Introduction. I+resources. Types of lexicographic tools

 

Unit 1. Introduction to Lexicographic Tools

 

1. INTRODUCTION

 

The adjective lexicographic is related to the names of two linguistic disciplines: lexicology and lexicography, both of which come from the Greek word lexiko meaning ‘speech’, ‘way of speaking’ or, simply, ‘word’. However, although closely related, these two disciplines are not the same. Lexicology is a theoretical discipline focused on the study of words, i.e., explores the form structure and meaning of words and the processes whereby new words are formed. In contrast, although using information from lexicology, lexicography is a practical discipline that deals with the concrete forms of words, that is, collects, explores, and describes lexical units (words and word combinations) in dictionaries and other lexicographic tools. In other words, lexicology provides the theoretical basis for lexicography and lexicography may be seen as applied lexicology.

 

Lexicographic tools help people solve language problems, particularly problems related to vocabulary (lexis). They are typically used by two groups of people: on the one hand, professionals working in such different areas as linguistics (and related disciplines), politics, journalism, trade etc. use them in order to preserve communication, solve problems or improve their communication. On the other hand, dictionaries and related lexical databases play an important role in both improving people’s knowledge of their mother tongue and, of course, in facilitating the learning of other (foreign) languages. In other words, most people use some kind of lexicographic tool in their lives, e.g., in order to look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary, to translate a foreign word or phrase or to find some information on a topic in an encyclopaedia.

I+Resources

 

If you are interested in lexicography and the science of making dictionaries, you may want to watch the following videos:

 

• http://www.sil.org/dictionaries-lexicography/videos is a good place to start

 

• http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary

 

 

 

The best-known and first lexicographic tool that comes to mind is the dictionary. However,

 

this is not the only resource available for exploring and/or learning a language. In this unit,

 

we will see five types of tools: (1) dictionaries, (2) glossaries, (3) encyclopaedias, (4)

 

encyclopaedic dictionaries and (5) linguistic or text corpora.

 

2.1 Dictionaries

 

Dictionaries are typical examples of reference books, that is, books that provide information

 

about things or people rather than extensive reading material (see also the Glossary at the end

 

of this course book). The Oxford English Dictionary defines dictionaries as books that deal

 

with

 

the individual words of a language (or certain specified classes of them), so as to set forth their orthography, pronunciation, signification, and use, their synonyms, derivation, and history, or at least some of these facts: for convenience of reference, the words are arranged in some stated order, now, in most languages, alphabetical; and in larger dictionaries the information given is illustrated by quotations from literature; a word-book, vocabulary, or lexicon (www-oed.com)

 

However, dictionaries not always included this information about words. The earliest

 

dictionaries in English were glossaries, and consisted of lists of foreign words (usually

 

French, Italian and Latin words) and their English equivalents. In fact, the word dictionary comes from Medieval Latin dictionarium meaning ‘collection of words and phrases’ (from Latin dictionarius ‘of words’ and dictio or ‘word’). Early dictionaries were glossaries, and provided compilations of those words considered to be difficult for readers in Latin manuscripts and which were inserted at the end of the texts in the form of lists. At first, these glosses did not follow a

particular order or criterion, but in the 15^th and 16^th centuries glossary authors started to organize them in alphabetical order. The main goal of these glossaries was to enable learners to master Latin (take into account that Latin was the language used in educated and educational contexts for a long time); however, they were too extensive and random, and finding words in them was not easy.

 

This situation started to change in the late Renaissance due to the attention paid to vernacular languages, i.e., the languages used by ordinary people versus the literary or official languages used by scholars, the church or royalty, which resulted in the emergence of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries. However, these early dictionaries were rather limited: their main goal was to help readers understand highly valued texts (usually, religious and literary) and, therefore, the words chosen came from those texts and were the terms that dictionary makers considered most difficult or hard to understand.

 

In the 18^th century, dictionaries started to include words other than difficult ones, and also paid attention to their etymology. Their goal was to educate ‘ignorant’ or illiterate readers (again, remember that access to education was limited at that time). Two very influential people in this respect were the English writer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) and the American lexicographer Noah Webster (1758-1843). Their main contribution to

Lexicography is Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language and Noah Webster’s An American Dictionary of the English Language.

Samuel Johnson wrote his dictionary in two stages. In 1747, he published The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language where he explained his motivation and goals for writing the dictionary. The Dictionary of the English Language (two volumes) was finally published in 1755 and included 42,773 words. As stated in its cover, this was “a dictionary in which the words are deduced from their

originals and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers”. Johnson’s main goal was to preserve and standardize the English language and, therefore, his dictionary was essentially prescriptive. In order to “fix” English, the dictionary traced the origins and history of words illustrating them with quotations from Middle English to show changes in meaning, offered readers some guidance on pronunciation, and provided information on all sorts of words (not just ‘hard’ ones), such as vulgar words, professional jargon, barbarisms etc.

