An Outline of British and American Lexicography
The Beginning of Dictionary Making in Britain
The historical roots of British lexicography go back to 7th‑8th centuries when Latin was a means of international communication in Europe and the most important texts, first and foremost biblical ones, were written in this language. To facilitate their reading and translation English monks produced glosses based on interlinear translations from Latin. All religious texts were supplemented with such lists of Latin‑English equivalents – glossaries. One of the first glossaries is the «Leiden Glossary» in which the pairs of equivalents are arranged in the order of their occurrence in the text.
It took seven centuries to achieve fully alphabetical order in glossaries. By that time (14th c.) it became clear that glossaries could not satisfy the growing reference needs of their users. It was necessary to make regular Latin‑English dictionaries which would not be confined to ‘hard’ Latin words in a particular text but include as many Latin‑English equivalents as possible. Such an attempt was made by compilers of «Medulla Gramatice» – the first Latin‑English dictionary which appeared in the15th century. Later on «Medulla Gramatice» served the basis for the first printed bilingual dictionary «Ortus (Hortus) Voca‑bulorum».
Latin‑English and English‑Latin dictionaries were very popular down to the end of the 16th century but already by the middle of the century Latin began to lose its status of an international language and English lexicographers turned to new West‑European languages. Among the most well‑known bilingual and polylingual dictionaries of this period are «A World of Words, or Most copious, and exact Dictionarie in Italian and English» by John Florio (1598), «A Dictionarie French and English» by Claudius Hollyband (1593), «Alvearic or Tripple Dictionarie, English, Latin, French» by J. Baret (1573).
It should be mentioned in this connection that dictionary‑making methodology was gradually evolving over the period of nine centuries, and various lexicographic conventions were adopted. The structure of the entry became fairly complex and the reader could extract more and more information about the lexis of the target language. Lexicographers commented on the morphological structure of the word (derivational affixes were singled out in 1538), its origin and field of usage, took into account synonymy and dialectal differences, used different modes of definition, examples, usage notes and even illustrations to make their dictionaries user‑friendly.
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One of the aims of scholarly works and also smaller didactic volumes was to help their readers to master West‑European languages. It follows that bilingual lexicography has always been pedagogically orientated and the use of the general bilingual dictionary seems to stay as long as translation plays a dominant role in foreign language education.
Monolingual Lexicography
The first monolingual dictionary of English «A Table Alphabetical, containing and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard English words, borrowed from Hebrew, Greek, Latin or French, etc.» by Robert Cawdrey was published in 1604. As can be seen from its title the dictionary concentrated on those words which could cause problems for native speakers of English. Robert Cawdrey who was a schoolmaster aimed at extending the vocabulary of those who spoke only English and did not know foreign languages.
Dictionaries of hard words dominated in the 17th century and gradually they became fairly sophisticated reference book which could be written only by professionals. Thus, for example, «Glossagraphia: or a Dictionary, Interpreting all such Hard Words whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Teutonik, Belgich, British or Saxon; as are now used in our refined English Tongue. Also the Terms of Divinity, Law, Physics, Mathematics… with Etymologies, Definitions, and Historical Observations on the same» by Thomas Blount (1656) comprised not only borrowings but also many terms of different branches of science. Thomas Blount devised very short and precise definitions, he indicated the origin of the word and its field of usage, and sometimes he mentioned the name of the author, who had used the word in question.
The first attempt at a dictionary whose word‑list comprised words of different degrees of complexity, both native and non‑native was made by Nathaniel Bailey who in 1721 published «An Universal Etymological English Dictionary». Two editions of this dictionary (1721 and 1727) served the basis for his famous «Dictionarium Britanicum» (London, 1730) which had 48,000 entries. Nathaniel Bailey made a few lexicographic innovations: he was the first to indicate the stressed syllable in head‑words and to use sayings and proverbs in order to make the senses more explicit. In the dictionary there are over 500 pictures illustrating many technical terms.
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Nathaniel Bailey’s dictionary is the most important achievement of English monolingual lexicography before Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary which produced an enormous impact on British and American lexicography of the eighteen‑nineteenth centuries. It will not be an exaggeration to say that Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary was revolutionary in many respects.
