Lemmatization of idiomatic expressions in school dictionaries

Abstract

Within the lexical universe of the Portuguese language, we highlight the learning of phraseological units (FU), especially idiomatic expressions (IE), as they constitute complex lexical units, whose global meaning does not correspond to the individual sum of the components of the expression, thus causing possible doubts to the consultants. Considering the importance of the school dictionary as a functional teaching material in the teaching and learning process of EI, we proposed to develop this work. Thus, this article aims to present the results of the analysis we carried out on the lemmatization provided to EI in two type 4 school dictionaries of the National Textbook Program (PNLD/2012), namely: Aulete (Geiger, 2011) and Unesp (Borba, 2011). To this end, by guiding ourselves by theoretical and methodological principles of Pedagogical Lexicography, Phraseology and Phraseography, especially in the contributions of Corpas Pastor (1996), Santamaría Pérez (2000) Xatara (1998), Olímpio de Oliveira Silva (2007), Krieger (2011), Ortíz Álvarez (2000; 2011), Welker (2011), Rodrigues-Pereira (2020), among others, we established the following specific objectives: i) to examine the information about the registration of IE in the front matter of the two dictionaries, as a way of verifying whether there is coherence between the information available in this part of the works and the records in the macrostructure; ii) to verify whether there are records of variants and elements of the IE outline and, if so, how they are presented in the works analyzed; and iii) compare the lemmatization of the IEs recorded in the two lexicographic repertoires selected for analysis, with a view to identifying parameters for recording the IEs. The analyses show heterogeneity in the lemmatization of the expressions, with different selection strategies for inserting the IEs in the microstructure. Both dictionaries include variants and contour elements, but with different procedures, which impacts the identification of fixed and variable components. Both from the analyses performed and from the bibliographic review, we identified that the lexicographic treatment of the IEs still lacks further metalexicographic reflections that may enable lexicographic repertoires organized in a more didactic way.