Intan Zainudin

A literature review of bilingual dictionary research in Malaysia shows that most research has focused on the problems of equivalents recorded in bilingual dictionaries. What is lacking is proper linguistic analysis of the discrimination of meaning for the source language entry and the findings of the target language equivalents. This paper attempts to fill this research gap by investigating the problems that arise in the discrimination of meanings of two Malay-English dictionaries, and the English equivalents. The analysis adopts the methods of frame semantics in describing the Malay verb memberi, assessing the different senses of meaning through the frames that are available. The theoretical framework of Frame Semantics has successfully helped the writer to reorganise the meaning of the Malay transitive verb memberi (translation in English "give") from the different frames evoked by the entry. Meanwhile, the information of the lexical units (LU) provided by the frames, for example the LUs from the frame of GIVING in the FrameNet database have contributed to a list of English equivalents that can be used in the Malay-English dictionary entry. This framebased analysis relies on the 5 million words Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka- Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (DBP-UKM) Malay corpus while all the English equivalents are sourced from FrameNet and English dictionaries.

In a lexicography class, linguistics students are taught the principles of arranging dictionary entries with the application of theories. There is also a need for the students to evaluate existing dictionary entries as well.  Due to the importance of corpus use in a lexicography work (Atkins & Rundell, 2008), students were introduced to a Malay corpus and the Frame Semantics  (Fillmore et al., 2003). Students were taught how to analyse the meaning of a word based on the frames and frame elements.  The use of DBP-UKM 5 million Malay corpus and the framework of Frame Semantics were found to be beneficial in assisting students to evaluate the verb entries of memerlukan and mencari, two highly frequent verbs in Malay. Students were able to evaluate the two verb entries from the Kamus Dewan 4th Edition (KD4), a monolingual dictionary, and the bilingual Intelek Malay-English Dictionary (IMED). Students’ analysis findings will be presented and a few recommendations on teaching lexicography will be discussed in this paper.

Boas (2009) has established that the recent trends in computational lexicography encompass computational methods and tools designed to assist in various lexicographical tasks, including the preparation of lexicographical evidence from many sources, the recording in database form of the relevant linguistic information, the editing of lexicographical entries and the dissemination of lexicographical products. In line with this development, Intan Safinaz’s research (2011) on frame-based analysis on Malay corpus has produced essential semantic information compiled in a reference database that can assist lexicographers in editing dictionary entries for Malay-English bilingual dictionaries. This paper aims to discuss the frame- based analysis that incorporated Frame Semantics methodology and the benefits of compiling the database as a reference database. The entry ‘memberi’ is analysed and the findings contribute to the semantic content of the reference database. This reference database is able to facilitate the task of editing entries of the Malay monolingual dictionaries, Malay-English bilingual dictionaries, as well as the Malay language reference books. This paper also discusses the possibility of building a Malay FrameNet based on the architecture of the English FrameNet which was set up at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. The proposed methods of building the Malay FrameNet is also inspired from the FrameNets of other languages for example the German, French and Japanese FrameNets. The setting up of the Malay FrameNet can be seen as an effort towards processing the Malay language and strengthening the Malay computational lexicography as well as encouraging future linguistic and computational lexicography research and cooperative efforts in natural language processing of the Malay language.