved, as the
bilingual dictionary has other tasks than has the monolingual one – and
thus also another structure. Of course, it is tempting to turn a French-Dan-
ish dictionary inside out, i.e. to make a left side (lemmata) in a correspond-
ing Danish-French one out of the right side (equivalents) in the original
dictionary. JR deprecates such a solution, realizing that there is a consider-
able risk that the new lemmata will not be related to their most direct
equivalents, but to peripheral ones. He further advices lexicographers not
to use lemma lists from bilingual dictionaries between Danish and other
languages than French, as the selection does not only rely on what a Dane
says, but also with whom he speaks! E.g., JR claims, that the need for gas-
tronomic words in a Danish-French dictionary will be much larger than in
a Danish-English one. Here JR is in opposition to Al who, as a representa-
tive of the van Dale dictionaries, underlines the SL-user's needs to express
his own reality.

“Les données lexicographiques et l’ordinateur” is the title of **B. Que-
mada’s** article, concerning computer-aided lexicography. His aim is to
show how much the computer could be used in lexicography today, if all
available know-how was applied. EDP can be used in all traditional main
phases: collection, edition and publication. BQ prefers a division into (1)
a lexicographic phase and (2) a dictionaric phase, i.e. a phase in which a
certain dictionary is developed. The lexicographic phase may be divided
into (1a) collection and (1b) analysis, while the dictionaric phase consists
in (2a) edition and (2b) publication. The article ends by acknowledging
that the introduction of EDP also requires more from the lexicographer,
and from the cooperation between computer scientists and lexicographers.
BQ suggests broad international cooperation in order to formulate linguis-
tic and computer science standards even though there is nothing new in
such a cooperation. Since the 16th century linguistic dictionaries have ac-
tually been the products of international cooperation, though inofficially
by means of copying and plagiarizing!

**J. Dendien's** article, “Éléments de réflexion pour l'informatisation d'un dictionnaire”, concerns some problems of a general nature in connection with computerization of dictionaries in order to establish a dictionary database similar to one of the linguistic basic databases in Quemada's stage (1a). The scanning process has to phases: an analytic, in which the information in the dictionaries is identified and localized, and a synthetic one, where the electronic dictionary is equipped with a structure, making possible automatic search inside the different information categories. JD concentrates on the synthetic part, thus presupposing the fulfilment of the analytic one. His aim is to show two ways of structuring the electronic dictionary: as a relational database or as a text database. The main difference between the two models is that the structures (elements and their relations) are not established until the activation of the parser (analysis application) – whereupon they are “forgotten” again, whereas the recognition of the structures is presupposed if the relational database model is going to work at all. In order to facilitate the work of the parser, the text database may be adapted (coded, tagged), so that a certain amount of structural information softens the raw text. In this way the analysis becomes faster and simpler.

**F. Henry's** topic is close to Dendien's. Under the title "Informatisation du Trésor de la langue française, problèmes et perspectives. Deuxième approche" he focuses on the initial analytic part of the computerization, i.e. what Dendien presupposed. However, FH focuses on the computerization of Trésor de la langue française which has two main problems: which technique to apply and which demands to make on the conversion. In a very convincing manner FH shows which enormous problems one faces if one chooses the difficult solution, i.e. to identify the structures already during the computerization. FH considers different stages of the dictionary. The faithful rendering of the original equals stage 0, whereas the ad-
dition of harmonizing principles may give a more perfect dictionary at
stage 1. If quite new information is added to the database, e.g. with a view
to publishing, the dictionary is at stage 2. The information from the dictio-
nary database can be used for machine dictionaries, i.e. the dictionaries
which are a precondition for automatic or semi-automatic text analysis and
synthesis. The modifications needed to make a good machine dictionary
out of the database implies a further step away from the original dictio-
nary. FH calls this the 3rd stage.

As remarked by Quemada in the discussion **B. Nistrup Madsen's** con-
tribution, "Computerized registration of the structure of a printed bilingual
dictionary and the establishment of a database", concerns the question of
how to establish a dictionary database for the use of a post-dictionary phase.
More precisely, her article discusses the principles for and the problems connected with the establishment of a machine-readable version of
the latest edition of DF with a view to a new printed edition. As compared
to the dictionary databases described by Dendien and Henry, this project is
less ambitious and more goal-oriented.

Neologisms and LSP lexis

In “Le purisme dans les dictionnaires de l’informatique “grand publique””” **J. Humbley** from the “Centre de terminologie et de néologie” (CTN) (under CNRS-INaLF) analyses how EDP dictionaries and the popular science press reflect the normative interventions on the part of the French language planning. The results are rather surprising because they show that as a general tendency the dictionaries do not worry about the de-creed terms. Many of them are simply not lemmatized. Secondly, the results of the analysis reveal that there are a lot of French terms in the dictionaries – not only in the purist dictionaries, but also in the ones that explicitly dissociate themselves from purism in their preface.

In "Sélection et analyse de termes nouveaux dans une base de données prédictionnariques" **P. Lerat** presents his place of work, CTN, which since its establishment in 1987 has brought together research in terms and neologisms, a situation which for several reasons seems to be an optimal solution. The inclusion of the centre under CNRS-INaLF further stresses the importance of terminography and dictionarics. The article especially concerns CTN's neologism activities, covering selection criteria, analysis criteria and application.
In contradistinction to the bulk of the Danish contributions **G. Dyrberg** and **J. Tournay's** article, "Définition des équivalents de traduction de termes économiques et juridiques sur la base de textes parallèles", is not motivated by DF, but by the work on a French-Danish economics and law dictionary for translation purposes. Especially within the domain of law the two languages differ considerably, because the underlying legal systems are basically different.

In the last article of the book, "Production semi-automatique d'un dictionnaire spécialisé français-danois sur la base d'un dictionnaire danois-français" **J. Qvistgaard** reports on the work with a Danish-French technical dictionary (which appeared in 1989). The perspectives are not confined to this dictionary, as the work is supposed to lead to a French-Danish technical dictionary, and to the establishment of principles for structuring, LSP determination and lemma selection, which can serve as models for new editions of technical dictionaries.

**Conclusion**

As far as the expressed wish for cooperation among mono- and bilingual lexicographers is concerned the colloquy and this book are, I think, a step in the right direction. The editor has managed to compose a book which contains a lot of inspiration for cooperation, not only among the practicians of mono- and bilingual lexicography, but also between theorists and practicians.

**Literature**

Mikkelsen, Hans Kristian (in print): What did Scerba actually mean by "active" and "passive" dictionaries?. In *Lexicographica*.