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This study aims to establish what lexical factors make it more likely for dictionary users to consult specific articles in a dictionary using the English Wiktionary log files, which include records of user visits over the course of 6 years. Recent findings suggest that lexical frequency is a significant factor predicting look-up behavior, with the more frequent words being more likely to be consulted. Three further lexical factors are brought into focus: (1) age of acquisition; (2) lexical prevalence; and (3) degree of polysemy operationalized as the number of dictionary senses. Age of acquisition and lexical prevalence data were obtained from recent published studies and linked to the list of visited Wiktionary lemmas, whereas polysemy status was derived from Wiktionary entries themselves. Regression modeling confirms the significance of corpus frequency in explaining user interest in looking up words in the dictionary. However, the remaining three factors also make a contribution whose nature is discussed and interpreted. Knowing what makes dictionary users look up words is both theoretically interesting and practically useful to lexicographers, telling them which lexical items should be prioritized in lexicographic work.
The project “Paronymwörterbuch” investigates and documents easily confused words (so-called paronyms) in German with respect to their use in public discourse as documented in a large corpus. These are, for example, antik/antiquiert/antiquarisch (antique/antiquated/antiquarian) or sportlich/sportiv (sporty/athletic). The results of this work are explanatory, contrastive entries in a new dynamic e-dictionary called “Paronyme − Dynamisch im Kontrast”. The objective of this paper is twofold. Firstly, essential new usage modalities of the new dictionary will be illustrated. As it is designed for contrastive consultation processes, the comparative structure of the entries will be elucidated and we will show how this dictionary has moved away from static to dynamic presentation by incorporating flexible consultation options. Secondly, as entries contain linguistic details which are consistently paired up with conceptual-encyclopaedic information, it is shown how this reference guide combines corpus-based methods with cognitive semantics. In this way, linguistic findings correlate better with how users conceptualise language by adequately reflecting ideas such as conceptual structure, categorisation and knowledge. Consequently, appropriate contrastive corpus tools and methods are employed. This paper also emphasises the need of semiotic approaches to the analysis of linguistic data in order to provide ostensive and cognitive-oriented lexical explanations. Such approaches are also necessary to guarantee an efficient pairwise investigation of paronyms. Advantages and disadvantages of explorative self-organising feature maps will be explained in more detail.