Lexicography. English dictionaries
Lexicography, that is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries, is an important branch of applied linguistics. It has a common object of study with lexicology as both describe the vocabulary of a language. Lexicology studies recurring patterns of semantic relationships, and formal phonological or grammatical devices by which they may be rendered. It aims at systematization revealing characteristic features of words and the main oppositions relevant for the vocabulary. The province of lexicography, on the other hand, is the semantic, formal, and functional description of all individual words. Dictionaries aim at a more or less complete description.
The term dictionary is used to denote a book listing words of a language with their meanings and often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and/or origin. There are also dictionaries that concentrate their attention upon only one of these aspects: pronouncing (phonetic) dictionaries and etymological dictionaries.
For dictionaries in which the words and their definition belong to the same language the term unilingual or explanatory is used, whereas bilingual or translation dictionaries are those that explain words by giving their equivalents in another language. Multilingual or polyglot dictionaries are not numerous; they serve chiefly the purpose of comparing synonyms and terminology in various languages.
Unilingual dictionaries are further subdivided with regard the time axis. Diachronic dictionaries, of which the Oxford English Dictionary is the main example, reflect the development of the English vocabulary by recording the history of form and meaning for every word registered. They may be contrasted to synchronistic or descriptive dictionaries of current English concerned with present-day meaning and usage of words.
Both bilingual and unilingual dictionaries can be general and special. General dictionaries represent the vocabulary as a whole with a degree of completeness depending upon the scope and bulk of the book in question. The group includes the thirteen volumes of the Oxford Dictionary alongside with any miniature pocket dictionary. Some general dictionaries may have very specific aims and still be considered general due to their coverage. They include, for instance, frequency dictionaries, i.e. lists of words, each of which is followed by a record of its frequency of occurrence in one or several sets of reading matter. A rhyming dictionary is also a general dictionary, though arranged in inverse order, and so is a Thesaurus in spite of its unusual arrangement.
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General dictionaries are contrasted to special dictionaries whose stated aim is to cover only a certain specific part of the vocabulary. Special dictionaries may be further subdivided depending on whether (the words are chosen according to the sphere of human activity in which they are used (technical dictionaries), or the type of the units themselves (e.g. phraseological dictionaries) or the relationships existing between them (e.g. dictionaries of synonyms).
The first subgroup embraces highly specialized dictionaries of limited scope which may appeal to a particular kind of reader. They register and explain technical terms for various branches of knowledge, art and trade: medical, linguistic, technical, economical terms, etc. Unilingual books of this type giving definitions of terms are called glossaries. They are often prepared by boards or commissions specially appointed for the task of improving technical terminology and nomenclature.
The second class deals with specific language units, i.e. with phraseology, abbreviation, neologisms, borrowings, surnames, place names, proverbs and sayings, etc. The third class contains a formidable array of synonymic dictionaries that have been mentioned in the chapter on synonyms. Dictionaries recording the complete vocabulary of some author are called concordances, they should be distinguished from those that deal only with difficult words, i.e. glossaries. Taking up territorial considerations one comes across dialect dictionaries and dictionaries of Americanisms. The main types of dictionaries are classified in the accompanying table.
Types of Dictionaries
| Unilingual | Bilingual or multilingual | ||
| General
| Explanatory dictionaries irrespective of their bulk | EEnglish-Russian, Russian-English, etc. and multilingual dictionaries | |
| EEtymological, frequency, phonetic, rhyming and thesaurus type dictionaries | Concentrated on one of the distinctive features
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| Special | Glossaries of scientific and other special terms; concordances Dictionaries of abbreviations, antonyms, borrowings, new words, proverbs, synonyms, surnames, toponyms, etc. 2 | Dictionaries of scientific and other special terms Dictionaries of abbreviations, phraseology, proverbs, synonyms, etc. 2 | |
| DDictionaries of American English, dialect and slang dictionaries | DDictionaries of Old English and Middle English with explanations in Modern English | ||
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Finally, dictionaries may be classified into linguistic and non-linguistic. The latter are dictionaries giving information on all branches of knowledge, the encyclopaedias. They deal not with words, but with facts and concepts. The best known encyclopaedias of the English-speaking world are the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
There exist also biographical dictionaries and many minor encyclopaedias.
