Home Random Page


CATEGORIES:

BiologyChemistryConstructionCultureEcologyEconomyElectronicsFinanceGeographyHistoryInformaticsLawMathematicsMechanicsMedicineOtherPedagogyPhilosophyPhysicsPolicyPsychologySociologySportTourism






Main types of dictionaries

There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be 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, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and geographical ànd 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.

Linguistic dictionaries may be divided into different categories by different criteria.

1) According to the nature of their word-list we may speak about generàl 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 à 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 à 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 îf their characteristics, å.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.

Explanatory dictionaries - provide information on all aspects of the lexical units entered: graphical, phonetical, grammatical, semantic, stylistic, etymological, etc. Most of these dictionaries deal with the form, usage and meaning of lexical units in Modern Eng, regarding it as à stabilized system and taking no account of its past development. They are synchronic (the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (COD) in their presentation of words.



Translation dictionaries (=parallel) are word-books containing vocabulary items in one language and their equivalents in another language. (New Engl-Russian Dic-ry edited by Prof Galperin, Engl-Rus by Muller).

Specialized dict-s

Phraseological dictionaries - vast collections of idiomatic or colloquial phrases, proverbs and other, usually image-bearing word-groups with profuse illustrations. (The Anglo-Rus Phras Dict by Koonin)

New words dict-ries (of neologisms) have as their aim adequate reflection of the continuous growth of the Engl Lang-ge.

Dict-ries of Slang contain elements from areas of substandard speech such as vu1garisms, jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms, åtc (Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by Å. Partridge )

Usage dict-ries make it their business to pass judgement on usage problems of all kinds, on what is right or wrong. Designed for native speakers they supply much various information on such usage problems as, å.g., the difference in meaning between words,the proper pronunciation of words like,the plural forms of the nouns,the meaning of foreign words (quorum) etc. They also explain what is meant by neologisms, archaisms, colloquial and slang words and how one is to handle them, etc. (of Modern English Usage by N. W. Fowler )

Dictionaries of word-frequency inform the user as to the frequency of occurrence of lexical units in speech, to be more exact in the corpus of the reading matter or in the stretch of oral speech on which the word-counts are based, they are constructed to make up lists of the so-called basic vocabulary, for spelling reforming, for an all-round synchronic analysis of modern English, etc. the Throndike dictionaries

Reverse dict-ry is a list of words in which the entry words are arranged in alphabetical order starting with their final letters. The original aim of such dictionaries was to indicate words which form rhymes. Nowadays such dic-ries are also used to study the frequency and productivity of certain word-forming elements and other problems of word-formation. Rhyming Dictionary of the English Language

Pronouncing dic-ries record contemporary pronunciation. As compared with the phonetic characteristics of words given by other dictionaries the information provided by pronouncing dictionaries is much more detailed: they indicate variant pronunciations as well as the pronunciation of different grammatical forms. (English Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones)

Etymological dic-ries trace present-day words to the oldest forms available, establish their primary meanings and give the parent form reconstructed by means of the comparative-historical method. In case of borrowings they point out the immediate source of borrowing, its origin, and parallel forms in cognate languages. (Etymological English Dictionary by W. W. Skeat, Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology edited by Ñ. Ò. Onions)

Ideographic dictionaries contain words grouped by the concepts expressed (were designed for Engl-speaking writers, translators seeking to express their ideas) (Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases P.M. Roget)

 


Date: 2016-01-03; view: 7253


<== previous page | next page ==>
Parameters of linguistic dictionaries | What are the main characteristics of a learner’s dictionary?
doclecture.net - lectures - 2014-2024 year. Copyright infringement or personal data (0.006 sec.)