Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English [antikvár]

Foreword Remarkably, in only a few recent years, the computer has become a powerful and increasingly indispensable tool in every conceivable aspect of our daily lives. That most certainly includes the daily lives of lexicographers! They can now not only conveniently store many millions of sentences from authentic spoken and written language, but also manipulate, display and study the components of these sentences - the words and word partnerships (collocations) along with contextual factors that come into play as different meanings are expressed. But if the computer is indispensable, so too is the sensitive, highly trained professional skill of the lexicographers. Indeed, their subtle judgment is all the more needed as the speed, power, and vast capacity of the computer reveal as never before the lexical complexity of a living language. And there is a third indispensable factor: the pedagogical experience and expertise that guide the Pearson Education team to present language learners with the information on current world English that is most necessary for them. The information is presented in a way that anticipates the learners' needs to understand meanings and to express those meanings idiomatically in their own speech and writing. The new LDOCE is a magnificent culmination of innovative energetic research along with computational techniques that are married to well-honed educational and lexicographical skills. It builds on the vital experience of earlier editions and incorporates a host of new features - such as the full-colour printing, the extra wealth of information on collocations (just glance for a moment at the entry for the word pace and its 'collocation box'). And everything in the printed dictionary can be extensively followed up in the accompanying CD-ROM where you will find a further eighty thousand example sentences, plus more than a million sentences direct from the Corpus. Not to mention the enormous bonus of having the Longman Language Activator® included as weU. What better way for learners to immerse themselves in today's English at its most vivid and lively! RANDOLPH QUIRK (Professor the Lord Quirk, FBA) University College, London