- •Why can’t we say that English has the biggest vocabulary?
- •Why can’t we count words in the language?
- •Problem with morphemes
- •Problems that lexicographers face compiling a dictionary
- •Corpora
- •Representative and well-balanced collections of texts.
- •Additional information on the properties of texts
- •History of British lexicography
- •Electronic dictionaries
- •Classification of dictionaries
- •Object of description
- •Hierarchical vs. Non-hierarchical relationships within the lexicon
- •Terminology of lexicology
- •Anglo-Saxon and Celtic part of the English wordstock
- •Peculiarities of Latin and Greek borrowings
- •Stratification of the English vocabulary
- •How do words change their meanings?
- •Lexicology vs Lexicography
- •‘A dictionary’ and other related terms
- •The organisation of a dictionary entry
- •History of lexicography
- •History of American and Russian lexicography
Lexicology vs Lexicography
Lexicology |
Lexicography |
closely related to lexicography due to their common concern for words or lexical units and their features (lexicology provides a theoretical basis to lexicography). |
Lexicography is thus defined as the art of writing a dictionary or a science of compiling a dictionary. |
studies a word exploring the patterns of its morphological and contextual behaviour as well as its semantic relationships. Also studies combinatory possibilities (phrasal, idiomatic and proverbial functions). |
studies lexicon but from a different angle. While lexicology concentrates on the general properties and features lexicography typically deals with the individuality of each lexical unit. |
studies words as elements of a system
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studies lexicography approaches words as individual units with respect to their meaning and usage. |
Lexicological study of words is governed by theories of semantics and word formation. Therefore, there is no scope for individual aberrations.
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In lexicography, on the other hand, definitions are often subjective and are not free from the bias of a dictionary maker.
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Lexicologist presents materials according to his view of the study of vocabulary |
Lexicographer is guided by the principle of convenience in the retrieval of data. |
Lexicology usually covers a wide range of areas in word study (reconstruction of meaning and semantic change of words, lexical variation, evolution of vocabulary over centuries, neologism and word-loss within languages, lexical borrowing and derivation over time, structural and etymological analysis of lexical items, etc. with close ties between semantics, syntax, and pragmatics). |
Lexicography serves simply as a store house of information. To perform this task adequately, it collects information from different sources and presents it for a variety of dictionary users. |
‘A dictionary’ and other related terms
“Dictionary” comes from Latin dictionarium through French dictionnaire which properly means “a book of sayings”.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica dictionary is “a book listing words of a language with their meanings and often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and/or origin”.
In 1225 John Garland used Dictionarius as a title for a manuscript of Latin words to be learned by memory. The words were not arranged in alphabetical order but in groups according to their subjects. This dictionary was used only for the teacher's classroom work in teaching Latin and contained no English words except for a few interlined glosses or "translations of single words".
There is a synonym for the word dictionary which comes from Greek, known as a lexicon; and it, too, literally means a “book of words”. The term most often used by Europeans is "lexicon"; while most Americans seem to prefer the word "dictionary" when they want a book of words with definitions.
The difference must be pointed out between commonly confused terms: dictionary, lexicon, glossary, reference book.
Dictionary lists a set of words with information about them. The list may attempt to be a complete inventory of a language or may be only a small segment of it.
A short list, sometimes at the back of a book, is often called a glossary.
Reference book containing words (or morphemes, phrases, idioms) arranged in a definite order (different one in various dictionaries), explains meanings of described units, gives different information about objects or presents translation into other languages or describes objects.