Another important figure is Noah Webster. He was an influential writer and lexicographer in the United States of America, and published his first dictionary in 1806 under the name A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. However, his main work was An American Dictionary of the English Language (with 70,000 words), first published in 1828 and republished in two volumes in 1840. In contrast to Johnson’s dictionary, Webster’s dictionary was basically descriptive and synchronic, and the words included in it were described following usage examples rather than the works of canonical authors. Accordingly, the dictionary was highly influential in its own time, and remained the

 

main lexicographic reference in the US after its acquisition by Charles Merriam in 1843 and the publication of the various Merriam-Webster dictionaries currently in use.

 

I+Resources

 

If you are interested in Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster, you will find more information in the following addresses:

 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson#A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Lan guage

 

• http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/Samuel-Johnsons-Dictionary.htm

 

• https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/plan.htm

 

• http://collections.stanford.edu/octavo/johthe/index.html

 

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPnVwOebWkk

 

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fB_Oph6G1w

 

• https://www.noahwebsterhouse.org/discover/noah-webster-history.htm

 

• http://webstersdictionary1828.com/NoahWebster

 

• http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/noah.htm

 

Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster were the precursors of modern dictionaries and their role in providing descriptions of the language, reference, and standards for language use.

2.2 Glossaries

 

Glossaries consist of alphabetical lists of terms with their definitions or brief explanations. They are typically placed at the end of books and include words from a particular domain of knowledge and which are (a) considered important in their respective domains, (b) newly introduced, or (c) highly specialized. The main goal of glossaries is to explain the concepts referred to by such specialized words and, in this sense, are related to defining vocabularies and ontologies. For instance, at the end of this course book you will find a glossary that includes the most important terms and notions seen in this subject and which you must remember.

 

I+Resources

 

You will find several glossaries at the following pages:

 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/Glossaries#Society_and_social_sci ences

 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_English_words

 

2.3 Encyclopaedias

 

The term encyclopaedia (also spelled encyclopedia) comes from the Greek enkyklios paideia meaning ‘general education’. An encyclopaedia is a reference work that offers general and comprehensive information about topics and subjects of human knowledge such as historical events, geographical features, short biographies of important people, etc. Because of their large scope, encyclopaedias typically consist of several books. This information is usually organized in alphabetical order, and is introduced or ‘summarized’ in a subject index located either at the back of the encyclopaedia or in a separate volume.

Encyclopaedias relate words to things and events in the (extra linguistic) world, and provide extensive information about them. In order to do so, they often include graphic information (pictures, maps, charts etc.) alongside the verbal explanations, and sometimes also direct their readers to other types of reference works. Finally, because they are focused on explaining concepts in the world around us, they only cover nouns, that is, do not include prepositions, conjunctions, etc. or verbs.

 

I+Resources

 

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has a good introduction to encyclopaedias at http://www.britannica.com/topic/encyclopaedia

 

 

2.4 Encyclopaedic dictionaries

 

An encyclopaedic dictionary is a reference book that offers in-depth explanations of concepts arranged alphabetically. It is a combination of an encyclopaedia and a dictionary in that it often incorporates images to the verbal explanations, and not only deals with nouns but also covers verbs, adjectives etc.

 

I+Resources

 

If you want to read more about encyclopaedic dictionaries, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedic_dictionary

 

2.5 Linguistic corpora

 

Linguistic corpora (singular: corpus) are compilations or collections of texts (either written texts or transcriptions of oral speech). Although these collections do not provide explicit descriptions or explanations about the data they contain, they can be searched and, therefore, allow for exploring words in their real context of use. Thanks to technology, contemporary corpora are machine-readable and are the main source of data in Lexicography.

 

I+Resources

 

Find out more about corpora at the following pages:

 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_corpus

 

• http://linguistlist.org/sp/GetWRListings.cfm?wrtypeid=1

 

• http://www.corpora4learning.net/

 

3. SUMMARY

 

Lexicographic tools play an important role in learning a language. With their help, you can look up words and explore things such as the way they are written (their spelling) and pronounced (their pronunciation), the words that usually go with them, what they mean in various contexts, how they translate into other languages, their syntactic properties, or how people use them. Of course, in order to choose a lexicographic tool and use it effectively you need to make several decisions and think about

 

• what you really want to find

 

• the type of information that each lexicographic tool offers

 

• how each lexicographic tool works

 

In other words, you must learn how to find information accurately and quickly and which tool you need to use in order to achieve your goals. You may also need to use several tools, which means that you need to be open-minded and, above all, must learn how to combine the tools at your disposal to make the most of them.

For instance, imagine that you want to know how to use the verb realize. Among other things, you will need to consider

 

• the spelling of the verb and whether different spellings involve different meanings (e.g. realize or realise?);

• how many senses the verb has;

 

• the verb’s translation in your own language; and

 

• whether the translation and/or meaning depends on the context(s) where the verb is used or not.

