Lexicology in theory, practice and tests Study guide Recommended by the Academic Council of Sumy State University Sumy Sumy State University 2015
PART 8. SOME BASIC PROBLEMS OF DICTIONARY COMPILING
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| PART 8. SOME BASIC PROBLEMS OF DICTIONARY COMPILING
The theory and practice of compiling dictionaries is called lexicography. The history of compiling dictionaries comes as far back as the Old English period, where we can find glosses of religious books / interlinear translations from Latin into English/. Regular bilingual dictionaries began to appear in the 15-th century: Anglo-Latin, Anglo-French, Anglo-German. The first unilingual dictionary explaining difficult words appeared in 1604, the author was Robert Cawdry, a schoolmaster, who compiled his dictionary for schoolchildren. In 1721 an English scientist and writer Nathan Bailey published the first etymological dictionary which explained the origin of English words. It was the first scientific dictionary compiled for philologists. In 1775 an explanatory dictionary was compiled. Its author was Samuel Johnson. Every word in his dictionary was illustrated by examples from English literature, the meanings of words were clear from the contexts in which they were used. The dictionary was a great success and it influenced the development of lexicography in all countries. The dictionary influenced normalization of the English vocabulary. But at the same time it helped to preserve the English spelling in its conservative form. In 1858 one of the members of the English philological society Dr. Trench raised the question of compiling a dictionary including all the words existing in the language. More than a thousand people took part in collecting examples, and 26 years later in 1884 the first volume was published. It contained words beginning with “A” and “B”. The last volume was published in 1928 that is 70 years after the decision was adopted. The dictionary was called NED and contained 12 volumes. In 1933 the dictionary was republished under the title “The Oxford English Dictionary’, because the work on the dictionary was conducted in Oxford. This dictionary contained 13 volumes. As the dictionary was very large scientists continued their work and compiled shorter editions of the dictionary: “A Shorter Oxford Dictionary” consisting of two volumes. It had the same number of entries, but far less examples from literature. They also compiled “A Concise Oxford Dictionary” consisting of one volume and including only modern words and no examples from literature. The work at a dictionary consists of the following main stages: the collection of material, the selection of entries and their arrangement, the setting of each entry. At different stages of his work the lexicographer is confronted with different problems. Some of these refer to any type of dictionary; others are specific of only some or even one type. The most important of the former are:1) the selection of lexical units for inclusion; 2) their arrangement; 3) the setting of the entries; 4) the selection and arrangement (grouping) of word-meanings; 5) the definition of meanings; 6) illustrative material; 7) supplementary material. The choice of lexical units for inclusion is one of the first problems the lexicographer faces. Then the number of items to be recorded must be determined. The basic problem is what to select and what to leave out in the dictionary. Which form of the language, spoken or written or both, is the dictionary to reflect? Should the dictionary contain obsolete and archaic units, technical terms, colloquialisms, etc? The choice depends upon the type to which the dictionary will belong, the aim the compilers pursue, the prospective user of the dictionary, its size, the linguistic conceptions of the dictionary-makers and some others. Explanatory and translation dictionaries usually record words and phraseological units, some of them also include affixes as separate entries. Synonym-books, pronouncing, etymological dictionaries and some others deal only with words. Frequency dictionaries differ in the type of units included. Most of them enter graphic units, thus failing to discriminate between homographs (such as back n, back adv., back v) and listing inflected forms of the same words (such as go, gone, going, goes) as separate items; others enter words in accordance with the usual lexicographic practice. The number of entries is usually reduced at the expense of some definite strata of the vocabulary, such as dialectisms, jargonisms, technical terms, foreign words and the less frequently used words (archaisms, obsolete words, etc.). The policy settled on depends on the aim of the dictionary. As to general explanatory dictionaries, for example, diachronic and synchronic word-books differ greatly in their approach to the problem. Since the former are concerned with furnishing an account of the historical development of lexical units, such dictionaries as NED and SOD embrace not only the vocabulary of oral and written English of the present day, together with such technical and scientific words as are most frequently met with, but also a considerable proportion of obsolete, archaic, and dialectal words. Synchronic explanatory dictionaries include mainly common words in ordinary present-day use. The bigger the dictionary, the larger is the measure of peripheral words, the greater the number of words that are so infrequently used as to be mere museum pieces. In accordance with the compiler’s aim the units for inclusion are drawn either from other dictionaries or from some reading matter or from the spoken discourse. For example, the corpus from which the word frequencies are derived may be composed of different types of textual material: books of fiction, scientific and technical literature, newspapers and magazines, school textbooks, personal or business