In reply to:

Also, I wonder whether subtleties of usage can ever really be defined or pinned down.

I suspect for most dictionaries the problem may be one of space and purpose rather than ability or inability to make these distinctions. Dictionaries for non-native speakers make more of an effort to show collocations and the limits on what subjects can go with what verbs. Otherwise, as far as quick reference is concerned there is only one's own linguistic intuition supplemented by usage guides to go on. Of course there are corpora, but then they are not very accessible and it takes a lot longer to come to a decision.

Of course this does all raise the issue of which usage guides or which citations in the corpus can be considered authoritative, and whether one takes a prescriptive or descriptive view of language.

Bingley


Bingley