Lexicography.

Lexicography is a branch of applies linguistics dealing with the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries. It is divided into 2 related declines.

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

Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly discipline of amazing and describing the semantic, syntagmatic, paradigmatic relationships within the lexicon of a language, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries needs for information by users in specific types of situation.

A person devoted to lexicography is called Lexicographer. It is widely accepted that lexicography is a scholarly discipline in its own right and not a sub-branch of applied linguistics, as the chief object of study in lexicography is the dictionary.

Classification of dictionaries.

1. Encyclopedic (Encyclopaedia Britannica Encyclopaedia Americana) and linguistic.

2. According to the scope of their word-list.

General (e.g. The Oxford English Dictionary, the New English - Russian dictionary edited by prof. Galperin, Hornby’s THE advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English etc.)

Restricted (e.g. Merriam Webster’s dictionary of Law Oxford Concise Dictionary of Proverbs).

2.According to the information given in item:

Explanatory (e.g. New Oxford Dictionary of English)

Specialized (e.g. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary )

3.According to the language of explanations.

Monolingual (e.g. New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary).

Bio lingual (English-Russian phraseological Dictionary by A.V. Kunin)

1.With regard to time:

Diachronic (historical) dictionaries (e.g. Oxford English Dictionary)

Synchronic (descriptive) dictionaries (E.g. Advance Learner’s Dictionary of current English).

Diachronic + Synchronic (e.g. concise Oxford Dictionary).

5.Learner’s Dictionaries (100,000 to 160,000 entries) (e.g. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary Random House College Dictionary).

A Brief history of English language dictionaries.

XV century – early Latin – English dictionaries.

1755 Dr. Samuel Johnson A. Dictionary of Modern English Language: 41.000 words illustrated with 114.000 quotations from Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, etc

1844-1928 the Oxford English Dictionary in twelve Volumes.

162 Noah Webster Ann American Dictionary of the English language e.g. Waggon=wagon, centre=center, Honour=honor.

The most important problems the lexicographer faces are the selection of items for inclusion and their arrangement, the setting of the entries, definition of meaning the illustrative to be supplied and the supplementary material the word-lists and the sort of directions for use for the benefit of the foreign adult learners of English must differ very widely from those given to English or American schoolchildren.