letters, interviews, telephone conversations, etc. The order of arrangement of the entries is different in different dictionaries. In most dictionaries of various types entries are given in a single alphabetical listing. In others the units are arranged in nests, based on this or that principle. In some explanatory and translation dictionaries, for example, entries are grouped in families of words of the same root. In this case the basic units are given as main entries that appear in alphabetical order while the derivatives and the phrases are given either as subentries or in the same entry, as run-ons that are also alphabetised. In synonym-books words are arranged in synonymic sets and its dominant member serves as the head-word of the entry. In some phraseological dictionaries, e.g. in prof. Koonin’s dictionary, the phrases are arranged in accordance with their pivotal words which are defined as constant non-interchangeable elements of phrases. A variation of the cluster-type arrangement is found in the few frequency dictionaries in which the items included are not arranged alphabetically. In such dictionaries the entries follow each other in the descending order of their frequency, items of the same frequency value grouped together. Each of the two modes of presentation, the alphabetical and the cluster-type, has its own advantages. The former provides for an easy finding of any word and establishing its meaning, frequency value, etc. The latter requires less space and presents a clearer picture of the relations of each unit under consideration with some other units in the language system, since words of the same root, the same denotational meaning or close in their frequency value are grouped together. Practically most dictionaries are a combination of the two orders of arrangement. In most explanatory and translation dictionaries the main entries, both simple words and derivatives, appear in alphabetical order, with this or that measure of run-ons, thrown out of alphabetical order. The number of meanings a word is given and their choice depend on two factors: 1) on what aim the compilers set themselves and 2) what decisions they make concerning the extent to which obsolete, archaic, dialectal or highly specialised meanings should be recorded, how the problem of polysemy and homonymy is solved, how cases of conversion are treated, etc. It is natural, for example, that diachronic dictionaries list many more meanings than synchronic dictionaries of current English, as they record not only the meanings in present-day use, but also those that have already become archaic or gone out of use. Thus SOD lists eight meanings of the word arrive (two of which are now obsolete and two are archaic), while COD gives five. There are at least three different ways in which the word meanings are arranged: in the sequence of their historical development (called historical order), in conformity with frequency of use that is with the most common meaning first (empirical or actual order), and in their logical connection (logical order). In different dictionaries the problem of arrangement is solved in different ways. It is well-accepted practice to follow the historical order in diachronic dictionaries and the empirical and logical order in synchronic word-books. In many other dictionaries meanings are generally organised by frequency of use, but sometimes the primary meaning comes first if this is considered essential to a correct understanding of derived meanings. Meanings of words may be defined in different ways: 1) by means of definitions that are characterised as encyclopaedic, 2) by means of descriptive definitions or paraphrases, 3) with the help of synonymous words and expressions, 4) by means of cross-references. It is the descriptive definitions that are used in majority of entries. It is necessary to stress the fact that word-meanings can be explained not only with the help of definitions and examples but also by means of showing their collocability (lexical and grammatical valency), especially their typical collocability. One of the major problems in compiling translation dictionaries and other bilingual word-books is to provide adequate translation’ of vocabulary items or rather to choose an adequate equivalent in the target language. The compilation of such dictionaries must be based on systematic and detailed contrastive studies of the languages dealt with. This will enable the lexicographer to decide what parts of their vocabularies diverge and thus require special attention in translation. Conveying the meaning of a lexical unit in the target language is no easy task as the semantic structures of related words in different languages are never identical. The lack of isomorphism is not limited to the so-called “culture-bound words” only but also to most other lexical units. The dictionary-maker is to give the most exact equivalent in the target language. Where there is no equivalent, to achieve maximum accuracy in rendering the meanings to be entered the compiler may either describe the meaning with an explanation, much similar to the definition of an explanatory dictionary, or resort to transliteration. Very often enumeration of equivalents alone does not supply a complete picture of the semantic volume of this or that word. Lexicography, that is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries, is an important branch of applied linguistics. Lexicography has a common object of study with lexicology; both describe the vocabulary of a language. The province of lexicography is the semantic, formal, and functional description of all individual words. Lexicographers have to arrange their material most often according to a purely external characteristic, namely alphabetically. 