38. Lexicography. Some main problems.

Lexicography, that is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries, is an important branch of applied linguistics. It has a common object of study with lexicology, as both describe the vocabulary of the language. The province of lexicography is semantic, formal and functional description of all individual words. Lexicographers have to arrange their material according to a purely external characteristic, namely alphabetically.

The most burning issues of lexicography are the following:

1) The selection of head-words. This problem can also be subdivided into several questions:

1. How far a dictionary should admit the historical

2. Selection between scientific and technical terms

3. Whether a dictionary should cover all the words of the language, including neologisms, nonce-words, slang, non-assimilated borrowings, foreign words, etc.

4. Should a dictionary be perceptive and prohibitive (should dictionary-makers attempt to improve and stabilize the vocabulary according to the best classical samples and advise the readers on preferable usage)

5. Should the frequency of the usage of words be taken into consideration (this is a modern criterion)

2) The arrangement and contents of the vocabulary entry:

a) Which of the selected units have the right to a separate entry and which are to be included under one common head-word.

b) Should the derivatives with suffixes –er, -ing, -ness, -ly be included in a dictionary

c) Differentiation and the sequence of various meanings of a polysemantic word.

d) A synchronic dictionary should also show the distribution of every word.

e) Many dictionaries indicate the different stylistical levels to which the words belong: colloquial, technical, poetic, rhetorical, archaic, familiar, vulgar, slang and the words’ expressive colouring: emphatic, ironical, diminutive, facetious.

3) The principles of sense definitions in a unilingual dictionary

a) there are two main types of definitions

1. linguistic – they are only concerned with words as speech material.

2. Encyclopaedic – they are concerned with things for which the words are names.

b) The meaning can also be explained through synonyms, but one synonym is never sufficient because no absolute synonyms exist. Besides, if synonyms are the only type of explanation, the reader is placed in a circle of synonymic references, with not a single word actually explained.

c) The meaning can also be explained by examples, i.e. contextually.

1. There is also a problem of whether all entries should be defined or whether it is possible to have the so-called run–ons for derivative words in which the root–form is readily recognized.