English lexicography is probably the richest in the world with respect to variety and scope of the dictionaries published. The demand on dictionaries is very great.
A bilingual dictionary is useful to several kinds of people: to those who study foreign languages, to specialists reading foreign literature, to translators, to travellers, and to linguists. It may have two principal purposes: reference for translation and guidance for expression. It must provide an adequate translation in the target language of every word and expression in the source language. It is also supposed to contain all the inflectional, derivational, semantic and syntactic information that its reader might ever need, and also information on spelling and pronunciation. Data on the levels of usage are also considered necessary, including special warnings about the word being rare or poetical or slangy and unfit to be used in the presence of "one's betters". The number of special bilingual dictionaries for various branches of knowledge and engineering is ever increasing. A completely new type comprises the machine, translation dictionaries which present their own specific problems, naturally differing from those presented by bilingual dictionaries for human translation. It is highly probable however, that their development will eventually lead to improving dictionaries for general use.
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The entries of a dictionary are usually arranged in alphabetical order, except that derivatives and compounds are given under the same head-word. In the ideographic dictionaries the main body is arranged according to a logical classification of notions expressed. But dictionaries of this type always have an alphabetical index attached to facilitate the search for the necessary word.
The ideographic type of dictionary is in a way the converse of the usual type: the purpose of the latter is to explain (the meaning when the word is given. The Thesaurus, on the contrary, supplies the word or words by which a given idea may be expressed. Sometimes the grouping is in parallel columns with the opposite notions. The book is meant only for readers (either native or foreign) having a good knowledge of English, and enables them to pick up an adequate expression and avoid over-use of the same words. The Latin word thesaurus means 'treasury'. Roget's book gave the word a new figurative meaning, namely, 'a store of knowledge', and hence 'a dictionary containing all the words of a language'. A consistent classification of notions presents almost insuperable difficulties. Only relatively few "semantic fields", such as kinship terms, colour terms, names for parts of human body and some others fit into a neat scheme. For the most part, however, there is no one-to-one correlation between notions and words, and the classification of notions, even if it were feasible, is a very poor help for classification of meanings and their systematic presentation. The system of meanings stands in a very complex relationship to the system of notions because of the polysemantic character of most words. The semantic structure of words and the semantic system of vocabulary depend on many linguistic, historical and cultural factors.
1Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases was first published in 1852. About 80 succeeding revised editions have appeared since. The latest abridged revision was issued by Penguin Books in 1962.
2An American version of Thesaurus is rearranged alphabetically, with the ideographic classification shown by means of cross-references. See The New Roget’s Thesaurus in Dictionary Form, ed. by Norman Lewis, 1961.
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A need for a dictionary or glossary has been felt in the cultural growth of many civilized peoples at a fairly early period. 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 interlinear translations from Latin. Regular bilingual English-Latin dictionaries were already in existence in the 15th century. The bilingual dictionary, it must be noted, is associated with foreign language study from time immemorial. The unilingual dictionary is a comparatively recent type.
The first unilingual English dictionary, explaining words by English equivalents, appeared in 1604. It was meant to explain difficult words occurring in books. Its title was "A Table Alphabeticall, containing and teaching the true writing and understanding of hard usuall English words borrowed from the Hebrew, Greeke, Latine or French". The little volume of 120 pages explaining about 3000 words was compiled by one Robert Cawdrey, a schoolmaster. Other books followed, each longer than the preceding one. The first attempt of a dictionary including all the words of the language, not only the difficult ones, was made by Nathaniel Bailey who in 1721 published the first edition of his "Universal Etymological English Dictionary". He was the first to include pronunciation and etymology.
Big explanatory dictionaries were created in France and Italy before they appeared for the English language. Learned academies on the continent had been established to preserve the purity of their respective languages. This was also the purpose of Dr Samuel Johnson's famous Dictionary published in 1775. The most important innovation of Johnson's dictionary was the introduction of illustrations of the meanings of the words "by examples from the best writers", as had been done before him in the dictionary of the French Academy.
