H.Sweet about Dictionaries - раздел Философия, Теоретические материалы По лексикологии современного Английского языка Study Of The Vocabulary
It Will, Perhaps...
Study of the Vocabulary
It will, perhaps, be most convenient to begin with that aspect of the dictionary which makes it the reverse of the grammar. From this point of view we have already defined a dictionary as a collection of the isolated phenomena of a language - those which cannot easily and conveniently be brought under general rules. It follows from this that the main function of a dictionary is to give the meanings of separate words. Some dictionaries confine themselves strictly to this function. But a dictionary which does not sacrifice everything to giving as large a vocabulary as possible in the shortest space ought to give a good deal more than this.
Idioms fall entirely within the province of the dictionary, because the meaning of each idiom is an isolated fact which cannot be inferred from the meaning of the words of which the idiom is made up: a dictionary which explains the meaning of do without explaining that of How do you do? is useless as a guide to the meanings of words.
A thoroughly useful dictionary ought, besides, to give information on various grammatical details, which, though they fall under general rules of grammar, are too numerous or too arbitrary and complicated to be treated of in detail in any but a full reference-grammar: such a dictionary ought to give full information about those grammatical constructions which characterize individual words, and cannot be deduced with certainty and ease from a simple grammatical rule. Thus it ought to give full information about the prepositions by which verbs are connected with the words they govern (think of, think about, think over, part from, part with). (...)
As convenience of reference requires that a dictionary should be as little bulky as is consistent with efficiency, it is advisable that its scope should be
distinctly defined and strictly limited, A dictionary of English for practical use by foreigners, or a French or German dictionary for practical use by English speakers, is, in the nature of things, mainly a dictionary of the present stage of these languages: its foundation is the modern colloquial and literary language, which involves, of course, the inclusion of a certain number of archaic words used in the higher literature, together with a certain amount of slang and vulgarisms and those dialectal words which, have found their way into general literature and conversation. (...)
Most of our larger English dictionaries, ;are also compromises between an expanded dictionary and an abridged cyclopedia. The fundamental distinction between a dictionary and a cyclopedia is, that the dictionary has to explain words, the cyclopedia has to explain things. The main function of the dictionary is to identify each word with its meaning or meanings, and give the details of its linguistic use as far as they do not fall entirely and exclusively under the province of grammar. This is clearly shown in the use we make of dictionaries of foreign languages. If we are ignorant of the meaning of the French word fleur, we look it up in our French-English dictionary, where we find the English translation 'flower', without any further comment, it being assumed that we know what a flower is. We feel that the translation is a surer guide to the meaning than the most elaborate definition. In an English dictionary for English people the same method of translation is followed as far as possible: commence and purchase are defined by being translated into the simpler 'begin' and 'buy', and we fall back on definition only when absolutely obliged to do so. Some of the more naive among the older dictionaries openly give up the attempt to define by such evasions as telling us that dog is 'the name of a well-known animal'. Even Walker's celebrated definition of a flea as 'a small insect of remarkable agility' would be of little use to any one who did not know already what a flea was.
But it may happen that in reading French we come across the name of some flower that is not found out of France, or, at any rate, not in England, so that when we look up the word in the French dictionary, the only explanation we find is 'name of a flower' with, perhaps, the botanical name, which probably conveys no meaning to our minds; we have not, therefore, learnt anything from the dictionary beyond what we could probably have gathered from the context without any further help. Nevertheless, the dictionary has done everything in its power to identify the word with the thing expressed by it; it is our want of knowledge of the thing itself which prevents us from profiting by the dictionary's identification. If we look up the botanical name in a cyclopedia, we can acquire a more or less definite idea of the thing itself- the flower.
There can be no question of the usefulness and convenience of the brief explanations of the ideas and objects expressed by rare words which our larger dictionaries give: these explanations afford the reader enough information to
enable him to form an idea of the real nature of the thing represented by the unfamiliar word without obliging him to wade through a sea of detail.
