Illustrative Phrases in the Dictionary
Quotations have been employed by lexicography since time immemorial. Their forms and functions, however, have been subject to modification depending on the lexicographic tradition, purposes of the dictionary and intentions of its compiler. Our objective is to consider the phraseological features of quotations which underlie the above modifications.
The history of dictionary making for the English language goes as far back as the Old English period, where its first traces are found in the form of glosses of religious books with translations from Latin. In the 15th century regular bilingual English‑Latin and Latin‑English dictionaries started to appear in order to enable the dictionary users to read scientific and religious books written in Latin. The compilers foresaw the necessity to include quotations in the dictionary and for a very long time they were implicitly presented there. The authors included some entries containing references to lexicographic and literary works in order to confirm the existence of the word in the language. A case in point is «Glossagraphia» (1656) by Thomas Blount where one can find the names of the authors and the titles of their books which served the basis of the dictionary.
Why did he do this? Blount, more than his predecessors, seems to have thought of language as a living, growing organism changing from year to year. He considered change inevitable. This is exactly the reason why he decided to indicate the literary sources, where the words, registered in his dictionary, can be found.
References to classical authors are also presented in Thomas Cooper’s «Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae» (1565).
‘Implicit’ quotations in these dictionaries proved to the user that the words in the wordlist had not been invented by the compiler but existed in the language of that period. Later quotations together with idioms, proverbs and catch phrases were introduced in the dictionary as examples.
In the 18 th century quotations were more regularly used in the dictionary. Nathaniel Bailey’s «Universal Etymological English Dictionary» (1721), one of the most popular of all dictionaries before Johnson, can serve as an example. The author included quotations from Spenser, Chauser, Shakespeare, which were used as examples, illustrating the meanings of words.
But the first dictionary in which quotations were employed as illustrative phraseology was «A Dictionary of the English Language in Which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals and Illustrated in Their General Significations by Examples from the Best Writers» (1775) by Dr. Samuel Johnson. His objective was to produce a normative dictionary, in which quotations would demonstrate the actual use of words for they were borrowed from the works of best writers whose language is immaculate.
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It took Samuel Johnson and his assistants 7 years to collect quotations, illustrating the life of the words which he was going to include into the dictionary. The information that we have of this method of collecting data is that he read books and marked the words which he wanted to illustrate and his six assistants copied the sentences in which they occurred on slips of paper. These were later put in alphabetical order and so made available for use as examples. S.Johnson then picked out the most striking in his opinion phrases, that were to serve as examples of the typical use of the word.
In his dictionary S.Johnson did not cite writers prior to the 16 th c., public opinion in his days being that in the 17 th c. and early 18 th c. the English language had reached the highest mark of its perfection. The dictionary is a prescriptive one, its aim was to preserve the purity of the English language of that time. Unfortunately Johnson did not date his quotations and in many cases did not give the title of the works from which they were taken. About 11,400 examples used in the dictionary perform the following important functions:
a) they prove that the word is not a fiction of the lexicographer’s brain but a fact of language;
b) they reinforce sense distinctions;
c) they help the user to gain a deeper insight into the collocational, colligational and stylistic peculiarities of the lexeme;
d) they point to the chronological limits of the language period under discussion.
The most commendable feature of Johnson’s dictionary was the full treatment of the various senses of words, to illustrate which he used a variety of quotations.
Samuel Johnson, however, only mentioned the authors whose language he considered to be immaculate and for this reason invaluable for the user of the dictionary, but never gave any specific references for his illustrative phrases.
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It should be emphasized in this connection that the use of quotations taken from masterpieces was typical of the European lexicography of 16–18 c. Thus, for example, the Dictionary of Academicians Kruska, that was compiled in Italy at the end of the 16 th. c. was characterized by professor Giovanni Nenchoni, president of the Academy, as historical and normative. It contains a great number of quotations to collect which a lot of work was done. The method of collecting information bears a strong resemblance to S.Johnson’s method. A list of books to be read was prepared, and then assigned to academicians. While reading they had to write out quotations on standard slips, which were later passed on to the Secretary, who worked on the entry and used quotations to illustrate the meanings of the word.
In the 18 th c. (1726–1739) the Spanish Royal Academy compiled its monolingual dictionary called «Diccionario de Autoridades», the most commendable feature of which is that it reflects the whole lexical wealth of the language of that time. Quotations from Spanish literature, history, philosophy and lexicography were employed in order
– to confirm the existence of such a meaning in the Spanish language,
– to illustrate the typical context, in which the word may occur.
In France in 1964 Paul Rober published a dictionary, in which definitions were illustrated by literary quotations to demonstrate the word and its relations with other words in the language.