 

In order to find out, you may want to start by using a dictionary, which, in turn, involves choosing between a monolingual dictionary, a bilingual one or both. However, answering these questions may also involve using a different tool, e.g., a thesaurus, a glossary or a textual corpus, and you must be aware of the possibilities and functioning of these tools.

 

 

I+Resources

 

You will find more information about the topics in this unit in the following addresses:

 

• http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/

 

• http://bcom.au.dk/research/academicareas/lexicography/

 

• http://www.leo.org/ende/index_en.html

 

 Go to the task “Lexicographic Tools”

Activities & Tasks

 

Lexicographic Tools TASK

 

Dictionaries are important when learning a language, but they are not the only tools. In this task, you will explore dictionaries and other types of lexicographic tools. The main goals are to help you

 

• evaluate your lexical competence (what you already know) and reflect upon your needs (what you may still need to improve your English, etc.), and

 

• approach lexicographic tools critically, i.e., use them taking into account which is the

 

best tool for a given task or goal, the type of information they offer, etc.

 

However, these are the aims proposed in this book, but not the only ones. You should be able to explain what you would like to achieve in this task.

 

My personal aims in this task are:

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

_________________________________________________________________________

 

TASK

 

STEP 1

 

Choose the full story of a short article from one of the websites in the table (or, if you wish, any other site you like):

 

www.rd.com/

www.magatopia.com/

_{www.bbc.co.uk/} edition.cnn.com/

 

 

 

STEP 2

 

After reading the text, select 10 words you do not know or that you think you should know better. Justify your choice.

STEP 3

 

Browse the web and choose four lexicographic tools. Try to find tools that illustrate the different types seen in this unit. Use them to find information about your ten words, e.g. their meaning, pronunciation, synonyms, word class, translation, the words they often go with, their possible abbreviations or acronyms, extra or non-linguistic information, etc.

STEP 4

 

Organize your results in a way that is easy to understand. You may want to use a table like the one shown below but, of course, you are free to design your own format:

 

 

Word

Pronunciation

Part of speech

 

 

wolf

/wʊlf/

Noun

 

 

 

[www.macmillandictionary.

[www.macmillandictionar

 

 

 

com/dictionary]

y.com/dictionary]

 

 

Meaning

Translation

Related words

 

 

wild animal similar to a

lobo

cry wolf

 

 

large dog that lives in

[www.wordreference.com/]

wolf whistle

 

 

groups

 

wolf down

 

 

[www.macmillandictionar

 

 

 

 

wolfish

 

 

y.com/dictionary]

 

 

 

 

[www.memidex.com]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sample sentence

 

When you are in the forest, you can hear wolves howling at the full moon.

 

[sentence.yourdictionary.com/wolf]

 

 

STEP 5

 

Describe the four tools you found online and compare them to the print (conventional)

 

dictionaries you used first in this task. Use the following grid:

 

 

Name of tool

Type of tool

Advantages

Disadvantages

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STEP 6

 

Answer the following questions:

 

1. Where did you find the best information?

 

2. Which way of looking up do you prefer? Why?

 

3. Compare the tools that you have used.

 

 Evaluation

 

Peer and self-evaluation checklist

 

1. Did I / we do the task right?

 

2. Did I / we understand the main ideas?

 

3. Can I / we use the tools described?

 

4. Has this web quest improved my/our knowledge of lexical tools? Group evaluation checklist

1. Was the cooperation / participation OK?

 

2. How were the roles in the group distributed?

 

3. Your own question

 

 

I+Resources

 

• www.alphadictionary.com/directory/Languages/Germanic/English/

 

• www.wordreference.com/

 

• dictionary.reference.com/

 

• prowritingaid.com/Free-Online-Collocations-Dictionary.aspx

 

• www.longmanwebdict.com/index.html

 

• dictionary.cambridge.org/

 

• www.babylon.com

 

• dictionary.msn.com/

 

• www.onelook.com

 

• www.dictionary.com

 

• www.m-w.com

 

• www.thesaurus.com/

 

• encarta.msn.com/

 

• www.encyclopedia.com/

 

• www.britannica.com/

 

• www.acronymfinder.com

 

Encyclopaedias

 

• encarta.msn.com/

 

• www.britannica.com/

 

• www.encyclopedia.com/

 

Corpora

 

• corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

 

• www.lextutor.ca/

 

• englishforuniversity.com/?page_id=162

 

• academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/Links/concordance_collocations.htm

 

• www.corpora4learning.net/resources/materials.html

 

• davies-linguistics.byu.edu/personal/

 

• www2.gsu.edu/~esljdb/KSU2005/index.htm

 

• courses.washington.edu/englhtml/engl560/corplingresources.htm#tools