Borrowings (Loan Words) A borrowed (loan) word is a word adopted from another language and modified in sound form, spelling, paradigm or meaning according to the standards of English. According to Otto Jespersen loan-words are “the milestones of philology, because in a great many instances they permit us to fix approximately the dates of linguistic changes”. But they may be termed “the milestones of general history” because they show the course of civilization and give valuable information as to the inner life of nations. Through its history the English language came in contact with many languages and borrowed freely from them. The greatest influx of borrowings mainly came from Latin, French and Old Norse (Scandinavian). Latin was for a long time used in England as the language of learning and religion. Old Norse and French (its Norman dialect) were the languages of the conquerors: the Scandinavians invaded the British Isles and merged with the local population in the 9th, 10th and the first half of the 11th century. After the Norman Conquest in 1066 Norman French was the language of the upper classes, of official documents and school instruction from the middle of the 11th century to the end of the 14th century. Etymologically the English vocabulary is said to have a particularly mixed character. Therefore some linguists (L.P.Smith, I.H.Bradley) consider foreign influence to be the most important factor in the history of English. Other linguists (Ch.Hockett, J.A.Sheard) and our linguists, on the contrary, point out the stability of the grammar and phonetic system of the English Language and consider it necessary to examine the volume and role and the comparative importance of native and borrowed elements in the development of the English vocabulary. The greatest number of borrowings has come from French. Borrowed words refer to various fields of social-political, scientific and cultural life. About 41 per cent of them are scientific and technical terms. L.P.Smith calls English «half-sister» to the Romance languages. The number and character of borrowings depend on many factors: on the historical conditions, on the nature and length of the contacts and also on the genetic and structural proximity of languages concerned. The closer the language the deeper and more versatile is the influence. Thus, from the Scandinavian languages, which were closely related to Old Eng¬lish, some classes of words were borrowed that could not have been adopted from non-related or distantly related languages: the personal pro¬nouns: they, their, them; also same, till, though, fro (adv). Sometimes words were borrowed to fill in gaps in the vocabulary. Thus, the English borrowed Latin, Greek, Spanish words paper, tomato, potato when these vegetables were first brought to England and because the English vocabulary lacked words for denoting these new objects. Borrowings enter the language in two ways: through oral speech and through written speech. Oral borrowings took place chiefly in the early periods of history, in recent times, written borrowings did. Words borrowed orally (L. Street, mill, inch) are usually short and undergo more changes in the act of adoption. Written borrowings (e.g. French communi¬que, belles-letres, naivete) preserve their spelling, they are often rather long and their assimilation is a long process. The terms «source of borrowing» and «origin of borrowing» should be distinguished. The first denotes the language from which the loan was taken into English. The second denotes the language to which the word may be traced: E.g. paper  Words like paper, pepper, etc. are often called by specialists in the history of the language «much-travelled words» which came into English passing through several other languages and not by means of direct bor¬rowing. Though the borrowed words always undergo changes in the proc-ess of borrowing, some of them preserve their former characteristics for a long period. This enables us to recognize them as the borrowed element. Examples are: the initial position of the sounds [v], [d], [z] is a sign that the word is not native: vacuum (Lat), valley (FR.), volcano (Ital.), vanilla(Sp.), etc; may be rendered by «g» and «j» gem (Lat), gemma, jewel (O. Fr.), jungle (Hindi), gesture (Lat), giant (O.Fr.), genre, gendarme (Fr.); the initial position of the letters «x», «j» «z» is a sign that the word is a borrowed one: zeal (Lat), zero (Fr.), zinc (Gr.), xylophone (Gr.); the combinations ph, kh, eau in the root: philology (Gr.), khaki (Indian), beau (Fr.); «ch» is pronounced [k] in words of Greek origin: echo, school, [S] in late French borrowings: machine, parachute; and [tS] in native words and early borrowings. The morphological structure of the word may also betray the for-eign origin of the latter: e.g. the suffix in violencello (Ital.) polysyllabic words is numerous among borrowings: government, condition, etc. Another feature is the presence of prefixes: ab-, ad-, con-, de-, dis-, ex-, in-, per-, pre-, pro-, re-, trans- /such words often contain bound stems. The irregular plural forms: beaux/from beau (Fr), data/from datum (Lat). The lexical meaning of the word: pagoda (Chinese)

.Borrowing words from other languages is characteristic of English throughout its history and more than two thirds of the English vocabulary are borrowings. Mostly they are words of Romanic origin (Latin, French, Italian and Spanish). Borrowed words are different from native ones by their phonetic structure, by their morphological structure and also by their grammatical forms. It is also characteristic of borrowings to be non-motivated semantically.

English history is very rich in different types of contacts with other countries, that is why it is very rich in borrowings. The Roman invasion, The adoption of Christianity, Scandinavian and Norman conquests of the British Isles, the development of British colonialism and trade and cultural relations served to increase immensely the English vocabulary. The majority of these borrowings is fully assimilated in English in their pronunciation, grammar and spelling and can be hardly distinguished from native words.

English continues to take in foreign words, but now the quantity of borrowings is not as abundant as it had been before. All the more so, English now has become a “giving” language; it has become Lingva Franca of the twentieth century. Borrowings can be classified according to different criteria:

a) According to the aspect which is borrowed

b) According to the degree of assimilation

c) According to the language from which the word was borrowed

(In this classification only the main languages from which words were borrowed into English are described, such as Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Russian). It starts with the basic fact about what happens when words, articularly nouns, are borrowed into other languages. When you borrow someone’s things, you sometimes get a little extra bits of their life included, things you didn’t mean to borrow but they just came alone, included with the things you did borrow. Their beach blanket has some sand from their last trip to the beach; the book someone lent you has a note about remembering to pick up their dry-cleaning; the mobile phone on loan from your brother has his broker’s number programmed into the speed dial list, that sort of thing.