Samuel Johnson worked on the dictionary for nine years. The dictionary was a fantastic achievement of English lexicography. Similar normative‑defining dictionaries had already been compiled for French and Italian. Johnson confessed that these dictionaries had set an example for him. But he was aware of both their merits and faults, and critically approached the underlying lexicographic principles.
«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» (London, 1775) had two parts. The first part consisted of «Preface», «The history of the English language» and «The grammar of the English language», the second part was the dictionary corpus, comprising 40,000 entries. A central concern of S.Johnson’s research of the lexicon was the study of current English and selection of those words which could be considered to be the norm. Otherwise stated, S.Johnson’s Dictionary was a prescriptive one.
The most important innovations of the Dictionary were a) clear differentiation of senses (separate meanings were neatly arranged and enumerated); b) each meaning was illustrated by quotations from «the best writers».
About 114,000 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 headword; d) they point to the chronological limits of the language period under discussion.
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S.Johnson planned to use quotations in chronological order to show how the semantic structure of the word was changing over a certain period of time. But this idea could be implemented into practice only in the «Oxford English Dictionary», originally called the «New English Dictionary» (1888–1928).
The OED is the most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of the English language. It was compiled by the English Philological Society. The work began in 1857, the first volume was published in 1888, the last one – in 1928, and a Supplement – in 1933. The second edition of the OED which recorded the language of the 20th century was published in 1989. Now the OED consists of twenty volumes and the number of entries amounts to more than 325,000.
The purpose of the dictionary was to record the history of all the English words since 1150. The dictionary registers different spellings of the word, its etymology, modern pronunciation, grammatical information and the account of usage over the period of the word existence. Each use is illustrated by a selection of quotations which give the user an idea of the chronological sequence of development of the word semantics. The dictionary indicates the subject field for which this or that use is characteristic and provides senses with stylistic labels. The OED comprises not only literary English words but also scientific and technical words, neologisms and a great number of obsolete, archaic, and dialectal uses.
The Oxford University Press published different abridged versions of the OED «for those who were interested in the history of the English language from the days of King Alfred». They are based on the same principles as the OED: the historical record of the English lexicon and the use of key quotations. «The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary» is the best known one.
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The number of dictionaries of English published in Great Britain in the 20th century is so great that it is impossible even to mention all the titles to say nothing of describing dictionaries in detail. The most popular one‑volume general‑purpose dictionaries are «The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English», the «Collins Concise Dictionary», Chambers English Dictionary, the «Longman Dictionary of the English Language» etc. All of them contain detailed guidance on the understanding and the general use of current idiomatic English.
General‑purpose dictionaries cannot satisfy those who are in need of expert guidance on some specific aspects of English. They can consult numerous dictionaries which provide the user with special information of various kinds. Special philological dictionaries are legion: pronuncia‑tion, etymology, usage, synonymy, idioms, slang, and many other linguistic phenomena are treated in dictionaries of this kind.
American Lexicography
The first American dictionaries of English were based on British dictionaries of the 18th century. Curiously enough, the first American dictionary was made by a Connecticut schoolmaster whose name was Samuel Johnson in 1798. «A School Dictionary» by S.Johnson had only 4,150 entries and did not differ from British dictionaries. In 1800
S.Johnson together with John Elliot published a new dictionary «A selected, pronouncing accented dictionary» which was also a learner’s dictionary. It has a reference section containing some information on grammar, etymology and derivation. The word‑list comprised not only native English words but also a few borrowings from Indian languages.
A truly American dictionary was compiled by Noah Webster. His two volume «American Dictionary of the English Language» was published in 1828 and had 70,000 entries. Noah Webster’s dictionary contained many Americanisms, that is words borrowed from Indian languages and Spanish which became part and parcel of the American variant of English in the 19th century. Webster’s definitions were more precise and scientific than those in S.Johnson’s Dictionary oriented at the language of the best British writers. Webster also tried to simplify the spelling and pronunciation that were current in American English of the period. A very important feature of this dictionary is a number of Supplements providing the user with a wealth of various encyclopaedic information.
After Webster’s death in 1843 George and Charles Merriam, publishers from the state of Massachusetts, bought the copyright for his famous dictionary, and now its shorter versions are published under the name of Merriam‑Webster. The latest revised edition «Webster’s Third New International Dictionary» has 460,000 entries, and lays special emphasis on present‑day English. It has more quotations but less encyclopaedic information than the previous edition.
Chapter 2.
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