Lexicography

Umair Ijaz.March 13, 2014

Definition

1. According to Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary,• "the activity or occupation of compiling

dictionaries.2. According to Dictionary.com, • " the writing, editing, or compiling of dictionaries". 3. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary,• "the principles and practices of dictionary making".

Etymology and Origin

• 1670–80; lexic(on) + -o- + -graphy • From the Greek, "word" + "write”

Branches of Lexicography

• Practical Lexicography: The act of writing, or editing dictionaries is known as Practical Lexicography.

• Theoretical Lexicography: The analysis or description of the vocabulary of a particular language, and the meaning that links certain words to others in a dictionary, is known as Theoretical Lexicography.

Types of Lexicography

• General Lexicography: General lexicography involves the art of writing, compiling, designing, using and editing dictionaries that describe language as used in general.

• Specialized lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of specialized dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that are devoted to a (relatively restricted) set of linguistic and factual elements of one or more specialist subject fields, e.g. legal lexicography.

What is Dictionary

• 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.

• A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with its glyph or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages.

Lexicon and Lexeme

• Lexeme is the minimal abstract unit of a language which originates other related forms

• For example, fly, flight, flew, all have a common lexeme of fly.

• Lexicon is the archive of lexemes.

Kinds of dictionary• • Scientific dictionaries which are dictionaries of record in that they register all (if possible) vocabulary of

language, usually on historical principles with numerous examples showing words’ usage;• • Functional dictionaries for everydayuse which are designed for use by native speakers who want to

check the meaning of an unfamiliar word. It is difficult to choose the words that should appear in such dictionaries and the most often used criterion is that of the rarity of the words’ occurrence. It is believed that very frequently used words (such as paper, or road) would not be looked up in a dictionary, so the focus is on words less frequently used as it is assumed that those could be unfamiliar and thus checked in such a dictionary.

• • Pedagogical dictionaries are divided into two types: compiledfor language learners with the emphasis on syntax and usage; and dictionaries for schoolchildren who are native speakers. Dictionaries for schoolchildren are often just simplified versions of dictionaries for adults.

• • Dictionaries of slang in which a lot of effort is put into collecting citations, providing examples and precise definitions, as even for native speakers many headwords might be unfamiliar.

• • Dictionaries of idioms are in most cases aimed at foreign language learners and explain the phrases whose meanings could not be inferred from the context.

• • Dictionaries devoted to only one subject such as medicine, law, computers or sport games. They usually have more detailed, almost encyclopedic information about the headwords, often without notes on usage, or linguistic properties.

• • Bilingual dictionaries which are tools for learning a foreign language.• • Onomasiological dictionaries - dictionaries of synonyms, thesauruses.

Making/ Compiling Dictionaries and three methods

According to Mosel 2004, “the first step in actually writing the dictionary is making lists of words which are to become head words or run-ons in dictionary entries. There are three methods:

• translating wordlists in the lingua franca into the source language as is suggested in most field manuals, at least for the basic vocabulary;

• extracting words from a text corpus;• eliciting words by techniques which encourage the

dictionary helpers to produce wordlists without translation.”

Lexicographer

• A lexicographer is concerned with what words are, what they mean, how the vocabulary of a language is structured, how speakers of the language use and understand the words, how the words evolved, and what relationships exist between words. This is the information a lexicographer compiles when creating a dictionary.

Two fundamental questions for lexicographers

• 1. Users – who will use the dictionary?• 2. Uses – what will the dictionary be used for?

Doctor Samule Johnson

• Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) was the first authoritative

and comprehensive English dictionary.

Ladislov Zgusta

• In 1971, historical linguist and lexicographer Ladislav Zgusta published the first major international handbook on lexicography, Manual of Lexicography, which is still regarded as a standard text in the field.

•

History of Lexicography• History traces back to the 5th century CE when Hesychius , a

grammarian from Alexandria developed a lexicon of obscure and ancient Greek words.

• In China, Sima Guang, a historian was responsible for compiling a dictionary in the 11th century.

History of English Lexicography• "The beginnings of English lexicography go back to the Old English

period . . .. The language of the Roman Church was Latin; its priests and monks needed to be competent in Latin in order to conduct services, and to read the Bible . . .. As English monks studied these Latin manuscripts, they would sometimes write the English translation above (or below) a Latin word in the text, to help their own learning, and as a guide to subsequent readers. These one-word translations, written between the lines of a manuscript, are called 'interlinear glosses'; they are seen as the beginnings of (bilingual) lexicography."

(Howard Jackson, Lexicography: An Introduction. Routledge, 2002)• In 1911, the concise Oxford dictionary was developed by the

lexicographer, Henry Watson.

Macrostructure of Dictionary

macrostructure – overall structural organisation of volume, typically:

• front matter, introduction, user guidelines• body – entries and definitions (plus often

other stuff), typically organised alphabetically• end matter – appendices and additional

information, eg. personal names, place names, loan items etc.

Microstructure of dictionary

microstructure – internal structure of dictionary entry blocks, typically:

• headword (lemma, form to be looked up) – spelling• pronunciation• part of speech category or word class• semantic specification – senses and reference• cross-references to related items, related by sense• collocations, co-occurrence strings• usage with examples• etymological or historical notes•

Chief significance

• lexicography has simplified the task of the linguists in learning languages.

Criticism

• A negative thing about compiling dictionaries is that the writer of a dictionary has rarely been spared by critics as most of the dictionaries have been found lacking in one area or another.

Thank you! Have questions?

• Umair Ijaz• UmairTheScholar@gmail.com