Seminar № 8 English lexicography

1. Fundamentals of English lexicography:

1. The history of British lexicography;

2. The history of American lexicography

2. The main problems in lexicography.

3. Types of dictionaries.

Literature: [3, 5, 6, 10, 12, 28-30, 34, 36, 37, 46, 47, 52]

Exercises

Ex. 1 Analyse E.Horot’s Big Anglo-Ukrainian Dictionary, state what type it belongs to; comment on the principles of selection of words, structure of dictionary entry; what information about a word can be deduced from the dictionary entry.

Ex. 2 Analyse the dictionaries: The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Webster’s New World Dictionary

Ex. 3 Choose one word out of the following list: head, hand, arm, body, thing, to go, to be, to tab and analyse its dictionary entry and its semantic structure as presented in the following dictionaries:

1. E.Horot’s Big Anglo-Ukrainian dictionary;

2. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary;

3. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles;

4. The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English by L.S. Hornby

Ex.4 Compare the following dictionary entries from the point of view of their content and the way lexical meanings are presented:

Awful, a

1. H.C.Wyld. The universal dictionary of the English language:

1. a.apt to fill others with awe, inspiring awe; dreadful, appalling; b. Deserving and inspiring respect and reverence, solemnly impressive: awful dignity

2. (colloq.) used as a mere intensive: an awful nuisance; an awful nonsence

2. The Concise Oxford Dictionary:

inspiring awe; worthy of profound respect; solemnly impressive; (arch.) reversal; (sl.) notable in its mind, as ~ scrawl, bore, relief, something awful.

3. The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English:

1. dreadful; impressive; causing awe: He died an ~ death. His sufferings were ~ to behold.

2. (colloq., intensive) very bad; very great; extreme of its kind: What an ~ mistake! What ~ handwriting (weather).

VI. Collins New English dictionary:

full of awe, filling with fear and admiration; impressive; venerable, majestic; solemn; dreadful; terrible; horrible; ugly; unsightly

V. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language:

1. inspiring awe 2. terrifying; appalling 3.worthy of reverence and solemn respect 4. (colloq.) a) very bad, ugly; disagreeable; unpleasant, etc.: as, an awful joke b)great, as, an awful bore.

Ex.5 Compare the entries for the following words in an encyclopedic dictionary and a linguistic dictionary. How different is the information you can find in each type of dictionary.

eye, colour, light

Ex.6 Find the following idioms in your dictionary. Which word are they under? Are they cross referenced from the entries for any of the other words in the idiom? What additional information is given about the idioms?

fly in the ointment, fly off the handle,

turn in one’s grave, turn over a new leaf,

spill the beans, full of beans