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This article presents a system which allows components of situations referred to by communication verbs to be combined in different ways to yield representations of different reference situation types. These are subsequently used as the basis of a comparison of the corresponding communication verbs in German and Spanish. Verbs referring to the same special reference situation type are shown to constitute a lexical field. Concentrating on the lexical fields of German and Spanish forbid-verbs, specific types of inform-verbs and persuade-verbs, we show that the procedure applied may in principle be used to cover the whole inventory of communication verbs in a bilingual conceptual (i.e. onomasiological) dictionary.
This article presents empirical findings about what criteria make for a good online dictionary, using data on expectations and demands collected in an online questionnaire (N~684), complemented by additional results from a second questionnaire (N-390) which looked more closely at whether respondents had differentiated views on individual aspects of the criteria rated in the first study. Our results show that the classical criteria of reference books (such as reliability and clarity) were rated highest by our participants, whereas the unique characteristics of online dictionaries (such as multimedia and adaptability) were rated and ranked as (partly) unimportant. To verify whether or not the poor ratings of these innovative features were a result of the fact that our subjects are unfamiliar with online dictionaries incorporating such features, we incorporated an experiment into the second study. Our results revealed a learning effect: participants in the learning-effect condition, i.e. respondents who were first presented with examples of possible innovative features of online dictionaries, judged adaptability and multimedia to be more useful than participants who were not given that information. Thus, our data point to the conclusion that developing innovative features is worthwhile but that it should be borne in mind that users can only be persuaded of their benefits gradually. In addition, we present data about questions relating to the design of online dictionaries.