A Pedagogic Approach to Filipino Lexicography 2008

A Pedagogic Approach to Filipino Lexicography

Peter Paul Sengson

Alexandra David
Camille Dumandan
Casey Giron
Marc Mauro Orenza
Michael Wilson Rosero
Angelique Sadie
Krystal Joy Sembrano
Paul Julian Santiago
Danielle Anne Tadena

University of the Philippines, Diliman

 A Pedagogic Approach to Filipino Lexicography 2008

I. Introduction

In order to learn a foreign language like English, references such as grammar

books, textbooks, and bilingual dictionaries are significant. Among these, bilingual

dictionaries are what foreign language learners immediately refer to for quick

consultation. The purpose for which a dictionary is intended for is a powerful

determining factor for its pedagogical usefulness (Hartmann, 1983).

There are two main purposes why people use or consult a bilingual dictionary:

(1) for comprehension, and (2) for translation (Landau, 1989). It is for the latter purpose

that a bilingual dictionary is more often used – to help the user translate texts from one

language into another.

In the Philippines, where English is one of the official languages and is used

widely in communication, dictionaries are essential in learning the language. Bilingual

dictionaries that are being sold to the public vary in number of word entries, accuracy in

definition and styles. Yet all of these dictionaries seem to be similar in the way they

define a given entry (Santiago, pers. comm.). These dictionaries, though presented in

various forms, seem to have a common way of defining: a word entry from a target

language is defined using the nearest equivalent word or phrase from the source

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language. This type of definition will be called, henceforth, the “traditional” way of

defining. Filipinos learning the English language is then left with no choice but to buy

these dictionaries.

Traditional dictionary gives the nearest equivalent of the entry from a target

language (L2) to a source language (L1). English-Filipino dictionaries, like Gabby’s

Practical English-Filipino Dictionary which resembles the Merriam-Webster type of

dictionary, list all the possible senses of the entry word. However, the context of word

usage is not established thus leaving a vague idea on the word. From all the listed senses

or word equivalent given as definition, most are polysemous in meaning and is

ambiguous e.g. the synonymous words like thief and burglar. On the other hand, the use

of nearest equivalent in definition follows the principle of substitutability as well as

brevity; but still remains confusing. For cases of ostensive definition in which pictures

are illustrated and are at times used for concrete referents, the definition in text becomes

problematic with respect to other senses of the word. Some of these illustrations do not

coincide with the given definitions or sample sentences. Moreover, it does not provide

clear ideas on, say, abstract nouns such as “love” which is defined as “pagmamahal o

pag-aaruga” and beauty as “kagandahan”. Most of the dictionaries being sold in the

market follow this type of definition.

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In comparison to this “traditional” type of dictionaries, the Collins COBUILD

Advanced Learners Dictionary promotes a new way in which a word should be defined.

However, to date there is still no published and on sale English-Filipino dictionary that

works in the same way as how the monolingual COBUILD defines an entry. For

example, instead of listing its usage only as a noun, the dictionary also points out the

correct conjugation of irregular nouns to its plural form thus helping the reader to

distinguish it between regular nouns. These classifications are very helpful for the non-

native speakers who are more likely to be unsure about how to use a word. Furthermore,

COBUILD gives sentence definitions which do not only provide the approximate

meanings of the entry word but also contextualize the definition by giving practical

descriptions and situations. Although this type of definition does not follow to

substitutability and brevity principle in some cases, what it does is that it defines the

word in an explanatory way that the learner would understand the entry without

sacrificing its precision. Also it exhibits simplicity as it uses simple terms in defining as

it contextualizes the entry to how it is functions in different situations. This type of

simplicity is best seen in abstract terms that do not have concrete referent.

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Given a sample word entry, we can clearly see the difference between the

“traditional” definition and the COBUILD-type definition. In Gabby’s Practical

English-Filipino Dictionary (1999), the noun “burglar” is defined as:

burglar (ber’ glar) n. – magnanakaw, kawatan, manloloob; mandarambong; akyat-bahay;

BURGLARIOUS (ber’ gle’ ri yus) adj. – hinggil sa panloloob o pagnanakaw ; BURGLARIZE (ber’ gle

rayz) v. - nakawan; pagnakawan; looban; pasukin ang bahay o gusali (upang pagnakawan);

BURGLAR PROOF (ber’ gler pruf) adj. - hindi kayang pasukin ng magnanakaw; BURGLARY (ber’ gle

ri) v. – pagnanakaw; panloloob, pagpasok sa bahay upang ito ay panlooban; BURGLE (ber’ gel) v.