As is well known the common lexicographic practice is the use of naturally occurring contexts. At the early stages of compiling a dictionary citations are part of the ‘philological phraseology’ that is phrases that have already become part and parcel of the philological thesaurus of the given language. Later on part of this philological thesaurus is used to illustrate the different meanings of words and thus becomes ‘illustrative phraseology’. It should be emphasized that if in monolingual normative dictionaries the function of illustrative phraseology is prescriptive, in historical ones, for example the «Oxford English Dictionary» it is of documenting. In the latter case quotation enables us to trace the process of the word semantic development and determine the historical relations between its meanings.
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With the development of learner’s lexicography the place and role of quotations in the dictionary changed drastically. In spite of the fact that the aim of learners’ dictionaries is to provide the user with the models to follow they do not employ quotations in S.Johnson’s sense (that is phrases borrowed from literary works of distinguished writers) as examples. All illustrative phrases are either what Palmer called ‘skeleton‑type examples’ or ‘sentence‑sample examples’ which were specially made up by the compilers to meet the needs of the foreign learner of the English language. The «Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English» (1978) was less consistent in this respect but still it will not be an exaggeration to say that quotations as citations of authentic texts gradually disappeared from the learner’s dictionary.
Quotations were brought back to the learner’s dictionary by corpus linguistics. The «Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary» (1987) was exclusively based on examples which have genuinely occurred in the language. At present all learners’ dictionaries borrow their examples from respective corpora, but neither of the authentic illustrative phrases can be classified as a quotation in the proper sense of the term. Corpora explicitly show that «individuals say particular things in a particular way because they have heard others say similar things in the same or similar ways» (Tannen, 1987, p. 309), and these ‘others’ do not necessarily have to be great writers, scientists, philosophers or politicians. Thus, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of illustrative phrases in modern learners’ dictionaries are citations from authentic texts it is impossible to associate them with their authors and classify them as quotations because they are ‘public property’.
Thus, we are justified in distinguishing between a citation, that is any passage cited, and a quotation, that is a passage taken from a book, play, speech and repeated by a person who is not the original author in order to support his/her opinion or argument. Citations are widely used in modern lexicography as commonplace free collocations illustrating the typical usage of the corresponding head‑word. Quotations, on the contrary, are more phraseologically bound and are generally excluded from dictionaries entries.
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To determine the place of quotations in illustrative phraseology it is necessary to compare them with other phrases, that are regularly included into the entry, that is idioms and commonplace free collocations.
From the very outset it should be pointed out, that there is no wall of partition between idioms and quotations. For ex., the idiom the world is one’s oysteris registered in «Longman Dictionary of Idioms» with Shakespeare indicated as the source («The Merry Wives of Windsor»,
act II, sc. 2). The idiom be no chickenis registered in the dictionary as John Swift’s citation from «Polite Conversation». The idiom fit like a gloveis registered as T.Smollett’s citation from «The Expedition Of Humphery Clinker», a letter to sir Walkin Phillips.
To become an idiom a quotation, or its part, has to undergo a certain process, during which it may loose its authorship. It can no longer provoke steady associations with the literary work, from which it was borrowed. Moreover, it is no longer necessary, because in order to understand these citations one does not need to know the whole literary work or even the passage, in which it occurs. In order for a citation to become an idiom it should be:
– aphoristic
– solid
– stable.
This enables a quotation to experience the process of semantic transformation.
Thus, on the one hand, citations border with idioms. On the other, it borders with commonplace free collocations, or citations, that is phrases with no author. Whether a quotation has absolute indisputable authorship is the main criterion that distinguishes it from a commonplace free collocation. In our minds a quotation is always linked to a certain person or source. Its value is that it is a reference to an authoritative opinion. We perceive the quotation as exact reproduction of the text, belonging to another person, we know this person and want to lean upon his authority. Its reproducibility is supported by quotation marks which are generally used to emphasize its formal globality and phraseological stability.
The difference between quotations and other phrases used in learners’ dictionaries becomes obvious if we apply the method of the categorial analysis described above. A quotation may demonstrate language idiomaticity and represent restricted and open collocations typical of the language in question. This is the reason why they have been used as illustrative examples in dictionaries for natives over the years. At the same time we have to admit that many quotations are connotative and culture specific. There is very much in them that learners have to disentangle before they can focus on the lexical unit itself and the way it should be used in speech. This makes the use of quotations as illustrative phrases impractical.
But the most important feature of quotations is their sociolinguistic nature. Any quotation is associated, if not directly connected, with the text it belongs to and its author, his or her knowledge, wisdom or wit.
