Lectures 11-12. Lexicography

Lexicography, the science of dictionary-compiling, is closely connected with lexicology, both dealing with the same problems — the form, meaning, usage and origin of vocabulary units — and making use of each other’s achievements.

On the one hand, the enormous raw material collected in dictionaries is widely used by linguists in their research. On the other hand, the principles of dictionary-making are always based on linguistic fundamentals, and each individual entry is made up in accordance with the current knowledge and findings of scholars in the various fields of language study.

There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be roughly divided into two groups — encyclopaedic and linguistic.

The two groups of reference books differ essentially in the choice of items included and in the sort of information given about them. Linguistic dictionaries are wоrd-books, their subject’ matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc. The encyclopaedic dictionaries, the biggest of which are sometimes called simply encyclopaedias are thing-books, that give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena), their relations to other objects and phenomena, etc.

It follows that the encyclopaedic dictionaries will never enter items like father, go, that, be, if, black, but only those of designative character, such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and also geographical and biographical entries.

The most well-known encyclopaedias in English are The Encyclopaedia Britannica (in 24 volumes) and The Encyclopedia Americana (in 30 volumes). Very popular in Great Britain and the USA are also Collier’s Encyclopedia (in 24 vols) intended for students and school teachers, Chamber’s Encyclopaedia (in 15 vols) which is a family type reference book, and Everyman’s Encyclopaedia (in 12 vols) designed for all-round use.

Besides the general encyclopaedic dictionaries there are reference books that are confined to definite fields of knowledge, such as The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford Companion to Theatre, Cassell's Encyclopaedia of World Literature, etc.

There are also numerous ‘dictionaries presenting information about notable persons (scientists, writers, kings, presidents, etc.) often called Who’s Who dictionaries.

Thus a linguistic dictionary is a book of words in a language, usually listed alphabetically, with definitions, pronunciations, etymologies and other linguistic information or with their equivalents in another language (or other languages).

Linguistic dictionaries may be divided into different categories by different criteria. According to the nature of their word-list we may speak about general diсtiоnaries, on the one hand, and restriсted, on the other. The terms general and restricted do not refer to the size of the dictionary or to the number of items listed.

To restricted dictionaries belong terminological, phraseological, dialectal word-books, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words, of abbreviations, etc.

All types of dictionaries, save the translation ones, may be mоnolingual or bilingual, i.e. the information about the items entered may be given in the same language or in another one.

Care should be taken not to mix up the terms monolingual and explanatory, on the one hand, and bilingual and translation dictionaries on the other.

For instance, the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles commonly abbreviated in NED and its abridgement The Shorter Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles (SOD) coyer the history of the English vocabulary from the days of King Alfred down to the present time; they are diachronic, whereas another abridgement of the NED — the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (COD) as well as H. C. Wyld's Universal Dictionary of the English Language are synchronic. Other series of authoritative synchronic explanatory dictionaries are Webster dictionaries, the Funk and Wagnalls (or Standard) dictionaries and the Century dictionaries.

The numerous linguistic dictionaries of the English language may be grouped by the following criteria: 1) the nature of their word-list, 2) the information they contain, 3) the language of the explanations, 4) the intended user.

The most important problems the lexicographer faces are: 1) the selection of items for inclusion and their arrangement, 2) the setting of the entries, 3) the selection, arrangement and definition of meanings, 4) the illustrative examples to be supplied, and 5) the supplementary material. The choice among the possible solutions depends upon the type to which the dictionary will belong, the aim the compilers pursue, the prospective user of the dictionary, the linguistic conceptions of the dictionary-maker, etc.