. But it is a question whether it would not be better to publish such information in a separate book than to mix it up with the legitimate material of a dictionary - namely, the identification of familiar ideas with the words which express them. An educated Frenchman just beginning English is ignorant of the meaning of the commonest verbs and adjectives in English, but he will not require to be told what oxygen is, or how lithography is carried on. It is not meant that these words should be excluded from a practical dictionary; on the contrary, they are examples - especially the latter - of a numerous class of words which form a debatable ground between necessary, everyday words and purely special and technical words.
A further reason for separating the special or encyclopedic from the general or lexical words lies in the different treatment they require. While the former demand, or, at least, allow, a more or less elaborate and lengthy description of the thing they denote, accompanied, perhaps, with pictures or diagrams, they are generally barren from the linguistic point of view, for they offer neither varied shades of meaning nor irregularities of form, nor do they enter into idiomatic combinations or special grammatical constructions. With the lexical words the relations are reversed: the greater the number of irregularities of form a word offers, and the more complex and varied its meanings and idiomatic combinations and special constructions are, the more indispensable for expressing ideas, and the more independent of encyclopedic treatment it is sure to be.
We arrive, then, at the result that for purposes of practical study of modern languages we require dictionaries which are strictly limited to the modern language, and exclude all encyclopedic elements - that is, all words of which it is conceivable that an educated native might say that he had never seen them in literature or that he did not know what they meant. Such a dictionary would, of course, include debatable words, unless it were intended for very elementary purposes, in which case it might exclude even such words as abacus, habeas corpus, iambic, nabob, oxygen.
But it would be very difficult to lay down any general principles by which we could exclude all encyclopedic words without hesitation, and the ordinary compromise has its practical advantages. (...)
The first business of a dictionary is to give the meanings of the words in plain, simple, unambiguous language. There must be no 'etymological translation1, no translation into obsolete or dialectal words. When we look up Isece in an Old-English dictionary and find it translated 'leech' as well as 'physician', we ought to be quite sure that leech here has its genuine modern meaning, and is not a mere repetition of the meaning of the other word.
Again, some dictionary-makers think it necessary to translate every slang
or colloquial word or expression in one language into a slang word or expression in the other language. The result is that they sometimes use some provincial or obsolete word or expression which may be quite unintelligible to the majority of their readers, and, indeed, may soon become unintelligible to all of them, for nothing becomes obsolete sooner than a certain class of slang colloquialisms. Most languages are so ambiguous in themselves that it is folly to go out of one's way to make them more so; and in a dictionary everything is detached and isolated, so that there is but little context to help. In fact, without the help of quotations it is almost impossible to define meanings with certainty. (...)
Quotations are next in importance to definitions. Indeed, in a large dictionary or thesaurus, the quotations are the, dictionary, and their arrangement is a matter of almost subordinate importance. They cannot, of course, be given with any great fullness in most short dictionaries. But in some cases a quotation is both shorter and clearer than a definition. All sentences that have anything of the character of proverbs or formulae deserve a place in every dictionary. Such sentences, indeed, can hardly be regarded as quotations, any more than idioms, which are as much a part of the common stock of the language as the words themselves: like them, they cannot be constructed a priori. (...)
In the first place, it must be borne in mind that the ultimate ideas of language are by no means identical with those of psychology, still less with those of metaphysics. Language is not in any way concerned with such psychological problems as the1 origin of our ideas of space and matter; for at the time when language was evolved, these conceptions were already stereotyped in the form of simple ideas, incapable of any but deliberate scientific analysis. Even such universally known facts as the primary data of astronomy have had little or no influence on language, and even the scientific astronomer no more hesitates to talk of "the rising to the sun” than did the astrologers of ancient Chaldэea. Language, in short, is based not on things as we know or think them to be but as they seem to us. (...)
At first, the meanings of words will be learnt mechanically one by one by associations with their context. In every language there are a certain number of words which the learner remembers at once, either because they are borrowed from or are cognate with words already familiar to him in his own or some other language, or through some chance resemblance to known words. These words are, as it were, centres round which other words crystallize, each new association leading to further associations, till at last the chief part of the elementary vocabulary of the language forms a solid mass of associations each connected in various ways with others.
