Special features of the main types of English dictionaries

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1. Historical Development of the English Lexicography

1.1 English Lexicography at The Middle English Period

1.2 English Lexicography at The Renaissance Period

1.3 English Lexicography in Modern Times

Chapter 2. Classification of The English Dictionaries

2.1 Encyclopedic and Linguistic Dictionaries

2.2 General Dictionary

2.2.1 Explanatory and Translation Dictionaries

2.3 Specialized (Restricted) Dictionary

2.3.1 Pronouncing Dictionary

2.3.2 Etymological Dictionary

2.3.3 Phraseological Dictionary

Conclusion

Bibliography



Introduction

This library research paper is devoted to one of the aspects of lexicography, namely the special features of main types of the English dictionaries.

Lexicography is one of the branches of the applied lexicology. It deals with the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries. They both have a common object of study: the form, meaning, usage and origin of vocabulary units. The difference between the two lies in the degree of systematization and completeness. Systematization and completeness cannot be achieved in lexicology simultaneously, because the number of units it studies is very great. Lexicography, on the other hand, aims at a more or less complete description of individual words, but cannot attain systematic treatment. Therefore, the relationship between lexicography and lexicology is that they both dealing with the same object, but with its different aspects.

The term «dictionary» is used to denote a book listing words of a language, usually in alphabetical order, with their meanings and often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and origin.

There are many different types of English dictionaries. They may be divided into two groups - encyclopedic and linguistic. They differ:

- in the choice of items included;

- in the sort of information given about them.

Linguistic dictionaries are word-books, their subject is lexical units and their linguistic properties - pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of usage. Linguistic dictionaries deal with all words of the language.

Encyclopedic dictionaries are thing-books. They give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena). Encyclopedic dictionaries deal with words of designative character (names for substances, diseases, animals, institutions, terms of science, biographical data).

Therefore, in this paper we will consider the special features and characteristics of main types of encyclopedic and linguistic dictionaries in terms of their meaning for the English language and English lexicology.

Further considering the peculiarities of the main types of English dictionaries require referring to the historical development of the English lexicography to clarify the main reasons for dividing an English dictionary into these types and figure out what kind of information each type of dictionary is devoted to.



1. Historical Development of the English Lexicography

1.1 English Lexicography at The Middle English Period

The development of the English lexicography is closely connected with the general evolution of the English language and the increase in the English word stock. The evolution of an English dictionary was greatly influenced by changes in the English language in each definite period of the English history.

The very first dictionaries were simply wordbooks that listed relatively difficult Latin terms, usually those of a Scriptural nature, accompanied by glosses in easier or more familiar Latin. Those glosses were ones of the religious books with interlinear translations from Latin.

Glosses containing native English equivalents for the hard Latin terms, can be found even in the Anglo-Saxon period of the English history. Among such glosses we can name the Leiden and Erfurt Glosses, which represent some kinds of the earliest written English dictionaries. These glosses, whether Latin-Latin or Latin-English, continued to be compiled during the entire Anglo-Saxon and most of the Middle-English period.

The development of the English dictionaries at the Middle English period is also closely connected to the international language of medieval European civilization - Latin. The very early Latin-English dictionaries are referred to the 15th century. It was the next stage and one of the examples of the dictionaries of that period can be mentioned the so-called Medulla Grammatica written in East England around 1400 which has never been printed; however, its two later reductions were among the earliest printed books.

Concerning the period of the Middle English, we should also note that the term «dictionary» first appeared in this period as well, when in 1220, John of Garland published a book he titled "Dictionarius" to aid in Latin diction and coined the term «dictionary».

Another example of the early English dictionary, which represented simply a listing of English words, was the 8000 word "Elementarie" published by Richard Mulcaster in 1582. It was not organized alphabetically, and we would unlikely recognize it today as a dictionary, but it is one of the first monuments of the English language and the beginning of the development of the English lexicography.

As an example of the first English dictionary which was organized alphabetically we can name the dictionary by Robert Cawdrey. He published the first single-language dictionary of English titled "Table Alphabeticall" in 1604.

It featured short definitions of 3000 words arranged alphabetically, while all the previous dictionaries were arranged by topic.

Besides the words from the Latin, early English dictionaries could also contain words from French and even Italian due to the Norman conquest and spreading French words into Middle English.

1.2 English Lexicography at The Renaissance Period

The development of the English lexicography at the Renaissance period was concentrated primarily on the foreign languages than on the English, which had affected negatively on the native English dictionary. The breakdown of Latin as an international language and the rapid development of international trade led to an immediate demand for foreign-language dictionaries, therefore the mayor type of the dictionaries of that period was bilingual dictionary. English people needed to communicate successfully with representatives of other different nations, and a lot of foreign words should be translated into English. Bilingual dictionaries were basically intended to help people to understand foreign speech and written works, and compiling them was a real challenge as in a bilingual dictionary it was necessary to find meaning for a word from spheres of two languages. Bilingual dictionaries were a result of translate-comparative work of translators of that historical period, and we can say undoubtedly that it was a completely new direction in the development of the English lexicography.

