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, patterns, examples, stylistic marks, etc.

The encyclopaedic dic-ries (The Encyclopaedia Britannica (in 24 volumes) and The Encyclopedia Americana (in 30 volumes), the biggest of which are sometimes called simply 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.

It follows that the encyclopaedic dictionaries will never enter items like father, go, that, be, if, black,but only such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, terms of science, some important events in history and geographical аnd biographical entries.

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. 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.

It is with linguistic dictionaries that lexicology is closely connected. As concept and word-meaning are closely bound up the encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries often overlap. Encvclopaedias sometimes 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 of words in a lang., us. 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.

1) According to the nature of their word-list we may speak about generаl dictionaries and restricted. The terms general and restricted do not refer to the size of the dictionary or to the number of items listed. 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, dialectal word-books, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words etc.

2) 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.

3) All types of dictionaries, except 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.

4) It is important to realise that no dictionary, even the most general one, can be a general-purpose word-book, each one pursues a certain aim, each is designed for a certain set of users. Therefore the selection of material and its presentation depend very much upon the supposed users, i.e. whether the dictionary is planned to serve scholarly users or students or the general public.

Thus to characterise a dictionary one must qualify it at least from the four angles: 1) the nature of the word-list, 2) the information supplied, 3) the language of the explanations, 4) the prospective user.

Amer ling dict-ries are close to encyclopaedic dict-ries.

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 1819