Kolomna State Teacher-Training Institute

Report on the course:

Introduction to the Contemporary English Philology

Theme: Lexicography as a science of dictionary-making

Student:

Gavrilin M

Year 1 Term 2

Faculty of foreign languages

Group 11/2

Teacher of a foreign language:

Akhrenova N.A.

Kolomna

2007

Contents

Introduction

1. Lexicography as a science

2. Dictionary: notion, functions, classification, components

3. The characteristics of Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners

Ending

List of used literature

Introduction

It’s well known that we can’t imagine studying any language in the world without such an important thing as a dictionary. It’s obvious that it plays the most leading role in studying a language. But there’s such a problem as what kind of a dictionary we must choose to improve our speech skills day by day.

This report is devoted to the lexicography as a science of dictionary-making. The pursuit of lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:

Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries.

Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly discipline of analyzing and describing the semantic relationships within the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language and developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as met lexicography.

A person devoted to lexicography is called a lexicographer, famously defined in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755) as "A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words".

General lexicography focuses on the design, compilation, use and evaluation of general dictionaries, i.e. dictionaries that provide a description of the language in general use. Such a dictionary is usually called a general dictionary or LGP dictionary. 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. Such a dictionary is usually called a specialized dictionary or LSP dictionary.

There is some disagreement on the definition of lexicology, as distinct from lexicography. Some use "lexicology" as a synonym for theoretical lexicography; others use it to mean a branch of linguistics pertaining to the inventory of words in a particular language.

It is now widely accepted that lexicography is a scholarly discipline in its own right and not a sub-branch of linguistics.

The theme of the report is actual because any pupil, student and even experienced teacher whose activity is closely connected with studying or teaching a language constantly needs a good dictionary which can always help at any time.

So the object of the investigation is lexicography as a science. The subject of investigation is dictionary-making itself.

There’re the following aims of the investigation: to show the importance of dictionary-making in modern linguistics, to study the history of lexicography and its modern development, to make out the dictionary its notion, functions, classification and components, to characterize the Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners as an example of a dictionary of good quality.

1.  Lexicography as a science

The theory and practice of compiling dictionaries is called lexicography.

In other words it is the art and craft of writing dictionaries.

The Erya, from the early 3rd century BC, was the first Chinese language dictionary. The book organized Chinese characters by semantic groups. The intention of this dictionary was to explain the true meaning and interpretation of words in the context of older ancient texts.

One of the earliest dictionaries known, and which is still extant today in an abridged form, was written in Latin during the reign of the emperor Augustus. It is known by the title De Significatu Verborum ("On the meaning of words") and was originally compiled by Verrius Flaccus. It was twice abridged in succeeding centuries, first by Sextus Pompeius Festus, and then by Paul the Deacon. Verrius Flaccus' dictionary was an abridged list of difficult or antiquated words, whose usage was illustrated by quotations from early Roman authors.

The word "dictionary" comes from neoclassical Latin, dictio, meaning simply "word".

The history of compiling dictionaries for English comes as far back as The Old English period, where we can find glosses of religious books. Regular bilingual dictionaries began to appear in the 15th century. These dictionaries were Anglo-Latin, Anglo-German, Anglo-French.

The first true English dictionary was Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabetical of 1604, although it only included 3,000 words and the definitions it contained were little more than synonyms. The first one to be at all comprehensive was Thomas Blount's dictionary Glossographia of 1656.

In 1721 an English scientist and writer Nathaniel Bailey published the 1st etymological dictionary which explained the origin of English words. It was called Universal Etymological English Dictionary. Bailey’s entries are fuller, compared with the glosses in the hard-word books, and there’re more of them (as many as 60, 000 in the 1736 edition), but his definitions lack illustrative support, and he gives little guidance about usage.

The history of lexicography is dominated by the names of 3 figures: Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster and James A. ............