Bridging across Polysemic Senses in Bilingual Specialized Dictionaries for ESP Learners

Abstract

Research has shown that links between polysemic senses (sense links) can and should be used to facilitate the acquisition of polysemy. However, sense links have received little attention in specialized lexicography because the concern about domain specificity has considerably reduced the number of polysemic senses that can be entered in specialized dictionaries. The descriptive shift in terminology research and the implications of cognitive semantics for learner's dictionaries have paved the way for dealing with sense links further in specialized dictionaries for learners (SDLs). Using computing-related lexical items as examples, this article proposes three guidelines for treating polysemy in SDLs with the aim of entering polysemic senses that do not belong to a given subject field while maintaining the focus on the subject field. It also presents four models for describing sense links in bilingual specialized dictionaries for ESP learners (BSDLs). Depending on the magnitude of overlap between the target language (TL) equivalents of the source and target senses as well as the effects of other factors, sense links are represented by ordering senses logically, appending the source sense1, combining logical ordering with a short explanation, or providing both the source sense and a short explanation. The guidelines and models can help address the major situations that lexicographers encounter when describing sense links in BSDLs and hopefully contribute to learners' acquisition of technical senses. Keywords: sense links, acquisition of technical senses, bilingual specialized dictionaries for learners, domain specificity, guidelines, models, semantic distance, overlap of target language equivalents