Реферат: Lexicography as a science of dictionary-making

The largest dictionary in the world is "het Woordenboek der Nederlansche Taal (WNT)" (the Dictionary of the Dutch language). It took 134 years to create the dictionary (1864 - 1998). It consists of approximately 400,000 words on 45805 pages in 92000 columns.

A Brief History of English Lexicography

(1) Latin and French Glossaries
Year	Author /Editor	Dictionary	Size /Type
1440	Parvulorum	Storehouse [of words] for children or clerics	English-Latin
1476	Caxton	Printing in England	English-Latin
1480	Caxton	French-English Glossary	French-English
1499	Caxton	Promptorium	"hard words"
1500	Hortus Vocabularum	Garden of Words	Latin-English
1533	John Withals	A Short Dictionary for Yong Beginners	English-Latin
1538	Sir Thomas Elyot	Dictionary (Bibliotheca Eliotae)	Latin-English
1565	Thomas Cooper	Thesaurus of the Roman Tongue and the British	French-English
(2) Early English Dictionaries: The Seventeenth Century
Year	Author /Editor	Dictionary	Size /Type
1552	Richard Huloet	Abecedarium Anglo-Latinum	English-Latin-(Fr.)
1582	Richard Mulcaster	Elementary	8,000 words
1588	Thomas Thomas	Dictionarium Linguae Latinae et Anglicanae	Latin-English
1598	John Florio	A World of Words	Italian-English
1604	Robert Cawdrey	A Table Alphabetical	2,500 words
1616	John Bullokar	An English Expositor	5,000 words
1623	Henry Cockeram	The English Dictionary	3 parts
1656	Thomas Blount	Glossographia
1658	Edward Phillips	The New World of English Words
1673	Thomas Blount	A World of Errors Discovered in the New World of Words
1676	Elisha Coles	An English Dictionary	25,000 words
(3) The Beginning of Modern Dictionary Practice: The Eighteenth Century
Year	Author /Editor	Dictionary	Size /Type
1702	John Kersey	A New English Dictionary	28,000 words
1704	John Harris	An Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
1706	John Kersey	Philips's New World of English Words	38,000 words
1721	Nathan Bailey	An Universal Etymological English Dictionary	40,000 words
1727	Nathan Bailey	An Universal Etymological English Dictionary Volume II	2 parts
1728	Ephraim Chambers	An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
1730	Nathan Bailey	Dictionarium Britannicum	48,000 words
1747	Samuel Johnson	Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language
1749	Benjamin Martin	Lingua Britannica Reformata
1755	Samuel Johnson	A New Universal English Dictionary	40,000 words
(4) Dictionaries of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Year	Author /Editor	Dictionary
1757	James Buchanan	Linguae Britannicae
1764	William Johnston	Pronouncing and Spelling Dictionary
1764	John Entick	Spelling Dictionary
1773	William Kenrick	A New Dictionary of the English Language
1780	Thomas Sheridan	A General Dictionary of the English Language
1783	Noah Webster	The American Spelling Book
1791	John Walker	Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language
1818	Henry Todd	Johnson's Dictionary
1820	Albert Chalmers	Todd-Johnson with Walker's Pronunciations
1828	Joseph E. Worcester	Chalmers's Dictionary
1828	Noah Webster	An American Dictionary of the English Language
1830	Joseph Worcester	Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language
1837	Charles Richardson	A New Dictionary of the English Language (cf. OED)
1841	Noah Webster	An American Dictionary of the English Language new edition
1846	Joseph Worcester	Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language
1857	Richard Chenevix Trench	Some Deficiencies in Our English Dictionaries (cf. OED)
1860	Joseph Worcester	A Dictionary of the English Language
1864	Noah Porter	A Dictionary of the English Language
1882	Charles Annandale	The Century Dictionary
1890	George and Charles Merriam	International Dictionary
1893	Funk & Wagnalls	Standard Dictionary of the English Language
(5) Dictionaries of the 20th Century
Year	Author /Editor	Dictionary
1909	George and Charles Merriam	International Dictionary
1913	Funk & Wagnalls	New Standard Dictionary of the English Language
1927	The New Century Dictionary
1928	Oxford English Dictionary
1934	Webster's New International Dictionary
1938	Irving Lorge & Edward Thorndike	A Semantic Count of English Words
1947	American College Dictionary
1947	Funk & Wagnalls	New College Standard
1953	David Guralnik & Joseph Friend	Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language
1961	Philip Babcock Gove	Webster's Third New International Dictionary
1963	Philip Babcock Gove	Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
1966	Random House	The Random House Dictionary of the English Language
1968	Random House	Random House Dictionary, College Edition (Random House College Dictionary)
1969	American Heritage Dictionary
1973	Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
1983	Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary

2. Dictionary: notion, functions, classification, components

If we speak about the dictionary as a linguistic term, it is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. Many dictionaries also provide pronunciation information; grammatical information; word derivations, histories, or etymologies; illustrations; usage guidance; and examples in phrases or sentences. Dictionaries are most commonly found in the form of a book, but more and more dictionaries are produced as software runs from electronic PDA or a general purpose computer. Most dictionaries are produced by lexicographers.