From: The Practical Study of Languages by Henry Sweet
V M Shirokikh L P Koudrevatykh... THE STUDY OF MODERN ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY Theoretical materials for seminars...
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Lexicology as a Science
The term consists of Greek morphemes:
lexis logos
(word, phrase) (learning).
Lexicology studies words and phrases, i.e. vocabulary of a language.
Vocabulary
Two Approaches to Language Study
Synchronic (syn = together, chronos = time).
The synchronic approach is concerned with the vocabulary of a language at a given period of time.
Diachronic (dia = thro
The Real Difficulty Is in the Vocabulary
The fact that the languages commonly learnt by Europeans belong mostly to the same Aryan stock, and have besides a large vocabulary in common of borrowed Latin, French, and greek words, is apt to b
Some Basic Assumptions
The most characteristic feature of English is its mixed character. While it is wrong to speak of the mixed character of the language as a whole, the com-posite nature of the English vocabulary cann
Words of Native Origin
Words of native origin consist for the most part of very ancient elements - Indo-European, Germanic and West Germanic cognates. The bulk of the Old English word-stock has been preserved, although s
Borrowings in the English Language
In its 15 century long history the English language has come in long and close contact with several other languages, mainly Latin, French and Old Norse (or Scandinavian). The great influx of borrow
Degree of Assimilation
Completely assimilated words do not differ from the native ones in pronunciation, spelling, frequency, semantic structure and sphere of application. It is difficult to distinguish them from
Morphemes. Their Structural and Semantic Classifications
A great many words have a composite nature and are made up of smaller units each having sound form and meaning. These are called morphemes, e.g. teach-er, help-less-ness, sports-man.
Like
Historic Changeability of Word-Structure
Language is never stable: it undergoes changes on all its levels: phonetic, morphological, lexical, phraseological, etc.
As for some morphemes, in the course of time they may become fused
Prefixation
Prefixation is the formation of words with the help of prefixes. There are about 51 prefixes in the system of Modern English word-formation.
Prefixes may be classified into several groups
Suffixation
Suffixation is the formation of words with the help of suffixes.
Diachronic Approach
Native suffixes:-ness, -ish, -dom, -hood, -ing, etc.
Foreign suffixes: -ation,
Structure of Compound Words: Their Inseparability
Compounds are structurally and phonetically inseparable. Structurally compounds are characterized by the specific order and arrangement of stems. The order in which the two stems are
Meaning of Compound Words. Motivation in Compounds
Semantically the majority of compounds are motivated units: their meaning is derived from the combined lexical meanings of their components. The semantic centre of the compound is the lexic
Classification of Compounds
According to the degree of semantic independence of stems; according to the part of speech; according to the means of connection of stems; according to the types of stems.
According to
Definition. Treatment of Conversion
Conversion (to convert - превращать) - is highly productive in replenishing the English word-stock with new words. The term «conversion» refers to numerous cases of phonetic identity of two words
Semantic Relations between Conversion Pairs
As one of the two words within a conversion pair is semantically derived from the other, it is of great theoretical and practical importance to determine the semantic relations between the words re
Traditional and Occasional Conversion
Modern English vocabulary is exceedingly rich in conversion pairs. Conversion in Modern English is extremely productive: new conversion pairs appear in fiction, newspaper articles and in oral com
Graphical Shortening
These are signs representing words and wordgroups of high frequency of occurrence in written speech: scientific books, articles, advertisements, letters, etc.
Letters:
St - Stree
Lexical Shortening
Lexical Abbreviation
It is natural that in the course of time and language development some graphical abbreviations should penetrate into the sphere of oral speech and turn into lexical ab
Historical Approaches to the Study of Word Meaning
Ancient Greece – Nature vs. Convention
In ancient Greece and Rome the study of language was a part of philosophy. The ancient Greeks first tackled the study of lan
Referential Theory of Meaning
The major thesis of this theory was that the word meaning is the actual referent. The meaning of a tree is the actual referent that occurs or the object in the world. This approach encounter
Conceptual Theory of Meaning - De Saussure
Concepts are not individual occurrences but a whole set of occurrences. The concept is in our mind and it is not an image. First we conceptualise. Then we need to lexicalise the concept, the
Grammatical Meaning
The branch of lexicology that is devoted to the study of meaning is known as semasiology.