Thus, in the «Oxford Dictionary of English» we are dealing with quotations proper, because all the authors are indicated there. In contrast, the compilers of COBUILD insist that all of the examples used in it are authentic; but these illustrative examples do not have authorship, and as a result cannot be called quotations.
The purpose of a learner’s dictionary is to give universal illustrative phrases, that will not be overloaded with cultural information. They should be understood by the learner who does not possess a considerable amount of background knowledge. The user should not be an expert in science, literature, music, etc. to understand the examples. If the illustrative phrase is overloaded with extralinguistic information, which is irrelevant for decoding the word meaning, it will lead to a false understanding and interpretation of this very meaning, and as a result the learner will not be able to use this phrase correctly in speech of his/her own.
This is the reason why many critics of authentic examples insist that quotations should be eliminated from the illustrative phraseology of a learner’s dictionary, because when a phrase is borrowed from a literary text, it can, on the one hand, be connotative and on the other socio‑linguistically determined, which in any case will distract the user from the meaning of the word to illustrate which it is summoned.
In modern learners’ dictionaries, such as the CIDE, on the contrary the sociolinguistic determination of quotations makes it possible to use them as part of the cultural component of the language. They provide the user with encyclopaedic knowledge, that is «knowledge associated with the word but which is not immediately relevant to linguistic structure» (Kiefer, 1990). It therefore enables the user to recognize quotations in texts and trace them back to their sources. The overall objective of this is to allow the learner to understand and enjoy the text containing quotations.
In this case special dictionaries of quotations become indispensable. Thus, for instance, the «Oxford Dictionary of Quotations» contains over 20 000 quotations taken from a variety of sources. In the foreword there are references to the authors and the thematic classification of quotations used in the dictionary. Firstly, it contains a great number of quotations from literary works (not only English and American literature but Russian and Soviet as well). Secondly, there are quotations from works on psychology and philosophy. The compilers included many quotations from scientific works as well. One may come across quotations from songs and anthems, political speeches and newspapers, magazines and the Bible.
Dictionaries of quotations, of course, are of great philological value, but they do not take into consideration the interests of foreign learners. Dictionaries of quotations as well as defining dictionaries should fall into two categories:
– dictionaries for native speakers,
– dictionaries for foreign learners.
It is assumed that a native speaker reads a lot and if he lacks background knowledge (philological literacy), she/he is then forced to consult a dictionary of quotations. It is quite natural, however, that a foreign learner does not possess the native speaker’s background knowledge. That is why we can only welcome the attempt that was made by the «Cambridge International Dictionary of English» to bring back quotations to the learner’s dictionary, but with a new purpose.
In the CIDE, like in many other learner’s dictionaries, there is a section in the entry where the user can find idioms and phraseological units. The use of different types and usage labels indicates that these are special lexical units which cannot be employed as phrases, illustrating the actual use of the headword. In contrast with other learner’s dictionaries, however, in the CIDE entry there is a section where the compilers register the quotations associated with the headword. In this case quotations are excluded from illustrative phraseology, the objective of which is to show how the word actually functions in speech. Quotations develop and enrich the user’s background knowledge.
To illustrate our point let us consider the way the word end is presented in the CIDE. The entry of this word gives the user
– linguistic knowledge, that is the definition of the nominative meaning of the word (end– the point in space or time beyond which smth. no longer exists, or part of smth. that includes this point);
– typical contexts, illustrating the actual use of the word.
The contexts are free word‑combinations, that were chosen by compilers of the CIDE from the Corpus of the Cambridge International Survey. In spite of the fact that these phrases are authentic, their authors are not registered, because the conceptual knowledge, introduced with the help of these phrases is by no means original and is the component of fluency in the language as a means of communication.
All word‑combinations function as illustrative phraseology, showing the learner how to use the word end in speech. For example: We damaged the end of the piano when we moved it.· This cable should have a plug at one end and a socket at the other.· Get to the end of the queue and wait your turn like everyone else.· There is no point continuing with these negotiations as they have clearly reached the end of the road (=cannot continue). All examples illustrate typical contexts in which the word under discussion can occur in speech and help the user to gain a deeper insight into its meanings as registred by the language.
Apart from illustrative phraseology, at the end of the entry we find Sir Winston Churchill’s famous phrase:
«Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But, it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.»
When a native speaker hears the word end it reminds him of the famous quotation, because it frequently occurs in literary and scientific works. Yet a foreign learner has no such associations and for this reason it is necessary to include the quotation into the dictionary. Without this cultural information the user’s notion of the word would be poorer.
Thus, quotations are to broaden the encyclopedic knowledge of the learner, bringing it nearer to the background knowledge of the native speaker. Quotations together with idioms perform a very important function of building up the learner’s phylological thesaurus.
Part 2.
Lexicography
Chapter 1.
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