§ 7. Summary and Conclusions

1. English is the national language of England proper, the USA, Australia and some provinces of Canada. It was also at different times imposed on the inhabitants of the former and present British colonies and protectorates as well as other Britain- and US-dominated territories, where the population has always stuck to its own mother tongue.

2. British English, American English and Australian English are variants of the same language, because they serve all spheres of verbal communication. Their structural peculiarities, especially morphology, syntax and word-formation, as well as their word-stock and phonetic system are essentially the same. American and Australian standards are slight modifications of the norms accepted in the British Isles. The status of Canadian English has not yet been established.

3. The main lexical differences between the variants are caused by the lack of equivalent lexical units in one of them, divergences in the semantic structures of polysemantic words and peculiarities of usage of some words on different territories.

4. The so-called local dialects in the British Isles and in the USA are used only by the rural population and only for the purposes of oral communication. In both variants local distinctions are more marked in pronunciation, less conspicuous in vocabulary and insignificant in grammar.

5. The British local dialects can be traced back to Old English dialects. Numerous and distinct, they are characterised by phonemic and structural peculiarities. The local dialects are being gradually replaced by regional variants of the literary language, i. e. by a literary standard with a proportion of local dialect features.

6. Local variations in the USA are relatively small. What is called by tradition American dialects is closer in nature to regional variants of the national literary language.

IX. Fundamentals of English Lexicography

Lexicography, the science, of dictionary-compiling, is closely connected with lexicology, both dealing with the same problems — the form, meaning, usage and origin of vocabulary units — and making use of each other’s achievements.

On the one hand, the enormous raw material collected in dictionaries is widely used by linguists in their research. On the other hand, the principles of dictionary-making are always based on linguistic fundamentals, and each individual entry is made up in accordance with the current knowledge and findings of scholars in the various fields of language study. The compiler’s approach to various lexicological problems (such as homonymy, phraseological units, etc.) always finds reflection in the selection and arrangement of the material.

MAIN TYPES OF ENGLISH DICTIONARIES

§ 1. Encyclopaedic and Linguistic Dictionaries

There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be roughly divided into two groups — encyclopaedic and linguistic.

The two groups of reference books differ essentially in the choice of items included and in the sort of information given about them. Linguistic dictionaries are wоrd-books, their subject’ matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc. The encyclopaedic dictionaries, the biggest of which are sometimes called simply encyclopaedias are thing-books, that give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena), their relations to other objects and phenomena, etc.

It follows that the encyclopaedic dictionaries will never enter items like father, go, that, be, if, black, but only those of designative character, such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and also geographical and biographical entries.

Although some of the items included in encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries coincide, such as the names of some diseases, the information presented in them is altogether different. The former give much more extensive information on these subjects. For example, the entry influenza in a linguistic dictionary presents the word’s spelling and pronunciation, grammar characteristics, synonyms, etc. In an encyclopaedia the entry influenza discloses the causes, symptoms, characteristics and varieties of this disease, various treatments of and remedies for it, ways of infection, etc.

Though, strictly speaking, it is with linguistic dictionaries that lexicology is closely connected and in our further consideration we

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shall be concerned with this type of reference books only, it may be useful for students of English to know that the most well-known encyclopaedias in English are The Encyclopaedia Britannica (in 24 volumes) and The Encyclopedia Americana (in 30 volumes). Very popular in Great Britain and the USA are also Collier’s Encyclopedia (in 24 vols) intended for students and school teachers, Chamber’s Encyclopaedia (in 15 vols) which is a family type reference book, and Everyman’s Encyclopaedia (in 12 vols) designed for all-round use.

Besides the general encyclopaedic dictionaries there are reference books that are confined to definite fields of knowledge, such as The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford Companion to Theatre, Cassell's Encyclopaedia of World Literature, etc.

There are also numerous ‘dictionaries presenting information about notable persons (scientists, writers, kings, presidents, etc.) often called Who’s Who dictionaries.

As concept and word-meaning are closely bound up the encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries often overlap. Encyclopaedias sometimes indicate the origin of the word, which belongs to the domain of linguistics. On the other hand, there are elements of encyclopaedic character in many linguistic dictionaries. Some of these are unavoidable. With terms, for instance, a lexicographic definition of meaning will not differ greatly from a short logical definition of the respective concept in encyclopaedic dictionaries. Some dictionary-compilers include in their word-lists such elements of purely encyclopaedic nature as names of famous people together with their birth and death dates or the names of major cities and towns, giving not only their correct spelling and pronunciation, but also a brief description of their population, location, etc.

For practical purposes it is important to know that American dictionaries are characterised by encyclopaedic inclusion of scientific, technical, geographical and bibliographical items whereas it is common practice with British lexicographers to exclude from their dictionaries information of this kind to devote maximum space to the linguistic properties of words.