Meaning is one of the most difficult problems in the theory of language and it has been the topic
Lexical Meaning
Besides grammatical meaning words have lexical meaning. The words go, goes, went, going, gone, having different grammatical meanings, have one and the same semantic component denoting the pr
Denotational and Connotational Meaning
The lexical meaning is not homogeneous either, it consists of:
- denotational meaning (semes) - component of the lexical meaning that makes communication possible; the basis of
Division of Vocabulary into Different Layers
Stylistically words can be subdivided into formal, neutral and informal layers. The formal and informal layers contain a number of subgroups. The main aspect of the formal layer is its booki
Formal Vocabulary
Literary words are chiefly used in writing and in polished speech:
1. common literary words (learned words) - mostly polysemantic, used in books of elevated style and in books o
Informal Vocabulary
The informal part is traditionally subdivided into literary colloquial (cultivated speech), familiar colloquial, low colloquial (illiterate speech). Literary colloquial is used by educated
Change of Meaning as a Linguistic Phenomenon
In the course of the historical development of a language, the meaning of words change, e.g.: glad had the meaning of bright in OE; husband had the meaning of master of the house-hold
Causes of Semantic Change
There are two groups of causes of semantic change: extralinguistic (historical) and linguistic factors.
Extralinguistic causes
In nation's social life,
Nature of Semantic Change: Metaphor and Metonymy
To answer the question «how new meanings develop» we must investigate the inner mechanism of this process. A necessary condition of any semantic change, no matter what the cause, is some connecti
Results of Change of Meaning
Results of semantic change can be generally seen in the changes of the denotational meaning of the word - restriction and extention of meaning, or in the change of its connotational component - ame
Grammatical and Lexical Ambiguity
Ambiguity
A word is ambiguous if it has more than one sense or more than two synonyms that are not synonyms to each other. A sentence is ambiguous if it has two or more parap
Monosemantic and Polysemantic Words
In the course of historic development of the English language words have undergone many changes. When we analyse the semantic structure of the words we notice that they are not units of a single me
Primary and Secondary Meanings
By diachronic approach we distinguish the primary meaning: table - a flat slab of stone and wood (плита), and secondary meanings (all the other meanings): стол, пища, таблица
Basic and Minor Meanings
Synchronically we understand polysemy as the coexistence of different meanings of the same word at a certain historical period of the development of the English language. Here the problems a
Classification of Synonyms
Acad. V.V. Vinogradov established the following classification of synonyms: ideographic, stylistic, ideographic-stylistic, contextual, absolute (total).
Ideographic synonyms a
Types of Connotations
A more modern and effective approach to the classification of synonyms may be based on the definition describing synonyms as words differing in connotations:
- connotation of degree or
Superstitious Taboos
A special source of synonymy is the so-called euphemism (eu - well, phemi -1 speak).
Euphemism is a way of speaking by which an unpleasant, improper _or offensive thing is designated by
Social Taboos
Euphemism is a frequent occurrence in Modem English, it is a wider phenomenon than a taboo was, and it has spread to many spheres of life. Such euphemisms can be called social taboos.
