More or Less than a Dictionary?

Wordnet as a Model for Serbian L2 Lexicography

Abstract

Transpoetika Dictionary is a Wordnet-based, bilingualized dictionary of the Serbian language, primarily aimed towards advanced students of Serbian as a foreign language (L2). The reason for basing a learner’s dictionary on the model of a large semantic database is not necessarily self-evident: Wordnet excels in representing the complexity of the relations between entries, but not in the complexity of information (grammatical, syntactic, orthoepic) assigned to individual entries. The paper explores the advantages and shortcomings of a Wordnet-based L2 project and offers some solutions in extending Wordnet so that it can satisfy the needs of L2 lexicography.