Literal Meaning In A Lexical Database
Definition:
The literal meaning is used to give the glosses of the individual components of a multi-morpheme expression, such as a compound or an idiom, where the meaning of the whole is different from the sum of its parts.
Discussion:
You only need to fill in the literal meaning if the entry is a compound or an idiom.
Examples:
The literal meaning of the word for "train" in Chinese is "fire car."
This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library. Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003.