An Integrated Semasiological and Onomasiological Presentation of Semantic Information in General Monolingual Dictionaries as Proposed in H.E. Wiegand's Semantics and Lexicography

Abstract

Herbert Ernst Wiegand is a very important figure in international metalexicography. A large part of his research has up to now been unavailable to the majority of the English-speaking world, because it has mainly been published in German. A new book Semantics and Lexicography seeks to break through this obscurity by providing English translations of a selection of articles spanning thirty years (from 1976 to 1996), which trace the development of Wiegand's views on semantic information. This book offers a valuable insight into the theoretical and corresponding terminological development that has already had such a remarkable impact on the "practical science" metalexicography. This article focuses on Wiegand's theories on the integration of the semasiological and onomasiological presentation of semantic information in the microstructures of general monolingual dictionaries. The theories are explicated and illustrated by examples from two Afrikaans general monolingual dictionaries and evaluated in order to establish their relevance. The conclusion is reached that the semasiological presentation of meaning is most appropriately located in the item giving the meaning paraphrase, which should form part of the semantic comment in an integrated microstructure. In the semantic comment, this item must be followed by clearly distinguished items giving onomasiological information, especially about synonymy. Keywords: definition, frame, hyponym, item giving the meaning paraphrase, lexical paraphrase, lexicographic paraphrase, metalexicography, near-synonym, object-constituting knowledge, onomasiological, semantic relation, semasiological, synonym, synonym definition.