The Definition of Antonymy
Antonymy is a lexical opposition of meaning. The words are different in form and opposite in meaning. It is also a relative phenomenon (same lexical field identical in style) and it has cont
Types of Antonymy
Complementary (contradictory/binary) antonymy. Complementary antonyms come in pairs that exhaust all the possibilities within a mixed lexical filed. One denies the other and together they m
Kinds of Antonyms
Absolute/root vs. Derivational antonyms..Absolute (root) antonyms such as: hot - cold, short - long are lexically words. The derivational antonyms are
formed by addin
The Definition of Neologism
The vocabulary does not remain the same, but changes constantly. New notions come into being, requiring new words to name them. On the other hand, some notions and things become outdated and the wo
Kinds of Neologisms
The intense development of science and industry, changes in economy, social and political life introduced a great number of new words, denoting new notions in these fields. Prof. I.R.Galperin calle
Ways of Word-Forming of Neologisms
The bulk of neologisms in English are formed according to the productive models of word-building in the given period and with the help of word-stock of the language. So, the greater part of literar
Archaisms
The vocabulary of a language never remains stable. There are constant changes in the semantic structure of any language. Words appear, undergo a number of phonetic and semantic changes and finally
Some Basic Features of Word-Groups
Words put together to form lexical units make phrases or word-groups. One must recall that lexicology deals with words, word-forming morphemes and word-groups.
The degree of structural and
Structure of Word-Groups
Structurally word-groups can be considered in different ways. Word-groups may be described as for the order and arrangement of the component-members. E.g., the word-group to read a book can
Motivation in Word-Groups
Word-groups like words may be also analysed from the point of view of their motivation. Word-groups may be called as lexically motivated if the combined lexical meaning of the group is deducible
Criteria of Stability and Lack of Motivation
Phraseological units are habitually defined as non-motivated word-groups that cannot be freely made up in speech but are reproduced as ready-made units; the other essential feature of phrase
General Classification of Phraseological Units
Taking into consideration mainly the degree of idiomaticity phraseological units may be classified into three big groups. This classification was first suggested by Acad. V. V. Vinogradov. These g
Structural Classification
Phraseological units may be defined as specific word-groups functioning as word-equivalents; they are equivalent to definite classes of words. The part-of-speech meaning of phraseological units is
Genetic (Etymological) Classification
Phraseological units are created from free word-groups. But in the course of time some words - constituents of phraseological units may drop out of the language; the situation in which the phraseol
Proverbs
Besides phraseological units - word-equivalents, the language has set-phrases which are equivalents of sentences. They are proverbs, sayings, aphorisms,
e.g.:custom is the second nature -
STANDARD ENGLISH. NATIONAL VARIANTS AND LOCAL DIALECTS
Standard English is the official language of Great Britain used in its literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called national variants. Local dialects are
AMERICAN ENGLISH
The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of American English. The term variant or variety appears most appropriate for several reasons. American English cannot be calle
Canadian English
English appeared in Canada in the 17th cent. with the British colonizers, who met there not only the native people - Red Indians and Eskimos, but with the French colonizers as well, who
Australian English
The Australian Commonwealth – the British dominion – was founded in 1901; before that the states were independent colonies, ruled separately by the British Government.
In the 20th
New Zealand English
New Zealand is one of the farthest former dominions of Great Britain, and from the first days of its development is economically closely connected with Australia. Their relations found reflection i
Problems in Lexicography
1. Selection of head words - selection of the items included in the dictionary is done according to the type and size (general, pocket dictionary).
2. Arrangement of lexical entrie
Procedures of Linguistic Investigation
Acquaintance with the currently used procedures of linguistic investigation is of considerable importance both for language learners and for prospective teachers as it gives them the possibility
Contrastive Analysis
Contrastive linguistics attempts to find out similarities and differences in languages. Detailed comparison of the structure of a native and a target language is called contrastive analy
Statistical Analysis
Statistical analysis has considerable importance not only because of its precision but also because of its relevance to certain problems of communication engineering and information theory.
Distributional Analysis
Distributional analysis in its various forms is widely used nowadays by lexicologists. By distribution we understand the occurrence of a lexical unit relative to other lexical units of the same
CONCISE DICTIONARY OF LINGUISTIC TERMS
Краткий словарь-справочник лингвистических терминов
Аббревиатура (abbreviation)- слово, образованное из названий начальных букв или из начальных звуков слов, входящих в и
CONTENTS
Introduction: the object of lexicology..........................................
Etymological survey of the English language..............................
I. Word structure and wo
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