10. History of American and Russian lexicography

American lexicography

The main name is Samual Johnson, who compiled the first American dictionary of the English language.

In 1798 he published a small book entitled “A School Dictionary”. This book was followed in 1800 by another dictionary by the same author, which already showed some signs of Americanization (tomahawk and wampum).

Noah Webster — the father of American lexicography. He broke away from English idioms, Americanization.

Main goal: give American English the status of an independent language, distinct from British English.

1829 — The American Dictionary of the English Language.

In many respects N. Webster follows the lead of Dr S. Johnson. He has improved and corrected many of S. Johnson’s etymologies. N. Webster attempted to simplify the spelling and pronunciation that were current in the USA of the period. He devoted many years to the collection of words and the preparation of more accurate definitions. Also he added the richness of additional information of encyclopedic characters (explanations about things named, including scientific and technical subjects), which had become a tradition in American lexicography.

Rights after Webster's death

Two printers and booksellers of Massachusetts, George and Charles Merriam, secured the rights of his dictionary from his family and started the publication of revised single volume editions under the name “Merriam-Webster”.

“Webster” freely to use by anyone to any dictionary. The practice of advertising by coupling N. Webster’s name to a dictionary which has no connection with him, continues up to the present day.

The other great American dictionaries are:

• the “Century Dictionary", first completed in 1891;

• “Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary", first completed in 1895;

• the “Random House Dictionary of the English Language", completed in 1967;

• “The Heritage Illustrated Dictionary of the English Language", first published in 1969, and C.L. Barnhart’s et al.

• “The World Book Dictionary” presents a synchronic review of the language in the 20th century.

Russian lexicography

18th — the 1st foreign manuscript dictionaries.

• explaining new necessary foreign terms

• opposing superfluous foreign words to Russian ones in order to show that foreign words are not necessary.

The encouragement of Peter the Great was responsible for appearance of the first part of “Lexicon of new vocabulas in alphabetic order” («Лексикон вокабулам новым по алфавиту»). But it was not finished. It included new loan words from new European languages concerning military, scientific and administrative terms from different fields of knowledge.

Bilingual dictionaries

Appearance connected with the history of economic and political relations between Russia and England in the 2nd half of the 16th century.

The first dictionary referred to the 18th century — it was a multilingual dictionary: Russian – Greek – Latin – French – German – English (Saint Petersburg in 1763 without a title page, G.A. Polyetika is supposed to be its author).

In 1772, P.I. Zhdanov published ‘The English and Russian Dictionary’ (Словарь Английской и Российской). In alphabetical order, differentiate word meanings, there were labels indicating grammar and word usage.

the 19th century:

1. Academic Russian and Church Slavonic Language Dictionary in 4 volumes (1847);

2. Dall’s V.I., Dictionary of the Great Russian Language was published in 1863 – 1866;

3. Academic Russian language Dictionary was compiled by I.K. Grott in 1895.

In the 20^th c. the most reliable are New English – Russian Dictionary in 2 volumes under the guidance of I.R. Galperin (1972), containing 150 thousand words and Russian – English Dictionary - A.I. Smirnitsky (1948), containing 50 thousand words. Both of these dictionaries are constantly revised and perfected.

11. Non-hierarchical relationships between words

Among non-hierarchical relations we mainly distinguish synonyms and the different forms of opposition (antonyms).

Synonyms

Two words are synonyms if they have a significant similar semantic content.

Synonyms have a significant semantic overlap, but the degree of synonymy is not necessarily related to that overlap. Synonyms often do not depend on the degree of precision of the semantic descriptions, but their degree of synonymy may however change at different levels of granularity.

Absolute synonyms

if it exists at all, it is quite rare. Absolute synonyms would be able to be substituted one for the other in any context in which their common sense is denoted with no change to truth value, communicative effect, or 'meaning’

Contextual synonyms

W1 and W2 are synonyms in the context C.

Antonyms and Opposites

A basic definition could be that W1 and W2 are antonyms or opposites if they have most semantic characteristics in common but if they also differ in a significant way on at least one essential semantic dimension.

As with synonyms, antonyms and opposites represent highly contextualized relations. There are also various degrees of opposition: some pairs of word-senses are more prototypically opposites than others.

Antonyms refer to gradable properties and opposites to non-gradable ones.

Antonyms

(good and bad)

Antonyms do not necessarily partition the conceptual space into two mutually exclusive compartments which cover the whole conceptual domain. Some overlap or space in between is possible, as in good and bad, since it is indeed possible to say that something is neither good nor bad, or, possibly, to say that something is both good and bad.

Opposites

(father and mother)

An interesting class among opposites are directional opposites. They represent either basic, topological, or conceptual (metaphorical) directional oppositions. In this class, which is conceptually relatively simple, fall examples such as: start – finish, top – bottom, descend – ascend.