Analysis of macro-, micro- and mediostructures in sports dictionaries

Abstract

The aim in this research was to analyse the convenience sample comprised of 87 mono-, biand multilingual sports dictionaries in terms of their macro-, microand mediostructures. The results showed that an alphabetical organisation of the lemmas prevailed rather than a systematic (i.e. thematic) arrangement, and it was the predominant choice in monolingual dictionaries. Most dictionaries in the sample had a complex macrostructure. This macrostructural complexity appeared to be inversely proportional to the number of languages in the terminological reference work – namely, the more languages included in a dictionary, the lower its macrostructural complexity. Further, the definition article structure format – be it with or without any supplementary information – was the most frequent of all the article structures and was by far the most recurrent in monolingual dictionaries. A translation equivalent in a target language as the only component of an article was a dominant article structure format in multilingual dictionaries. In general, the most commonly included grammatical data were on word class and the number in nouns, whereas additional information included in articles varied from diatechnical labels, different kinds of restrictions in terms of usage, historic backgrounds, etymology, the first use of terms, etc. Ultimately, the cross-referencing system was most frequently applied in monolingual dictionaries.