LEXICON/SEMANTICS: CORPORA

1. THESAURUSES: Look at the following four thesauruses: Roget's thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, Encarta, and RhymeZone. In your opinion, which of the five gives the "best" set of synonyms for sweep? What criteria did you use to rank them?
    

2. WORDNET: How many verbal word senses do the following four verbs have (according to WordNet): sweep, mistake, serve, consider. Do these data agree with your intuitions?
    

3. VISUAL THESAURUS: Look for the same four verbs as in #2. Does the "complexity" of the diagram for these words agree with that on WordNet?
    

4. NEOLOGISMS: Use Google to look for a strange-ish "new word" listed on WordSpy. How many tokens are there on the web? Look at the first 10-15 hits. Do they have more or less the same meaning given at WordSpy, or are some quite different?
    

5. GLOSSARIES: Use Glossarist to find a web-based glossary for a topic that you're interested in. Give the URL for this glossary. List two words from that glossary that are fairly new to you.