- magnakaw

In a dictionary patterned to Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary

1987 edition, the word “burglar” should appear like this:

burglar1 /bɜ:glə/, burglars. Ang burglar ay isang magnanakaw na pwersahang pumapasok sa

isang bahay o ibang gusali2. EG Pinasok ng burglar ang kanyang bahay at tinangay ang lahat ng

kanyang pagmamay-ari. A burglar broke into his house and took away all his valuable possessions

In this paper we looked at the relative effectiveness of the two types of

dictionary as an instrument in gaining vocabulary competence from L13 to L24. We then

tried to see what attributes of a dictionary can be accounted for, to say that it is

pedagogic. We argue that a pedagogic English-Filipino dictionary must have (1)

1 Other derivations of the word “burglar” such as “burglary”, “burglarize”, etc. is

defined as separate entry.
2 This definition in Filipino is a direct translation from the English definition available

in the Collins-COBUILD dictionary.

3 This is the target language and in this paper this is the English language.
4 This is the source language and in this paper this is the Filipino language.

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definitions which (a) do not only provide the nearest equivalents but contextualizes the

definitions by way of giving of practical descriptions and situations, and (b) employs

the most frequently-used words in Filipino; and (2) sample sentences in Filipino that

demonstrates actual usage of the word.

This paper is subdivided into six parts. Section I is this introduction. Section II

discusses related works on lexicography. The methodology used in collecting the data

will be talked about in Section III. Section IV will be allotted for the presentation of the

data collected. In Section V, we will give a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the

data collected; and Section VI shall conclude this study.

II. Dictionary and Lexicography

The term “dictionary” is a powerful word; the word suggests authority,

scholarship and precision (Landau, 1981. p.6). Any successful record of the language

such as a dictionary is itself a contribution to authority. People tend to believe that

dictionaries tell them what is or is not allowed in a language (Sinclair, 1987). What

makes a good dictionary according to Haas (1962) is one in which you can find the

word you are looking for preferably in the very first place you look. Its main purpose is

to provide help to someone to better understand the language.

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There are a number of ways by which a dictionary can be classified. Malkiel

(as cited in Landau, 1989) provided three categories: perspective, presentation and

range. Perspective is based on how the compiler views the work (diachronic or

synchronic) and what approach is taken (how it is organized). Presentation signifies

how the material of a given perspective is presented while range refers to the size and

scope of the dictionary, including the number of languages covered (monolingual,

bilingual or multilingual) and the extent of concentration on lexical data.

Lexicography, as Hartmann and James (1998) defined it, is the professional

activity and academic field concerned with dictionaries and other reference works. It

has two basic divisions: lexicographic practice or dictionary-making and lexicographic

theory or dictionary research. Lexicographic practice or dictionary-making processes

abide by the following principles: 1) priority of essence in which the most essential

elements should come first before the incidental elements, 2) Simplicity which suggests

that simple words are not defined using difficult words that is why complex words or

concepts are learned from a dictionary, 3) substitutability wherein a definition should be

substitutable for the word in context and 4) brevity which basically calls for the need to

save space without sacrificing the precision of meaning (Landau, 1989). It requires

thorough research of the language and the consideration of several factors by the

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lexicographer when choosing and defining the entry words to be included in the

dictionary.

Bilingual Dictionaries

The basic purpose of a bilingual dictionary is to coordinate the lexical units of

one language with those lexical units of another language which are equivalent in their

lexical meaning (Zgusta, 1971). Unfortunately the way most of the reference materials

published thus far have been prepared, makes them useful only for purposes of analysis,

recognition or comprehension and there is nothing, or very little, in them that makes

them useful for synthesis or production: they are all diagnostic ‘rather than generating’

(Hartmann, 1983). Some dictionaries that can be said to be truly “generating are

Hornby’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and the more recent Longman Dictionary of

Contemporary English. However, these dictionaries still have some limitations such as

non-specificity with regard to the learner’s cultural background. For instance, a Filipino

high school student might not know that an “igloo” is a dome-shaped house that

Eskimos make out blocks of hard snow. In such cases wherein the lexical item has no

equivalent term in L1, a good bilingual dictionary should define the term using words

and sample sentences in L1 to avoid altering its definition.