The most famous works of that time are Florio's Italian-English dictionary (1599) and the first great classical dictionary, Cooper's Thesaurus (1565).

It should be noted that none of these wordbooks of the 16^th century actually used the title «dictionary» or «dictionarium», in contrast to the earlier ones. They were called by the various kinds of fanciful or half-fanciful names, and during the late 16th century, the full tide of the Renaissance had been sweeping curious flotsam and jetsam into English literary harbors.

Wide spreading of Latin and Greek words and terms eventually affected English so powerfully that no non-Latinate Englishman could ever hope to read many words in his own language unless he was provided with explanations of elements unfamiliar to him. To provide precisely such explanations, the Dictionary of Hard Words was developed, and it became one of the first real predecessors of the modern dictionaries.

It is significant that the first English word book to use the name dictionary, Coke ram's The English Dictionary (1623), was subtitled « An Interpreter of Hard Words». Therefore, if the 16^th was the century of the foreign language dictionary, the 17^th century was the century of the dictionary of hard words.

Between 1708 and 1721, hard-word dictionaries began to be replaced by word books giving increasing attention to literary usage. The first book to embody new ideas of the age was Nathaniel Bailey's Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, originally published in 1721. This, one of the most revolutionary dictionaries ever to appear, was the first to pay proper attention to current usage, the first to feature etymology, the first to give aid in syllabification, the first to give illustrative quotations (chiefly from verbs), the first to include illustrations, and the first to indicate pronunciation.

Nathaniel Bailey's Universal Etymological Dictionary was the basis of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of 1755 and through Johnson, it influenced all subsequent lexicographical practice in the long run.

Since Universal Etymological Dictionary was the first etymological dictionary, we can say that this new type of a dictionary appeared in the 18th century. It did not simply list words, but gave explanations about the origin of these words, and thus started a new stage in the development of the English lexicography.

The techniques used by N. Bailey in Universal Etymological Dictionary, have been further developed and largely extended by S. Johnson in his Dictionary. S. Johnson revised Bailey's draft etymologies, made a systemic use of illustrative quotations, fixed the spelling of many disputed words, developed a really discriminating system of definition and exhibited the vocabulary of English much more fully than had ever been attempted before. Johnson's Dictionary continued to be widely used up to 1900 and influenced a lot English word usage and English language in general. For instance, in 1880 a Bill was thrown out of Parliament because a word in it was not in «the Dictionary».

After the appearance of Universal Etymological Dictionary and Samuel Johnson's Dictionary a new type of dictionaries was developed. It was the dictionaries of the second half of the 18^th century which devoted maximum of their attention to the pronunciation of words. Various pronunciations experts edited a series of pronunciation dictionaries. Therefore, at that time a new direction in the English lexicography developed. The most important works of that period were Thomas Sheridan's General Dictionary of English Language (1780), and John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791).

Thereby, the chief contribution of the Renaissance period to the development of the English lexicography was authoritative recording of literary vocabulary and accurate recording of pronunciation.



1.3 English Lexicography in Modern Times

In this subchapter we will consider the development of the English lexicography from the 19^th century up to nowadays.

The chief directions of the development of the English lexicography in the 19^th century was:

· the recording of word history through dated quotations;

· the development on encyclopedic word books.

Thus, we can say that the lexicographical researches of that period mainly continued developing the ideas that had been expressed by N. Bailey and S. Johnson. For instance, one of the ideas of S. Johnson about the sense of a word which «may easily be collected entire from the examples», have been further developed during the first 25 years of the 19^th century along with the development of historical linguistics and the researches of R. K. Rask, J. L. C. Grimm and F. Bopp who clearly defined the historical principle in linguistic.

Findings of new science of historical linguistics combined with the ideas of S. Johnson have found the reflection in New Dictionary of English Language (1836) by Charles Richardson. His dictionary was completely lacking definitions but the one in which both the senses and the historical evolutions of the senses were accurately indicated by dated defining quotations.

Another important milestone of the English lexicography of the 19^th century was the great New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, first organized in 1858, begun under Sir James Murray in 1888, and completed under Sir William Craggy in 1926.

It leads us directly to the 20^th century and the appearance of the New English Dictionary or Oxford English Dictionary (N. E. D. or O. E. D.), published in 1933, which covered the vocabulary of English with a completeness of historical evidence and discriminations of senses unparalleled in linguistic history.

