Semantic Relations in Definitions in Monolingual Dictionaries

Making “definitions” is perhaps the chief function of a monolingual dictionary, which can be performed in various styles depending on the purpose of dictionary and its users. One of the definition formulas in dictionary compiling is applying semantic relations. The present descriptive-analytical study aims to highlight the role of semantic relations in definitions. To this end, extracted definitions of Sokhan Comprehensive Dictionary were analyzed based on the theoretical model of Casagrande and Hale (1967). Definitions in corpus of study were randomly selected, considering the point that they can cover diverse semantic fields. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether applying semantic relations would result in more efficient definitions, and also whether this would require different methods in lexicography. Exploring the list of thirteen relations in Casagrande and Hale (1967) showed that, due to meticulous boundaries among semantic relations, the mentioned model can be effectively implemented in complying thematic culture-oriented dictionaries. The results revealed that applying semantics relations is a common strategy in the definitions of Sokhan Comprehensive Dictionary, but in majority of cases a combination of relations were appeared for a single entry. This research proposes a novel generation of thematic dictionaries, not the alphabetic ones, which can concentrate on cultural elements of a language, by applying semantic relations and providing word nets.