Speakers
Description
In this paper, we explore the possibilities and challenges of lexicographic treatment of pragmatic markers, specifically epistemic and evidential markers in Czech. Our starting point is a detailed comparison of how these expressions are treated in contemporary monolingual Czech dictionaries. Following this, we present the development of the SEEMLex lexicon of Czech epistemic and evidential markers which is based on detailed annotation of selected expressions using data from a Czech-English parallel corpus. We describe the features we annotate when analysing the expressions studied, outline the main aspects that constitute or distinguish their meanings, and emphasise the importance of considering the communicative function in which these expressions are used. Additionally, we highlight the benefits of using a specialised lexical database for the lexicographic processing of pragmatic expressions in general. We demonstrate our approach with a draft of a dictionary entry for the common Czech epistemic marker asi ‘probably’ providing a comprehensive example of our methodology.