The only important British dictionary except Oxford English Dictionary was Henry Cecil Wild's Universal Dictionary of English Language (1932), a work of somewhat restricted vocabulary coverage but the one which well pointed the way to the modern English dictionary.

Concerning the modern English lexicography, following trends can be highlighted:

- a significant upturn in the lexicographical work and wide publishing of many author and author-specific English dictionaries of new types, devoted to such popular literature as comics, fantasy books like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings and even reference books for films or popular computer fantasy games.

Novelty of these new dictionaries and reference books is that such literature has never been a subject of lexicographical studying, therefore, we can say that it is a new direction in the modern English lexicography;

- combining features of a glossary and encyclopedia in one edition, what allows us to say that modern dictionaries are becoming more and more hybrid and it reflects the demands of our modern society.

The modern dictionary can also contain:

· Definitive English spellings;

· pronunciation indicated by diacritical markings;

· strictly limited etymologies;

· numbered senses;

· selective treatment of synonyms and antonyms;

· encyclopedic and biographical items.

This returns us to the classification of main types of the modern English dictionaries and their main characteristics.



2. Classification of The English Dictionaries

All English dictionaries are divided into two principal types: encyclopedic and linguistic.

Linguistic dictionaries can be divided into following main types:

According to the nature of a word-list:

· general dictionaries,

· specialized, or restricted dictionaries.

According to the kind of information, general dictionaries divide into:

· explanatory,

· translation.

According to the subject, specialized dictionaries divide into:

· pronouncing,

· etymological,

· phraseological.

On the basis of this classification we can consider each type of a dictionary more precisely, in terms of their meaning for the English language and English lexicography.

2.1 Encyclopedic and Linguistic Dictionaries

These two large groups of reference books differ chiefly in the choice of items included and in the sort of information given about them.

Linguistic dictionaries are word-books, their subject matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc.

The encyclopedic dictionaries, or simply encyclopedias, 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 encyclopedic dictionaries will never enter items like «father», «go», «black», but only those of denotative character, such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and geographical and biographical entries.

As distinct from an encyclopedia, a dictionary presents a systematic description of the vocabulary of a given language highlighting the special features of lexical items: their orthography, pronunciation, etymology, grammar as well as semantic and pragmatic characteristics. All these aspects of representation are discoverable in dictionaries where words, their differences and similarities, become a priority. For example, a dictionary distinguishes between neutral and stylistically coloured (emotive) vocabulary and uses a special set of labels indicating the stylistic values of words: archaic, colloquial, dated, derogatory, euphemistic, slang, formal, literary, jocular etc. These are distinctions that are made within language vocabulary. They are crucial for the functioning of lexical items, such as «die» and «kick the bucket»; «marry» and «join in holy matrimony», although within each pair they denote the same referent.

In terms of the historical development of the English lexicography, we can say that the difference between encyclopedias and linguistic dictionaries is found even in the time of appearance each of these types. Linguistic dictionaries, represented at the beginning in the form of glosses, organized alphabetically, appeared much earlier than encyclopedias, as linguistic dictionaries only listed the word stock and reflected the structure and diversity of the language at the given period of history. For compiling an encyclopedia, more or less fundamental and comprehensive knowledge of subjects were demanded, so it took some time to collect them and learn how to use them.

2.2 General Dictionary

The main difference between general and specialized dictionaries is that a general dictionary deals with more or less the whole lexicon of the language and its functions are wider and more general than that of a specialized dictionary.

The key characteristics of a general dictionary are the following:

· It consists of the words which are most frequent in texts of different genres,

· It denotes concepts that are central to human life,

· It suffices to paraphrase and explains any word from the English word stock.

General dictionary also has a variety of applications in linguistics:

· It may be used to construct a set of semantic primitives which suffice to represent all the possible meanings of a language in theoretical linguistics,

· It may suffice to define the meanings of all the other dictionary entries in lexicography,

· It may provide most of the vocabulary to be learnt in language learning or teaching,

· It may represent the core of the lexicon of a language in language comparison.

2.2.1 Explanatory and Translation Dictionaries

The key features of a general dictionary, mentioned above, answer a question why this type of a dictionary includes explanatory and translation dictionaries. The main characteristics of a general dictionary is that it deals with the whole lexicon of a language, so its functions are to explain words of the given language and find equivalents for foreign words in the word stock of the given language.

The main difference between explanatory and translation dictionaries is the language that is used in them. Explanatory dictionary is a monolingual one. In this dictionary the entries consist of the spelling, transcription, grammatical forms, meanings and examples. Explanatory dictionary helps to understand the words from the word stock of one given language.