Since words and their meanings develop over time, dictionary entries are organized to reflect these changes. Dictionaries may either list meanings in the historical order in which they appeared, or may list meanings in order of popularity and most common use.

Dictionaries also differ in the degree to which they are encyclopedic, providing considerable background information, illustrations, and the like, or linguistic, concentrating on etymology, nuances of meaning, and quotations demonstrating usage.

Any dictionary has been designed to fulfill one or more functions. The dictionary functions chosen by the maker(s) of the dictionary provide the basis for all lexicographic decisions, from the selection of entry words, over the choice of information types, to the choice of place for the information (e.g. in an article or in an appendix). There are two main types of function. The communication-oriented functions comprise text reception (understanding), text production, text revision, and translation. The knowledge-oriented functions deal with situations where the dictionary is used for acquiring specific knowledge about a particular matter, and for acquiring general knowledge about something. The optimal dictionary is one that contains information directly relevant for the needs of the users relating to one or more of these functions. It is important that the information is presented in a way that keeps the lexicographic information costs at a minimum.

All dictionaries are divided into linguistic and encyclopedic.

Encyclopedic dictionaries describe different objects, phenomena and people and give some information about them.

Linguistic dictionaries describe vocabulary units, their semantic structure, their origin and their usage; words are usually given in the alphabetical order.

Linguistic dictionaries are divided into general and specialized dictionaries.

General dictionaries include explanatory (monolingual) and translation (bilingual) dictionaries.

In explanatory (monolingual) dictionaries the entry consists of the spelling, transcription, grammatical forms, meanings, examples, phraseology.

Translation (bilingual) dictionaries give words and their equivalents in the other language.

Specialized dictionaries include dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, collocations, word frequency, slang, neologisms; etymological, pronouncing, phraseological and other dictionaries.

Specialized dictionaries (also technical dictionaries) focus on linguistic and factual matters relating to specific subject fields. A specialized dictionary may have a relatively broad coverage, e.g. a picture dictionary, in that it covers several subject fields such as science and technology (a multi-field dictionary), or their coverage may be more narrow, in that they cover one particular subject field such as law (a single-field dictionary) or even a specific sub-field such as contract law (a sub-field dictionary). Specialized dictionaries may be maximizing dictionaries, i.e. they attempt to achieve comprehensive coverage of the terms in the subject field concerned, or they may be minimizing dictionaries, i.e. they attempt to cover only a limited number of the specialized vocabulary concerned. Generally, multi-field dictionaries tend to be minimizing, whereas single-field and sub-field dictionaries tend to be maximizing.

Phraseological dictionaries describe idioms, colloquial phrases and proverbs. Some of them have examples from literature.

Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the oldest forms of these words and forms of these words in other languages.

Pronouncing dictionaries record only pronunciation.

Dictionaries of neologisms contain newly appearing words.

Anybody learning a foreign language knows the value of a good dictionary.

We all know how useful a bilingual dictionary can be in providing a quick translation for something when we don’t know a simple concrete word which translates easily. On the other hand a good well-organized monolingual dictionary can help a lot.

Let’s begin by looking at meaning. You know that one word can have a whole range of different meanings, some of them very similar to each other and some completely different. Which definition should you choose? Well, the first way in which a dictionary can help is by listing meanings so that the most common or frequent comes first, and at least common comes last. A good dictionary will also provide example sentences for each of the different meanings; it can solve a lot of problems if you can see how the word is actually used in a sentence.

The example sentence should also help with understanding the way the word combines with other words in a sentence. For example, you can’t really use a verb unless you know that it should be followed by a gerund or an infinitive or «that» clause or whatever.

Another important thing is the use of certain preposition after some adjectives which a dictionary will prompt to you. Besides, dictionaries give examples of common compounds and phrases which include the word you’ve looked up.

The example sentences can give you quite a lot of information about the grammar of the word you’re interested in; but it isn’t the only way in which a dictionary provides grammatical information. A dictionary will indicate to what word class a word belongs. A well-thought-out dictionary will also have a system of abbreviations or symbols to tell you, for example, whether a noun is countable, whether a verb is transitive or intransitive and so on. You won’t be able to use a word correctly in a sentence unless you know the answers to such questions.

English is famous for its unpredictable spellings and a dictionary is obviously going to be very useful here. A dictionary will tell you whether this spelling is British or American. You can even find out whether a verb has an irregular past tense or whether an adjective has an irregular comparative form.

The phonetic alphabet is used in dictionaries to tell you about the pronunciation of a word, and a special indication will help you get the stress in the right place.

List of major English dictionaries:

The Penguin English Dictionary