The Representation of Multidimensionality in a Bilingualized English-Spanish Thesaurus for Learners in Architecture and Building Construction

• Published in: International journal of lexicography 2011-06, Vol.24 (2), p.198-225
• Main Authors: Fernandez, T., Faber, P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0950-3846; 1477-4577
• DOI: 10.1093/ijl/ecq046

This article discusses the conceptual design of BEST (Bilingualized English-Spanish Thesaurus), an online dictionary prototype for learners in the architecture and building construction domain. Since the users targeted by this dictionary must create specialized texts, they need reading and writing skills. The aim of this resource is thus to represent information in such a way as to help users to encode and decode specialized texts. As an example, this article focuses on the concept of window, an extremely complex object in architecture. It analyzes the different ways that window can be represented and the dimensions or perspectives from which it can be defined (i.e. multidimensionality). This analysis of window can be applied to other concepts in the domain. This study shows how information extracted from specialized lexicographic resources enriched with corpus data can be used to represent specialized concepts. Such representations help users to acquire specialized knowledge and also to produce texts. Adapted from the source document