Translation dictionary is a bilingual one. It gives words and their equivalents in the other language. Translation dictionary has some characteristics of an explanatory dictionary, i.e. it can include spelling of the words, their grammatical forms, meanings and examples of usage of the foreign words. These two types are closely connected to each other.

The special feature of a translation dictionary is also that it is used basically by translators or tourists, i.e. only by a limited group of people, while an explanatory dictionary can be used by any person in any society group, so its range of usage is much wider.

2.3 Specialized (Restricted) Dictionary

Specialized, or restricted, dictionary covers only a certain specific part of the language vocabulary. It deals with:

· the definite sphere of human activity in which they are used, e.g. in various branches of knowledge, art and trade,

· the type of the units themselves, e.g. phraseological dictionaries,

· the relationships existing between them, e.g. dictionary of antonyms, synonyms, collocations, word frequency, slang, neologisms, etc.

Therefore, the main feature of this type of a dictionary is that it registers and explains terms from some definite and restricted field of knowledge of a branch of some science.

The development of a specialized dictionary is closely connected to the development of the spheres of human activity which required special terms for special notions or items and the range of usage of a specialized dictionary is also restricted by a number of people working in these spheres of science, knowledge or art.

In fact, the number of specialized dictionaries is large, and it is increasing each year, therefore we can consider only some subtypes which are relevant for the sphere of linguistics and lexicology.



2.3.1 Pronouncing Dictionary

Pronouncing dictionary is a kind of a dictionary that is in a little need as almost in all cases the pronunciation of words can be inferred from its spelling given in any other dictionary.

Its special feature is that compiling such a dictionary, a lexicographer must make several fundamental decisions about the way pronunciation is to be represented in it. In particular, he must decide what type or types of pronunciation are to be shown; what range of variants is to be included; and what notation system is to be used. Although these questions are not wholly independent of one another, it will be convenient to discuss them in that order.

Pronouncing dictionary is probably the only one type of a dictionary which do not have any exact information based on which it can be compiled.

2.3.2 Etymological Dictionary

Etymological dictionaries are the oldest type of a dictionary except encyclopedias and linguistic glosses or word-books. Its development originates in the 18^th century, from the appearance of Nathaniel Bailey's Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, originally published in 1721. Since that, etymological dictionaries have been probably the most popular kind of a dictionary, it was developed in the 19^th and 20^th centuries up to the present. Therefore, we can make a conclusion that a question of the origin of the words has always worried lexicographers and the etymological aspect is perhaps one of the most significant for linguistics.

The special feature of an etymology dictionary is that it focuses its attention on the origin of the words and it also deals with prehistory of words. The prehistory often requires the origin of the word in other languages, e.g. 'Clinic' - [comes from Greek <'a bed'], 'Scene' - [comes from Greek < 'a tent']. Another key characteristic of an etymological, or historical dictionary is that the semantic development is extremely important.



2.3.3 Phraseological Dictionary

Phraseological dictionary deals with phraseological units of the language, i.e. idiomatic or colloquial phrases and proverbs.

Phraseological dictionary is also one of the most contemporary types of the dictionaries, unlike encyclopedias, general or etymological dictionaries.

In phraseological dictionaries we can find phraseological word-groups or sentences, arranged, as a rule, into different semantic groups.

The main features of this type of a dictionary is that its organization is rather difficult, unlike all other types of dictionaries. Phraseological units can be classified:

- according to the ways they are formed,

- according to the degree of the motivation of their meaning,

- according to their structure and according to their part-of-speech meaning.

It should also be mentioned that phraseological dictionary can be related to the specialized type of a dictionary since they cover only one restricted area of the word stock, and all the words in this area have very specialized meaning.



Conclusion

Dictionaries play a very important role in linguistics and lexicography and in any sphere of activity connected to a language, because they are concerned with words. Dictionaries have become essential in the period of the Middle Ages and they stay essential for us nowadays. The people`s need in a dictionary is obvious. Whoever we are, simply common readers or tourists, scientists or linguistic students, we all need a good dictionary to guide us in the world of words because words of our own language as well as of a foreign one, are the significant part of our life. lexicography linguistic dictionary translation

Dictionaries give us necessary information about words and each type of a dictionary is important in its own way as each of them represent one definite aspect of a word: its history, pronunciation, common usage, the notion it expresses or even its idiomatic sense. Some of its types were developed in the Middle Ages, some at the Renaissance period, and some have appeared in modern times, but without any single one of the types of a dictionary the language will become poorer and lose part of its diversity.

Nowadays there is a great increase in the English vocabulary, related to the widening of the word stock and constant adding new words to it, and it is quite possible that this process will continue and there will be more new types of dictionaries because the world is constantly changing and become more and more global, and different nations are communicating with each other more through the Internet, enriching languages with a lot of foreign words and expressions.



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