ASIALEX 2007 / Asian Lexicography: Retrospect and Prospect 30 Corpus-based Lexicographic Pragmatics: On 'transforming' dirty corpora Gilles-Maurice de Schryver Ghent University, Belgium; University of the Western Cape, South Africa; and TshwaneDJe HLT Corpus-based pragmatics in dictionaries Just over one decade ago, corpus-based pragmatics labelling made its way into a major dictionary for the first time. In the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary (COBUILD 2, Sinclair 1995), the compilers started to insert the novel 'PRAGMATICS' sign into the Extra Column, whenever the 'statement of meaning' for certain senses of words had to be supplemented by an 'added meaning'. In the latest edition, COBUILD 5, this single label is split into seven different labels, as can be seen from Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1: Information plate on 'Pragmatics' in the front matter of COBUILD 5 Figure 2: Random section from COBUILD 5; note the pragmatics data in the extra column (on the right of the articles)