Dictionaries of the national language of a country are an essential and quite frequently controversial part of social life and learning. This is an account of how such dictionaries are made, how they are used, and the issues and problems that face their writers and editors. It is wide-ranging, scholarly, yet readable in its approach, addressing the linguistic problems in areas such as distinguishing meanings, writing definition, and providing synonyms.
This is the first volume in the trilogy Dictionaries in the English-Speaking World, 1500-1800, which will offer a new history of lexicography in and beyond the early modern British Isles. The volume explores the dictionaries, wordlists, and glossaries that were compiled and read by speakers of English from the end of the Middle Ages to the year 1600. These include the first printed dictionaries in which English words were collected; the dictionaries of Latin used by all educated English-speakers, from young children to Shakespeare to adult royalty; the dictionaries of modern languages that gave English-speakers access to the languages and cultures of continental Europe; dictionaries and wordlists documenting other languages from Armenian to Malagasy to Welsh; and a great variety of specialized English wordlists. No unified history has ever surveyed this vast, lively, and culturally significant lexicographical output before. The guiding principle of the book, and the trilogy, is that a story about dictionaries must also be a story about human beings. John Considine offers a full and sympathetic account of those who compiled and used these works, and those who supported them financially, paying particular attention to records of dictionary use and its traces in surviving copies. The volume will appeal to all those interested in the languages and literary cultures of the sixteenth-century English-speaking world.
This book is an accessible introduction to lexicography – the study of dictionaries. Dictionaries are used at home and at school, cited in law courts, sermons and parliament, and referred to by crossword addicts and Scrabble players alike. Lexicography provides a detailed overview of the history, types and content of these essential references. Howard Jackson analyzes a wide range of dictionaries, from those for native speakers to thematic dictionaries and those on CD-ROM, to reveal the ways in which dictionaries fulfil their dual function of describing the vocabulary of English and providing a useful and accessible reference resource. Beginning with an introduction to the terms used in lexicology to describe words and vocabulary, and offering summaries and suggestions for further reading, Lexicography: An Introduction is highly student-friendly. It is ideal for anyone with an interest in the development and use of dictionaries.
Language endangerment is a fundamental issue for humanity. What rights do minority communities have concerning their languages? How does each language conceptualize the world differently? How much knowledge about the world and a local ecosystem is lost when a language disappears? What is the process involved and how can insights about this process contribute to linguistic theory? What typological insights will be lost if undescribed languages disappear before their unique structural properties are known? How can language shift be stopped or reversed? This volume comprises: * a general overview introduction * four theoretical chapters on what happens during language shift * ten case studies of autochthonous languages under threat * four case studies of migrant languages at risk * three concluding chapters discussing strategies and resources for language maintenance.
The eighteenth century is renowned for the publication of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language, which reference sources still call the first English dictionary. This collection demonstrates the inaccuracy of that claim, but its tenacity in the public mind testifies to how decisively Johnson formed our sense of what a dictionary is. The essays and articles in this volume examine the already flourishing tradition of English lexicography from which Johnson drew, as represented by Kersey, Bailey, and Martin, as well as the flourishing contemporary trade in encyclopedic, technical, pronunciation, and bilingual lexicons.
This volume undertakes a detailed analysis of the latest generation of learners' dictionaries of English. It assembles the papers delivered at the eponymous symposium held at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in April 1997. There are a number of reasons why these dictionaries are of special lexicographic interest: 1. the type of learners' dictionary associated notably with the name of Hornby can look back on a long tradition in British lexicography; 2. competition between various publishers since the late 70s has given crucial impetus to the development of these dictionaries; 3. these new dictionaries are decisively marked by the evaluation of large-scale computer corpora. Central to the volume is the in-depth comparison of four dictionaries published in 1995: OALD5, LDOCE3, COBUILD2, CIDE. The aim is to exemplify specific differences of approach in the four dictionaries from a wide range of viewpoints (definitions, information on valency and collocations, policy on usage examples, political correctness, etc.). A number of articles also enlarge on the history of learners' dictionaries of English, the significance of corpus linguistics for lexicography, and perspectives for the future, notably in connection with the electronic media.
How do we teach and learn vocabulary? How do words work in literary texts? In this book, Ronald Carter provides the necessary basis for the further study of modern English vocabulary with particular reference to linguistic descriptive frameworks and educational contexts. Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives includes an introductory account of linguistic approaches to the analysis of the modern lexicon in English and discusses key topics such as vocabulary and language teaching, dictionaries and lexicography and the literary, stylistic study of vocabulary. This Routledge Linguistics Classic includes a substantial new introductory chapter situating the book in the current digital age, covering changes and developments in related fields from lexicography and corpus linguistics to vocabulary testing and assessment as well as additional new references. Vocabulary: Applied Linguistic Perspectives has been widely praised since first publication for the breadth, depth and clarity of its approach and is a key text for postgraduate students and researchers studying vocabulary within the fields of English Language, Applied Linguistics and Education.
A Sociolinguistic History of British English Lexicography traces the evolution of British English dictionaries from their earliest roots to the end of the 20th century by adopting both sociolinguistic and lexicographical perspectives. It attempts to break out of the limits of the dictionary-ontology paradigm and set British English dictionary-making and research against a broader background of socio-cultural observations, thus relating the development of English lexicography to changes in English, accomplishments in English linguistics, social and cultural progress, and advances in science and technology. It unfolds a vivid, coherent and complete picture of how English dictionary-making develops from its archetype to the prescriptive, the historical, the descriptive and finally to the cognitive model, how it interrelates to the course of the development of a nation's culture and the historical growth of its lexicographical culture, as well as how English lexicography spreads from British English to other major regional varieties through inheritance, innovation and self-perfection. This volume will be of interest to students and academics of English lexicography, English linguistics and world English lexicography.
This book aims at investigating from the perspective of the major economic dictionaries the notions of economic crisis and cycle. The project consists in giving an extensive summary of a number of significant entries on this subject, with an introductory essay to each entry placing them (and the dictionary to which they belong) in their context, giving some details on the author of the dictionary entry, and assessing the entry’s (and its author’s) contribution. The broad picture (including the history of these encyclopedic tools) will be examined in the introductory essays.
This stimulating new book, as the premier work introducing bilingual lexicography from a communicative perspective, is launched to represent original thinking and innovative theorization in the field of bilingual lexicography. It treats the bilingual dictionary as a system of intercultural communication and bilingual dictionary making as a dynamic process realized by sets of choices, characterizing the overall nature of the dictionary. It examines the dictionary and dictionary making by using a model of lexicography which stresses the three-way relationship of compiler, dictionary context and user and incorporates them into a unified coherent framework. Throughout the study, special focus is on English and Chinese bilingual lexicography. It will serve not only as a valuable guide to those interested in dictionary compilation and theoretical inquiries but also as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in bilingual lexicography.
