A Lexicological Approach to Look-up Frequency of Turkish Sign Language Dictionary Users

Öz

From the point of lexicography, the phenomenon of dictionary look-up frequencies can answer many critical questions on dictionary users’ needs and relationship between corpus data and look-up tendencies. Although there have been a number of studies on the theoretical and functional aspects of look-up frequencies in the field of spoken language to date, there remain relatively a few attempts to describe the characteristics of look-up behaviour in sign languages. This paper investigates the relationship between the frequency list of Turkish Sign Language Corpus and The Contemporary Turkish Sign Language look-up occurrences. By using an approach to the comparison of corpus data and log files, the results demonstrate that there is a very limited similarities between both of them and no positive relation for percentage of top ranked items. Moreover, this corpus-based lexicography study concludes that objective corpus based-frequency list is a comparatively poor predictor of the dictionary look-up frequency and this difference might be direct result of the morphological structure of words/signs in TİD (rather simultaneous realization) compared to Turkish (rather agglutinative morphology).

Anahtar Kelimeler

• corpus
• log files
• frequency list
• online dictionaries
• sign language

A Lexicological Approach to Look-up Frequency of Turkish Sign Language Dictionary Users

Öz

Sözlükçülük açısından, sözlük aramalarının sıklığı olgusu sözlük kullanıcılarının ihtiyaçları ve derlem verisi ile sözlük arama eğilimleri arasındaki ilişki konusunda birçok önemli soruya cevap vermektedir. Şu ana kadar konuşma dili alanında, kuramsal ve işlevsel açıdan birçok sayıda sözlük arama sıklığı çalışması bulunmasına rağmen işaret dillerinde, sözlük arama davranışını tanımlamayı amaçlayan çok az girişim yer bulmaktadır. Bu çalışma, Türk İşaret Dili Derleminin sıklık listesi ile Güncel Türk İşaret Dili Sözlüğündeki sözlük arama görünümleri arasındaki ilişkiyi incelemektedir. Derlem verisi ile günlük sistem dosyalarının karşılaştırılması yaklaşımı kullanılan çalışmanın sonuçları, her ikisi arasındaki ilişkinin çok sınırlı olduğunu ve en sık görünüme sahip birimlerin oranları arasında herhangi bir olumlu ilişkinin bulunmadığını göstermektedir. Ayrıca derlem-tabanlı bu sözlükçülük çalışması, nesnel derlem tabanlı sözcük sıklığı listelerinin sözlük arama sıklığını belirlenmesinde çok zayıf bir kestirim sağladığı ve bu farklılığın doğrudan nedeninin Türk İşaret Dilindeki (daha çok eşzamanlı gerçekleşim sunan) sözcüğün/işaretin biçimbilimsel yapısının Türkçeden (daha çok eklemeli biçimbilim barındıran) farklı olması olabileceği görüşüne varmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• derlem
• günlük sistem dosyaları
• sıklık listesi
• çevrimiçi sözlükler
• işaret dili

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