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 many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be roughly divided into two groups – encyclopaedic and linguistic. Linguistic dictionaries are word-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 called 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. Although some of the items included in encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries coincide, such as the names of some diseases, the information presented in them is altogether different. The former give much more extensive information on these subjects. For example, the entry influenza in a linguistic dictionary presents the word’s spelling and pronunciation, grammar characteristics, synonyms, etc. In an encyclopaedia the entry influenza discloses the causes, symptoms, characteristics and varieties of this disease, various treatments of and remedies for it, ways of infection, etc. 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 dictionaries, on the one hand, and restricted, on the other. The terms general and restricted do not refer to the size of the dictionary or to the number of items listed. What is meant is that the former contain lexical units in ordinary use with this or that proportion of items from various spheres of life, while the latter make their choice only from a certain part of the word-stock, the restriction being based on any principle determined by the compiler. To restricted dictionaries belong terminological, phraseological, dialectal word-books, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words, of abbreviations, etc. There are also dictionaries that concentrate their attention upon only one of these aspects: pronouncing (phonetical) dictionaries and etymological dictionaries. Pronouncing dictionaries record contemporary pronunciation. As compared with the phonetic characteristics of words given by other dictionaries the information provided by pronouncing dictionaries is much more detailed: they indicate variant pronunciations (which are numerous in some cases), as well as the pronunciation of different grammatical forms. The world famous English Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones, is considered to provide the most expert guidance on British English pronunciation. The most popular dictionary for the American variant is A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English by J. S. Kenyon and T. A. Knott. 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 origin, and parallel forms in cognate languages. The most authoritative of these is the newly-published Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology edited by С. Т. Onions. Quite popular is the famous Etymological English Dictionary by W. W. Skeat compiled at the beginning of the century and published many times. For dictionaries in which the words and their definitions 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. Explanatory dictionaries provide information on all aspects of the lexical units entered: graphical, phonetical, grammatical, semantic, stylistic, etymological, etc. Unilingual dictionaries are further subdivided with regard to the time. Most of these dictionaries deal with the form, usage and meaning of lexical units in Modern English, regarding it as a stabilised system and taking no account of its past development. They are synchronic in their presentation of words as distinct from diachronic, those concerned with the development of words occurring within the written history of the language. For instance, the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles commonly abbreviated in NED and its abridgement The Shorter Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles (SOD) cover 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) is synchronic. 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. 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. General dictionaries are contrasted to special dictionaries whose aim is to cover 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), 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 specialised dictionaries of limited scope which appeal to a particular kind of a reader. They register and explain technical terms for various branches of knowledge, art and trade: linguistic, medical, technical, economical terms, etc. The second subgroup deals with specific language units, i.e. with phraseology, abbreviations, neologisms, borrowings, toponyms, proverbs, etc. Phraseological dictionaries have accumulated vast collections of idiomatic or colloquial phrases, proverbs and other, usually image-bearing word-groups with profuse illustrations. But the compilers’ approach is in most cases purely empiric. By phraseology many of them mean all forms of linguistic anomalies. The third subgroup contains a formidable array of synonymic dictionaries. 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. Dictionaries of slang contain elements from areas of substandard speech such as vulgarisms, jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms, etc. The most well-known dictionaries of the type are Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by E. Partridge, Dictionary of the Underworld: British and American, The American Thesaurus of Slang by L. V. Berry & M. Den Bork, The Dictionary of American Slang by H. Wentworth and S. B. Flexner. 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 (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 exist also biographical dictionaries and many minor encyclopaedias. 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 is 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. The entries of a dictionary are usually arranged in alphabetical order, except that derivatives and compounds are given under the same head-word. Thus to characterise a dictionary one must qualify it at least from the four angles mentioned above: 1) the nature of the word-list, 2) the information supplied, 3) the language of the explanations, 4) the prospective user. TEST 1
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