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Kovalenko_lexicology

Electronic Resources:

  1. Neologism. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [Електронний ресурс]. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism - 8 September 2009 19:21

  2. People-first_language. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [Електронний ресурс]. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People-first_language - 28 July 2009 at 22:13

  1. LEXICOGRAPHY

    Subject matter of lexicography / The history of English dictionary-making / The criteria of word description in linguistic dictionaries / Classification of dictionaries / Electronic and online icitonaries

Lexicography is a linguistic discipline dealing with dictionary-making and dictionary research. In general, the following spheres of interest of lexicography might be described:

  1. dictionary-making including recording (fieldwork), editing (description) and publishing (presentation);

  2. dictionary research including dictionary history, dictionary criticism, dictionary typology, dictionary structure, dictionary use, dictionary IT and some other fields.

All dictionaries could roughly be divided into encyclopaedias and linguistic dictionaries. Within the lexicological frame we deal with the latter.

The first glossary of the English language that carried the title Dictionary was compiled in 1538 by Thomas Knigh, followed by Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words (1604).

Speaking about the history of English lexicology, scholars generally mention two important figures and two dictionaries that achieved profound influence on the art of English dictionary-making.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language was first published in 1755. In 1747 he wrote a letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, describing the need for a new dictionary as he saw it, and the way he would go about creating it. This statement was called The Plan. Among other contemplations about how a dictionary should be organized and what purposes it should serve, he wrote: “It is not enough that a dictionary delights the critic, unless at the same time it instructs the learner” (quoted after Lexicography: Critical Concepts, 2003).

Johnson's masterwork could be judged as the first “modern” dictionary as he managed to bring together such elements as textual references for most words rather than a mere glossary without definitions and an alphabetical order rather than arrangement by topic (a previously popular form of arrangement, which meant all animals would be grouped together, etc.).

James Murray started working on what turned out to be another remarkable dictionary, Oxford English Dictionary about 150 years later. The work took 20 years to accomplish. The Oxford University Press began writing and releasing the Oxford English Dictionary in short fascicles from 1884 onwards. It took nearly 50 years to finally complete the huge work, and they finally released the complete OED in twelve volumes in 1928.

In 1806, Noah Webster published his first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. In 1807 Webster began compiling an expanded and fully comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language; it took twenty-seven years to complete. To evaluate the etymology of words, Webster learned twenty-six languages, including Old English (Anglo-Saxon), German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit. Webster hoped to standardize American speech. He completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France, and at the University of Cambridge. The book contained seventy thousand words, of which twelve thousand had never appeared in a published dictionary before. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American English spellings, replacing colour with color, substituting wagon for waggon, and printing center instead of centre. He also added American words, like skunk and squash, that did not appear in British dictionaries.

Words in dictionaries are desctibed according to different criteria:

As to the content of the word-list, dictionaries can be classified into general dictionaries and restricted dictionaries. General dictionaries contain lexical units in ordinary use from various language layers, while restricted dictionaries include only a certain part of the word-stock. Here belong terminological, phraseological, dialectal dictionaries, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words, of abbreviations, etc.

As to the information they provide, all linguistic dictionaries can be described as either explanatory or specialized. Explanatory dictionaries provide information on all aspects of the lexical units: graphical, phonetical, grammatical, semantic, stylistic, etymological, etc. Most of these dictionaries deal with lexical units in Modern English: they are synchronic in their presentation of words. Diachronic dictionaries are concerned with the historical development of words.

Specialized dictionaries deal with lexical units only in relation to some of their charactreristics, e.g. only in relation to their etymology, or frequency, or pronunciation.

Pronouncing dictionaries record contemporary pronunciation. They indicate various pronunciaitons as well as the pronunciation of different grammatical forms.

Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the oldest forms available, establish their primary meanings and give the parent form reconstructed by means of the comparative-historical method. In case of borrowings they point out the immediate source of borrowing, its orogin and parallell forms in cognate language.

Dictionaries of word-frequency inform their user as to the frequency of occurrence of lexical units in speech. Most of these dictionaries were constructed to make up lists of words as the basis for teaching English as a foreign language, the so-called basic vocabulary.

Phraseological dictionaries include vast collections of idiomatic or colloquial phrases, proverbs, etc. with illustrations.

Dictionaries of slang contain elements from areas of substandard speech such as vulgarisms, jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms, etc.

Dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms provide information on all the lexical units that enter into the given semantic relations with the head lexical unit. In case of polysemantic words, synonyms and antonyms are given for each of the meanings.

A reverse dictionary is a list of words in which the entry words are arranged in alphabetical order starting with their final letters.

Translation dictionaries (sometimes also called parallel) are word-books containing vocabulary items in one language and their equivalents in another language1.

Some dictionaries are created for a certain prospective user, a target group of people who are supposed to find it particularly useful. Especially popular are English learners' dictionaries, designed to help learn the English language. Some dictionaries even state the learner's level at which the dictionary is useful, for example Oxford Collocations Dictionary is designed for Upper-Intermediate to Advanced students.

Collocation dictionaries help students write and speak natural-sounding English. Collocations are common word combinations such as speak fluently, meet a challenge and winning formula. They are essential building blocks for natural sounding spoken and written English. The dictionary shows all the words that are commonly used in combination with each headword: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions as well as common phrases.

A new word in dictionary-making is language activators. The Language Activator takes you form a key word or basic idea, like good, and shows you more precise words or phrases with information on register, context and grammar structures thay are used in. An Activator provides detailed definitions that help students choose the correct word and corpus-based examples show words in typical usage, giving various collocations and phrases. The index at the back of the book enables easy cross-referencing.

The development of the IT has lead to the creation of electronic computer dictionaries. Such dictionaries are available on the CDs and can be installed on your computer and provide quick search of the necessary entry. Almost all types of the dictionaries described above are available in electronic versions.

Online dictionaries are very convenient for those who use the Internet of the permanent basis. An evident advantage of online dictionaries is that their content is constantly updated so the users enjoy the freshest version of the dictionary.

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