International Words -words are borrowed by several languages, and not just by one which are significant in the field of communication.

Many of them are of Latin and Greek origin. Most names of sciences, political terms, terms of art are international, e. g. philosophy, mathematics, music, theatre, politics, policy.

International words. There exist many words that were borrowed by several languages. Such words are mostly of Latin and Greek origin and convey notions which are significant in the field of communication in different countries. Here belong names of sciences (philosophy, physics, chemistry, linguistics), terms of art (music, theatre, drama, artist, comedy), political terms (politics, policy, progress). The English language became a source for international sports terms (football, hockey, cricket, rugby, tennis).

Variants and dialects of the English language. American English. Lexicography. Types of Dictionaries For historical and economic reasons the English language has spread over vast territories. It is the national language of the UK, the USA, Australia, New Zeland and some provinces of Canada. Besides, it used to be a state language in the former colonies of the British Empire: in Asia, Africa, or in countries which fell under US domination in Central and South America.  The key terms in studying the territorial varieties of the English language are: Standard English, variants, dialects. Standard English is the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people. Local dialects are varieties of the English Language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In GB there are two variants: Scottish English and Irish English, and five main groups of dialects: Nothern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern. Every group contains several (up to ten) dialects. Among the regional varieties beyond the borders of GB American English is the most important, as it has its own literary standards, i.e. its own generally accepted norms of speaking and writing. american English can not be called a dialect since it has a literary normalized form called Standard American, while a dialect has no litrary form. Canadian, Australian and Indian English can also be considered regional varieties of English with their own peculiarities. The differences between British English (BE) and American English (AmE) are observed in the vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and spelling. There is a number of differences between British and American lexicons. There exist words which belong only to American vocabulary and constitute its specific feature. These words are called Americanisms (the term was introduced by Sir John Witherspoon, rector of Princeton University).  Among Americanisms the following major groups of words are distinguished: historical Americanisms, proper Americanisms and borrowings. The examples of historical Americanisms are the words: fall (autumn), to guess (in the meaning “to think”), sick (in the meaning “ill, unwell”). In BE their meanings have changed, while in AmE these words still retain their old meanings. Proper Americanisms are words that are specifically American. They denote American realia, objects of American flora and fauna: ^ Congress, House of Representatives, District Attorney, forty-niner (золотоискатель 1949 года), prairie scooner (фургон переселенцев), jump a claim (захватить чужой участок), drugstore, blue-grass, catbird (американский пересмешник), bullfrog, etc. They are also names of objects which are called differently in the US and in GB: store – shop, baggage – luggage, subway – underground, railroad – railway, gasoline – petrol, department – faculty, etc. AmE is rich in specifically American borrowings which reflect the historical contacts of the Americans with other nations on the American continent. Among such borrowings are Spanish borrowings (ranch, sombrero, canyon, tornado), Afro-American borrowings (banjo), German borrowings (lager beer and black beer, frankfurter) and especially Indian borrowings (the words wigwam, canoe, mocassin, tomahauk, racoon, skunk, names of places, rivers, lakes and states: Mississippi, Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky. The differences between Canadian and BE are concerned mainly with intonation. As for the vocabulary, some words do not differ from their British counterparts while others are the same as in AmE: to guess (“to think”), rooster (“cock”), sidewalk (“pavemant”), store (“shop”). Australian English, too, differs from BE mainly in phonetics: the pronunciation is characterized by the nasal twang (is nasalized), like that of Americans, by indistinct pronunciation of the consonants p,b,w, n (the so-called American lip-laziness), Australian speech is somewhat slow, lengthy and monotonous. In the vocabulary there is a number of typically local words like coala, dingo, bandicoot (сумчатая крыса) and various placenames borrowed from the native inhabitants.  Indian English differs from BE in pronunciation (take – [tek], young – [o], etc.) and vocabulary. It contains a great number of words taken from the native language: curry, bandana, khaki, sari, sahib, bundgalow, etc. Some of them have become international. The mass media, constant international contacts facilitate the levelling of differences between variants and dialects of the English language.