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Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

linguabase.org

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Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#41

Post by dec0dedab0de »

jakub_g wrote: post #33
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #9

There are nearly half a million compound phrases that aren’t in any dictionary—simply because they contain spaces. “Boiling water.” “Saturday night.” “Help me.” I would hope that none of those examples were taking up space in a dictionary.

It's quite interesting that "boiling water" in many Slavic languages is actually a separate word (and not derived from "water", but from "boiling"; similar how the author mentions "ice" being used instead of "frozen water").

It was mentioned in other comments but boiled water is steam, and frozen water is ice. We do not have separate words for freezing water or boiling water.

in the slavic languages do they have a different way to describe boiling or freezing milk, or any other liquid?

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#42

Post by dragonwriter »

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #13
grantpitt wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more on this?

Consider phrasal verbs like "shut up", "get lost" or "kick off". Knowing what the parts mean doesn't let you understand the whole. In your native tongue you take these for granted, but in a second language you have to learn that the sum is more (or different) than the parts.

These are called idiomatic phrases, and many (all natural?) languages have them, and, yes, they are pitfalls for language learners.

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#43

Post by johnhamlin »

I got into solving the NYT crossword during Covid. I couldn’t solve a Monday when I started; now I do Mondays downs-only and look forward to Saturdays. Along the way, I developed a sixth sense for when an answer will be more than one word. I’ve thought a lot about it and can’t really describe how I do it. (Some other puzzles clarify if an answer spans multiple words, but I find the ambiguity adds to the fun.)

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#45

Post by epgui »

danesparza wrote: post #28

I don't think 'Words with spaces' is a thing. I think maybe the word the author is looking for is 'phrase'

It’s probably a thing, especially with loan-words (eg.: “avant garde”), and there are probably much better examples… But the examples in the article make no sense to me.

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#46

Post by agmater »

ndr42 wrote: post #5

I imagine that languages like german that create composites of nouns have less of a problem with this: English: cream of mushroom soup Spanisch: sopa cremosa de champiñones German: Champignoncremesuppe

In Dutch we indeed happily do this even for English loanwords like "creditcard" or something more obscure like "lockpick". When in doubt, remove the space.

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#47

Post by speak_plainly »

Dictionaries are a mixed bag at best. If you apply David Kaplan’s character/content distinction from Demonstratives, you have to ask: should pure indexicals, which are essentially 'contentless' pointers be treated the same way as standard words? Let alone the thousands of rigid designators in this dataset that map directly to specific objects in the real world. At a certain point, is there no room left for encyclopedias?

Re: Half million 'Words with Spaces' missing from dictionaries

#50

Post by smt88 »

butvacuum wrote: post #29
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the article did a good job explaining that. I just think those were terrible examples for the introduction. I think "shut up", "good night", and "hot dog" would have really got the point across better, but those might already be in dictionaries.

'hot dog' belongs in a thesaurus, not a dictionary. It's just a type of sausage.

In the US, if you ordered a hot dog and got a sausage (or vice versa), it would be very reasonable to return the item and ask for something else. They are culturally completely different, the same way Cheerios in milk is not another cold soup like gazpacho is.
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