19. Lexicography

1. Some of the main problems of lexicography.

2. Types of dictionaries

3. Historical development of British and American lexicography

The main problems: the selection of head-words, the arrangements and contents of the vocabulary entry, the principles of sense definitions and the semantic and functional classification of words.

“diagonal is explained by the following context where only this term can occur: a square has two diagonals, and each of them divides the square into two right-angled isosceles triangles”; A diagonal is one of the two lines … etc.

2. Classification of dictionaries.

Pronouncing (phonetical) dictionaries (D. Jones «Pronouncing Dictionary») and etymological dictionaries (W. Skeat).

Unilingual or explanatory dictionaries (NED, COD, N.G. Wyld’s «Universal Dictionary») – bilingual or translation dictionaries (English-Russian dictionaries by I.R. Galperin, by Y.Apresyan). Multilingual or polyglot dictionaries.

Unilingual dictionaries: diachronic dictionaries (OED); synchronistic and descriptive dictionaries.

General and special dictionaries. General dictionaries: frequency dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, thesaurus. Learner’s dictionaries: A.S. Hornby «The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary». «The Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English» (1981).

Special dictionaries: technical dictionaries, phraseological dictionaries («The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs»; A.V. Koonin), dictionaries of synonyms (R. Soule «A Dictionary of English Synonyms and Synonymous Expressions»; Y. Apresyan «English Synonyms»). Dictionaries of neologisms: Burchfield «Supplement to NED»; «The Longman Register of New Words»; «Bloomsury Dictionary of New Words».

Concordances

Linguistic and non-linguistic (the encyclopaedias). The Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Encyclopaedia Americana.

Machine translation dictionaries

3. 15-th century. Robert Cawdry, A Table Alphabeticall, containing and teaching the true writing and understanding of hard usuall English words borrowed from Hebrew, Greeke, Latine and French, 1604.

N. Bailey, Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1721.

S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English language in Which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals and Illustrated in Their General Significations by Examples form the Best Writers, London, 2 vols., 1775. “lexicographer – a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge…”.

John Walker, The Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English language, 1791.

The 19^th century: the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) – “New English Dictionary on Historical Prinsiples”.

1858, the English philological society, Dr. Trench (NED), 1884 – the first volume; «The Oxford English Dictionary», 1933; «A Shorter Oxford Dictionary»; «A Concise Oxford Dictionary».

Joseph Wright, The English Dialect Dictionary.

The American lexicography. Samuel Johnson, “A School Dicitonary”, 1798.

Noah Webster, “The American Dictionary of the English Lnaguage”, 1828; Merriam-Webster.

The Century Dicitonary, 1891; Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary, 1895.