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Corpus-based Dictionary

The COBUILD ELD was a breakthrough in English lexicography

pioneering the use of corpus in making a dictionary. It presented a new kind of

definition, a definition that is contextualized by giving practical descriptions and

situations as stated above. This type of dictionary pays particular attention to the

functions of words and phrases; functions such as in conversation or writing (e.g. you’d

better, no kidding) or in drawing the attention of the hearer or reader to what you are

about to say (e.g. as for myself). It is a principle of this dictionary that it should be

easily understood by the learner for whom it is designed (Sinclair, 1987).

The use of a corpus in lexicography has produced positive outcome and has

made significant contributions to the craft of dictionary-making. Advantageous though

as it may seem, the main limitations of the use of a corpus is that no matter how large it

is and how carefully it has been assembled, it cannot possibly represent truly the myriad

ways in which language is used spontaneously in speech and deliberately in writing

(Landau, 1989). But then we can be assured that as the corpus gets larger and larger,

there will be a greater chance that the definitions and usage of the words being defined

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will be more accurate. However, it may take a lot of research and time to create a

dictionary that can represent all the possible usage of all the words.

III. Methodology

Procedure

The participants in this research were 3rd year high school students from five

different schools. There were a total of 159 respondents.

Before doing the actual experiment to test the effectiveness of the two-types of

dictionaries, a pre-experiment was conducted to ascertain that the use of a dictionary

will help yield higher results for the respondents. One school (Echo) was administered a

vocabulary test for three (3): groups A, B and C. Group A was given pedagogic-type

definitions, while students in group B were provided with the word entries defined in

the traditional way and no dictionary aid was given to Group C, which served as a

control group.

After proving that the use of dictionaries affected the scores of the students

significantly, the actual experiment was administered.

The four (4) participant schools in which the actual experiment was conducted

as tested for the relative effectiveness of the two types of dictionary, two (2) 50-point

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vocabulary tests were prepared: Phase I and Phase II. The students of these schools

were divided randomly into two groups, A and B. The testing materials distributed to

Group A or B, were accompanied by definition of words from one of the two types of

dictionary to aid the students in answering each phase.

In phase I, students in group A were given pedagogic-type definitions, while

students in group B were provided with the word entries defined in the traditional way.

In phase II, the opposite was done, Group A was given definitions in the traditional way,

and the pedagogic-type definitions this time was given to Group B.

IV. Presentation of Data

The scores of each student were then recorded according to Group, Phase and

School. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistical methods which enabled us to

compare the mean scores per group. Refer to Table I & II for the graph of mean scores.

The data from the first four schools were further analyzed using the Student’s T-Test to

affirm the significance of the difference in mean score of each group. Refer to Table IV,

V, VI & VII. The data from the last school (Echo) was analyzed using Single

Classification ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) to account for the source of variation and

was further analyzed using the F-test for significance. Refer to Table VIII for the

analysis of variance.

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Table 1 Phase II Mean Scores

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50
45
40
35
30
Pedagogic
25
Traditional
20
15 Control
10
5
0
Echo

Table 2 Mean Scores of Echo

PHASE 1 PHASE 2
df = 16 df = 16
α= 0.05 α= 0.05
t= 5.66 t= 3.87
T value significant at > 2.120

Table 3 t-test data (Alpha)

PHASE 1 PHASE 2

df = 13 df = 13

α= 0.05 α= 0.05
t= 7.24 t= 2.18
T value significant at > 2.160

Table 4 t-test data (Bravo)

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PHASE 1 PHASE 2

df = 16 df = 16

α= 0.05 α= 0.05

t= 5.66 t= 0.97

T value significant at > 2.120

Table 5 t-test data (Charlie)

PHASE 1 PHASE 2

df = 17 df = 17

α= 0.5 α= 0.5

t= -1.51 t= 1.46

T value significant at > 2.110

Table 6 t-test data (Delta)

Source Of
Variation df Sum-of-squares Mean-Square
Between groups 2 609.474 304.7037
Within groups 24 489.556 20.3982
Total 26 1099.03 325.1019
f= 14.9378
value significant at > 3.40
Table 7 Analysis of Variance data (Echo)

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V. Analysis of Data

The data showed that the Groups who used pedagogic-type definitions yielded

higher mean scores than the Groups who used the traditional definitions. In Phase I,

mean scores of Beta exhibited a high difference of 3.8371. However, Delta showed the

opposite trend, the group who used traditional-type of definition yielded a mean score

