Parameters of linguistic dictionaries

There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be roughly divided into two groups— encyclopaedic and linguistic.

The two groups of reference books differ essentially in the choice of items included and in the sort of information given about them. Linguistic dic-ries are word-books, their subject matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc.

The encyclopaedic dic-ries the biggest of which are smtimes called simply encyclopaedias are thing - book 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 encyclopaedic dictionaries will never enter items like father, go, that, be, if, black, but only those of designative character such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and geographical аnd biographical entries.

It is with linguistic dictionaries that lexicology is closely connected. And the most well-known encyclopaedias in English are The Encyclopaedia Britannica (in 24 volumes) and The Encyclopedia Americana (in 30 volumes), Collier' s Encyclopedia (in 24.vol), Chamber's Encyclopaedia (in 15 vols) and Еveryman’s Encyclopaedia (in 12 vols).

There are also numerous dictionaries presenting information about notable persons (scientists, writers, kings, presidents, etc.) often called Who's Who dictionaries.

As concept and word-meaning are closely bound up the encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries often overlap. Encvclopaediassometimes indicate the origin of the word, which belongs to the domain of linguistics. And also there are elements of encyclonaedic character in many linguistic dictionaries.

A linguistic dictionary is а book 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 generаl dictionaries and restricted. 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 а certain part of the word-stock, the restriction being based on any principle determined by. the compiler. To restricted dictionaries belong terminological, phraseological, dialectalword-books, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words etc.

As to the information they provide all linguistic dictionaries fall into those presenting а wide range of data, especially with regard to the semantic aspect of the vocabulary items entered (they are called explanatory) and those dealing with lexical units only in relation. to some оf their characteristics, е.g. only in relation to their etymology or frequency or pronunciation. These are termed specialized dictionaries.

All types of dictionaries, save the translation ones, may be monolingual or bilingual i.e.the information about the items entered may be given in the same language or in another one.

Саrе should be taken not to mix up the terms monolingual and explanatory, on the one hand, and bi1inguа1 and trаns1аtiоn dictionaries on the other. The two pairs of terms reflect different dimensions of dictionaries. The terms monolingual and bi1inguа1 pertain to the language in which the information about the words dealt with is couched. The terms explanatory and trаns1аtiоn dictionaries characterize the kind of information itself.

Thus among dictionaries of the same type, say phraseological or terminological, we may find both monolingual and bilingual word-books. For example, Kluge's Etymologisches Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache is bilingual, but it is not its purpose to supply translation of the items entered.

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