Lemmatization as a macrostructure optimization tool of an electronic dictionary

Abstract

The paper is aimed at identifying the ways of the optimization of the process of user lemmatization in an electronic translation dictionary. The study is novel in that it is the first to analyze the procedure of lemmatization executed by the software of an electronic dictionary from the standpoint of the functional theory of lexicography. The paper provides a lexicographic analysis of a user’s operations and possible mistakes, including spelling, in the process of lemmatization when accessing the corpus of a translation dictionary. The author examines the solutions offered by the compilers of printed dictionaries and proves that an increase in the volume of a dictionary corpus complicates the lemmatization procedure and forces the compiler to rely on a user’s knowledge; analyzes the problems arising in the lexicographic situation when a user perceives information by ear and then creates a search query for an electronic dictionary; determines the role of context in the selection of a translation equivalent when consulting a dictionary; suggests using voice input, speech recognition and spellchecking as means to satisfy communicative and cognitive needs of a dictionary user. As a result, the study proves that automation of the lemmatization procedure and integration of context analysis tools into the electronic dictionary software (for example, spellcheckers used in text editors) increase the efficiency of a user’s consultation with an electronic dictionary.