0.6 higher than the other group. In Phase II, a better trend can be observed since all the

Groups who received the pedagogic-type definitions yielded higher mean scores than

those who used the traditional-type definition. Since almost the same trend was

observed for the two phases, we assume that the students were not a big factor that

could have affected the results. The T-Test data showed that in Phase I, the difference of

the means was significant for Alpha, Bravo and Charlie at alpha (α) =0.05. Delta

exhibited a negative T-Value. In Phase II, Bravo and Charlie also exhibited a significant

mean difference and there were no negative T-Value results, which imply that the use of

a pedagogic dictionary aids a student extensively, better than the traditional type.

Meanwhile, the Analysis of Variance data for Echo showed a higher between-

group mean square than within-group. This enabled us to conclude that the source of

variation was in between the groups. Wherein, we assume that the only factor different

among the groups was the type of definitions given to aid them in answering. The mean

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score of the control group (C) was way lower than the mean scores of Groups A and B.

It can be concluded that the use of dictionary of whichever type, greatly affected the

score of the students positively. The data also showed a very high F Value at 14.9378,

where the significance value was 3.40, which leads us to conclude that the mean

differences for this data were also significant.

The statistical data therefore affirmed that the usage of pedagogical-type of

definition was more effective than the traditional-type.

VI. Conclusion

The process of dictionary-making requires a great deal of meticulousness. It is

an act that should be carried out with utmost consideration of principles that make up a

good dictionary. As this paper has shown, these principles include priority of essence,

simplicity, substitutability and brevity.

However, although these principles are established, there are dictionaries that

stray from certain principles in satisfying their purpose. This paper has differentiated the

“traditional” type of dictionary which abides with all of the above mentioned principles

from the COBUILD type of dictionary, which do not follow some of these principles,

such as substitutability and brevity yet it proved its effectiveness than the “traditional”

type of dictionary as seen in the results of this study therefore, supporting our argument

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that pedagogic English-Filipino dictionary must have (1) definitions which (a) do not

only provide the nearest equivalents but contextualizes the definitions by way of giving

of practical descriptions and situations, and (b) employs the most frequently-used words

in Filipino; and (2) sample sentences in Filipino that demonstrates actual usage of the

word. This calls for a publication of a pedadogic English-Filipino dictionary patterned

on the COBUILD type of dictionary with consideration with culture-based lexical

entries.

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Acknowledgement

We would like to thank our Professor Mark Felix Albert Santiago, for believing

in us and for inspiring us to work on this topic. We would also like to thank the Summer

Institute of Linguistics (SIL), the University of the Philippines’ Main Library, and Mr.

Jay-ar Igno from the University of the Philippines’ Department of Linguistics.

We also like to thank Makati Science High School, Don Alejandro Roces

Science and Technology High School, Saint Mary’s College of Baliuag, Corinthian

School-Bocaue Campus, San Jose del Monte High School and Baguio City National

High School for allowing us to conduct research in their schools.

We also extend our sincerest gratitude also to Tadena family, Dumandan family,

Sadie family, and Giron family for their warm accommodation and hospitality

throughout our research work.

Above all, we thank the Almighty Father for giving us strength.

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References

Castillo, Felys. 2004. The New Handy English-Filipino Dictionary. Sta. Cruz Manila:
Booklore Pub.Corp.

De Guzman, Maria Odulio. 1968. The New Filipino-English English-Filipino

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Encleare Foundation. 2007. The English Filipino Dictionary Revised Edition.

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Gaboy, Luciano L. 1999. Gabby’s Practical English-Filipino Dictionary. Bulacan:

Racquel Commercial Press.

Hartmann, R.R.K. &James, Gregory. 1984. Lexicography: Principles & Practice.

London: Academic Press. Inc.

_______________________________. 1998. Dictionary of Lexicography. London:

Routledge.

Landau, Sidney. 1989. Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography. 2nd ed.
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Mish, Frederick C., ed. 2003. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed.
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Sinclair, John, ed. 1987. Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, 1st ed. Great
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Tomaszczyk, J. 1983. On Bilingual Dictionaries, Lexicography: Principles and Practice.

London: Academic Press

Wierbicka, Anna. 1985. Lexicography & Conceptual Analysis. USA: Karoma

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