Bridging the Pragmatic Gap: Representing Georgian Discourse Markers in Lexicographic Resources
Keywords:
discourse markers, dictionaries, bilingual, monolingual, metalexicography, GeorgianAbstract
This study examines how Georgian discourse markers (DMs) are represented in online dictionaries, focusing on one monolingual Georgian explanatory dictionary and one bilingual Georgian-Russian dictionary. The selection of these resources is motivated by their widespread use among speakers and learners of Georgian and their inclusion of spoken-language vocabulary. The aim is to evaluate the quality and usability of the lexicographic treatment of Georgian pragmatic markers (i.e., discourse markers) through a metalexicographic lens. The paper compares monolingual and bilingual entries across seven functional categories: addition, cause/effect, sequencing, contrasting, comparison, exemplification, and conclusion. DMs may appear as single words, particles, or short phrases. Data categories analysed include grammatical information (part of speech, inflection), translation equivalents, collocations, usage examples, and pragmatic functions. These elements are integrated to construct a coherent lexical profile for each marker. The analysis assesses not only lexical content but also functional adequacy for the target audience—Georgian speakers and second-language learners. A multi-theoretical framework combining Frame Semantics (Fillmore), Corpus Linguistics, Contrastive Analysis, Translation Theory, and Metalexicography with Interface Theory (Ilba, 2022) is applied to evaluate dictionary microstructure and macrostructure. The empirical selection of markers is grounded in frequency data from the Georgian National Corpus (Tandashvili & Gippert, 2015), ensuring a usage-based foundation for the analysis.
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