Lexicography vs. lexicology. The history of British and American lexicography. How modern dictionaries are made. Some problems of lexicography. Classification of dictionaries

[Lexicography vs. lexicology]

Lexicography — the art and science of compiling dictionaries — has a history of over 2,000 years. Us origin dates back to ancient China, Greece, and Rome, though other countries have also made serious contributions to the field. With the invention of printing many of dictionaries of many languages appeared in various countries. The 20" century made lexicography a highly scholarly subject due to the development of linguistics, including lexicology, and new technologies. The growth of academic societies, like the Dictionary Society of North America (1975), and the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX, 1983) has also contributed to its development.

The object of lexicography and lexicology is the same — vocabulary of a language. But lexicology is mostly interested in revealing structural and systematic features of vocabulary, while lexicography is mainly concentrated on compiling dictionaries word­books with lists of vocabulary units and their specific semantic, structural and functional characteristics. Lexicology works out principles of vocabulary organization and thoroughly studies data about certain lexical units and lexical phenomena that are widely used in lexicography. In its turn lexicography collects and preserves valuable information for lexicology. Thus, both branches of linguistics complement each other and use each other's achievements.

2. The history of British and American lexicography!

British lexicography is one of the richest m the world. Many of new editions of well-known dictionaries appear regularly (like the Concise Oxford English Dictionary), and

new scries of dictionaries have recently been launched (like Longman). Specialized dictionaries that have appeared recently can hardly be enumerated.

Yet, the history of British lexicography is not very long in comparison with, for example, Arabic lexicography, which developed in the 8^th century. The first word-books that appeared on the British Isles during the entire Anglo-Saxon and most of the Middle-English period were lists of difficult Latin terms used in the Scriptures. These lists of 'difficult Latin words' were accompanied by glosses in easier Latin or sometimes with

Anglo-Saxon equivalents. Sometimes they were written between the Latin lines. No attempts were made to list the Anglo-Saxon words in some order.

The first English dictionaries were published in the sixteenth century, though none of them were ever called 'dictionaries': various fanciful names were used, like hortus 'garden' or thesaurus 'hoard'. They included words organized in a systematic, usually alphabetic, way so that the user could find words easily. They were bilingual foreign language word-books (English-French and French-English, English-Italian and Italian-English, English-Spanish and Spanish-English, English-Latin and Latin-English).

The 17" century saw the emergence of a monolingual English dictionary. In 1604 the first monolingual dictionary was published. It was A Table Alphabeticall, contayning and teaching the true writing and understanding of hard usuall English wordes borrowed from the Hebrew, Creek, Latine, or French, etc., by Robert Cawdrey, a schoolmaster. The dictionary had more than 2,500 entries containing 'hard' words like anathema, gargarize. No modal verbs, pronouns or 'obvious' words like eat, cat were included in it yet.

The Golden Age in the history of British lexicography began in the 18* century. Hard-word dictionaries began to be replaced by ordinary-word dictionaries focusing on literary usage. In 1702 John Kersey published his New English Dictionary and moved away from the 'hard word' tradition. It included words of daily language and aimed 'for Young Scholars, Tradesmen and the Female Sex' to teach them 'to spell trucly'.

The best dictionary of this time was the Universal Etymological Dictionary by Nathaniel

Bailey (1721). For the first time a dictionary included etymology, usage including style information, syllabification, illustrative quotations (chiefly from proverbs) and even pronunciation - all types of information that is customarily provided in modern explanatory dictionaries. In 1730 N.Bailey and two collaborators published a more comprehensive work, containing 48,000 words, the Dictionarium Britannicum. It became the basis of S.Johnson's dictionary.

In 1755 Dr. Samuel Johnson, the poet, essayist and literary critic published his great Dictionary of the English Language in two volumes consisting of 2,300 pages with 40,000 entries. This work became the most authoritative text for several generations of Englishmen and was superseded only by the Oxford English Dictionary. It took Johnson more than eight years to write it (instead of the intended three), and it was the first English dictionary ever compiled by a writer of the first rank.

The dictionary was a scholarly record of the whole language, based on a corpus of examples (an important innovation!) by the 'best' authors of that time like Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Addison, Bacon, Spenser (though many of them were reproduced from memory). Thus it became a prescriptive, 'purifying' guide to the best usage of the English language for more than a century. Johnson's attempts to fix the language, his thorough choice of the words for inclusion, and high repute in which the dictionary was held

established a lofty bookish style that was given the name of "Johnsonian" or "Johnsonese". In 1880 a bill was actually thrown out of Parliament because a word in it was not in "the Dictionary" /Whitehall 1969: 204.

S. Johnson was especially good at giving definitions; he was called 'a skillful definer'. Yet he sometimes gave in to his personal prejudices and humour - 'whimsical and licentious manifestations of his personalities', as critics remarked. "When you arc in business, it helps if you have a keen sense of humour", — Johnson used to say. The most quotable example is that Dr. S.Johnson included a vexatious definition of oats because he meant to vex the Scots — 'A gram, which in F.ngland is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people'. Lexicographer he defined as 'A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words'. To illustrate the meaning of the adjective dull he wrote: "To make a dictionary is a dull work". According to the dictionary и patron is 'one who countenances, supports or protects". He also added with humour that a patron is "commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery'.

Pronunciation was not registered in the dictionary because S. Jonhson was aware of a variety of pronunciations and realized that the task of standardizing them was imposiible then. Various pronunciation diclionaries appeared later in the second half of the 18^th century (among them are Thomas Sheridan's General Dictionary of the English Language - 1780, and John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English language—- 1791).

Proper names and extralingnistic items were mostly excluded, and this is still a characteristic feature of modern British lexicography.

One more important innovation that S. Johnson made was to preface his Dictionary with an explanation of his aims and procedures. The preface also included a short history of the language and a grammar. There he made also an attempt to depart from prevailing prescriptive principles and take a descriptive approach. While in the dictionary's plan (1747) he wrote that "the chief intent [of the dictionary compiler] is to preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom", its preface (1755) stresses that its major aim is "not form but register the language". This departure from prescriptive to descriptive principles initialed a new era in lexicography:

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