Dictionary_Intro_P2

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The key for decoding the pronounciation rules is usually presented as part of the introductory pages of the book. In an ordinary dictionary, the key assumes that the person who is using it is a person who is currently capable of reading the inscriptions that the words are presently written in, and is also practiced at enunciating several simple words as they are pronounced in the language that is being surveyed in this particular dictionary. That is, to use the dictionary with relative ease, the reader ought to be able to recognize the lexical structure of the language so that, while perusing a survey of its lexicon, one's sounding out the particular pronounciation rule which follows a specific word, produces a sound pattern that is a word used in the language which the dictionary covers.

Even though it may be that a word list combined with a technique (or algorithm) to properly pronounce any one of the words that is found on the list could be said to constitute a "dictionary," dictionaries are organized to do other forms of work as well. The most obvious sequence is to move to the set of definitions that are positioned in an ordered format such that all of the definitions in the set are to be naturally associated with the word (or phrase) that they follow.

Each definition provided in this set is to be evaluated as an equivalence so that if the reader knows how the word is graphically inscribed and has paid attention to the pronounciation key, the sound pattern that constitutes the word may now be refered to (as literally) "in other words." The numbered definitions which are presented as showing an equivalence to the word, each designates


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