Аs to pronunciation, attention was turned to it somewhat later. A pronouncing dictionary that must be mentioned first was published in 1780 by Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of the great dramatist. In 1791 appeared "The Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language" by John Walker, an actor. The vogue of this second dictionary was very great, and in later publications Walker's pronunciations were inserted into Johnson's text — a further step to a unilingual dictionary in its present-day form.
The Golden Age of English lexicography began in the last quarter of the 19th century when the English Philological Society started work on compiling what is now known as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), but was originally named "New English Dictionary on Historical Principles". It is still occasionally referred to as NED.
The purpose of this monumental work is to trace the development of English words from their form in Old English, and if they were not found in Old English, to show when they were introduced into the language, and also to show the development of each meaning and its historical relation to other meanings of the same word.
The Philological Society set to work to gather the material, volunteers offered to help by collecting quotations Dictionary-making became a sort of national enterprise. By 1881 the number of readers was 800 and they sent in many thousands of slips.
The first part of the Dictionary appeared in 1884 and the last in 1928. Later it was issued in twelve volumes and in order to accommodate new words a supplement was issued in 1933.The success of the enterprise was largely due to its third editor James A. H. Murray, a Scottish schoolmaster, who organized an editorial staff and actually started the publication.
The Oxford University Press published different abridged versions. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary formerly appeared in two volumes, now printed on thinner paper it is bound in one volume of 2,538 pages. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary was first published in 1911.
Noah Webster, was universally considered to be the father of American lexicography, who emphatically broke away from English idiom, and embodied in his book the specifically American usage of his time. His great work, “The American Dictionary of the English Language”, appeared in two volumes in 1828 and later sustained numerous revised and enlarged editions. In many respects Webster follows the lead of Dr Johnson (the British lexicographer). But he has also improved and corrected many of Johnson’s etymologies and his definitions are often more exact. Webster attempted to simplify the spelling and pronunciation that were current in the USA of the period. He devoted many years to the collection of words and the preparation of more accurate definitions.
N. Webster associated with many eminent men of his country and took an active share in public life. He realized the importance of language for the development of a nation, and devoted his energy to giving the American English the status of an independent language, distinct from British English.
Webster’s dictionary enjoyed great popularity from its first editions. This popularity was due not only to the accuracy and clarity of definitions but also to the richness of additional information of encyclopaedic character, which had become a tradition in American lexicography.
It is important to note that the name Webster may be attached for publicity’s sake by anyone to any dictionary. Many publishers concerned with their profits have taken this opportunity to issue dictionaries called Webster’s.
A complete revision of Webster’s dictionary is achieved with a certain degree of regularity. The years when revised editions were published are: 1864 – 1890 – 1934 – 1961.
The other two great American dictionaries are The Century Dictionary, first completed in 1891, and Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary, first completed in 1895. All three continue to appear in variously named subsequent editions including abridged versions. Many small handy popular dictionaries for office, school and home use are prepared to meet the demand in reference books on spelling, pronunciation, meaning and usage.
Words and expressions
to compile – составлять
recurring – повторяющийся
applied – прикладной
device – прием
relevant – существенный
to reveal – обнаружить
axis – ось
current – настоящий
to facilitate – облегчить
consistent – последовательный
insuperable – несравнимый, недостижимый
kinship – родство
feasible – возможный
glossary – словарь
traces – следы
vogue – мода
Questions to the lecture
1. What is the difference between lexicography and lexicology?
2. What is a dictionary?
3. What is the difference between unilingual, bilingual and multilingual dictionaries?
4. What do you know about general dictionaries?
5. What dictionaries are called special?
6. What are the problems of machine translating dictionaries?
7. What is the thesaurus?
8. When did the first bilingual English-Latin dictionaries appear in England?
9. When did the first unilingual explanatory dictionary appear in England?
10. When did the first pronouncing dictionary appear?
11. When did the English philological society start work on compiling Oxford English Dictionary do you know?
12. What versions of Oxford English Dictionary do you know?
13. Who is the father of American lexicography?
14. When were Webster’s dictionary editions published?
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