If you're interested in what makes a good dictionary, as opposed to a good app, I want to note something that I really want but that dictionaries generally do not provide:
Words generally accept several different parameters (known in linguistics as "complements"). If I look up the FrameNet entry for "notify (v.)" ( https://framenet2.icsi.berkeley.edu/fnReports/data/lu/lu9183... ), I see that it belongs to the semantic frame of "telling", with 7 "elements" potentially in play. Those are:
1. Addressee
2. Manner
3. Medium
4. Message
5. Speaker
6. Time
7. Topic
Some of those elements can appear with "notify" because they can appear generally on any verb (like Time, as in "I notified him yesterday"), and some are more specific to "notify" itself (like Message, as in "I notified him of your decision").
The FrameNet entries for notify also tell us how each element may be marked in a real English sentence, and provide examples in which each element is color coded. This is what I want to see in more dictionaries. I particularly want it for elements that are specific to the particular word.
For a concrete example from my own life, I spent a long time being aware that 保护 was Chinese for "protect", and yet I was completely unable to figure out how to use it in a sentence. The issue is that "protecting" involves (a) an agent, the subject of 保护; (b) a person being helped, the object of 保护; and (c) a threat. No dictionary that I consulted indicated how to talk about the threat in a sentence in which the verb was 保护, nor did any of them even feature an example sentence in which a threat appeared. Modeling a sentence on the example of English, in which the threat involved in a protecting action is marked by the preposition from, does not work and will confuse Chinese speakers.
It turns out that the way to mark the threat is to include it in a subordinate clause governed by the verb avoid. 我保护她免挨饿, "I [will] protect her to avoid going hungry", not "I will protect her from going hungry". This is important information if you're trying to speak Chinese! But it's absent from the dictionaries. It is intensely frustrating to know exactly what information I'm looking for, to know that a dictionary is the place to find it, and yet to find that it is mysteriously absent from the dictionary.
This is really really interesting. I wonder if the data from FrameNet would be enough to reliably generate this kind of information in a Japanese dictionary, and if the license supports is usage. I'm going to explore this more, thanks.
Words generally accept several different parameters (known in linguistics as "complements"). If I look up the FrameNet entry for "notify (v.)" ( https://framenet2.icsi.berkeley.edu/fnReports/data/lu/lu9183... ), I see that it belongs to the semantic frame of "telling", with 7 "elements" potentially in play. Those are:
1. Addressee
2. Manner
3. Medium
4. Message
5. Speaker
6. Time
7. Topic
Some of those elements can appear with "notify" because they can appear generally on any verb (like Time, as in "I notified him yesterday"), and some are more specific to "notify" itself (like Message, as in "I notified him of your decision").
The FrameNet entries for notify also tell us how each element may be marked in a real English sentence, and provide examples in which each element is color coded. This is what I want to see in more dictionaries. I particularly want it for elements that are specific to the particular word.
For a concrete example from my own life, I spent a long time being aware that 保护 was Chinese for "protect", and yet I was completely unable to figure out how to use it in a sentence. The issue is that "protecting" involves (a) an agent, the subject of 保护; (b) a person being helped, the object of 保护; and (c) a threat. No dictionary that I consulted indicated how to talk about the threat in a sentence in which the verb was 保护, nor did any of them even feature an example sentence in which a threat appeared. Modeling a sentence on the example of English, in which the threat involved in a protecting action is marked by the preposition from, does not work and will confuse Chinese speakers.
It turns out that the way to mark the threat is to include it in a subordinate clause governed by the verb avoid. 我保护她免挨饿, "I [will] protect her to avoid going hungry", not "I will protect her from going hungry". This is important information if you're trying to speak Chinese! But it's absent from the dictionaries. It is intensely frustrating to know exactly what information I'm looking for, to know that a dictionary is the place to find it, and yet to find that it is mysteriously absent from the dictionary.