1. Lexicography

Lexicography, an important branch of applied linguistics, is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries. Although lexicography is an applied science, one that is concerned with the practical needs of users, it is still a science because it uses the methods of objective description, generalization, and constant revision. Lexicography is the preparing of dictionaries, and it deals with “the principles that underlie the process of compiling and editing a dictionary” Jackson, 1988, p. 247). These principles may include a theory of description of vocabulary and its lexemes, organizing and presenting lexical description, and defining lexemes and expressions. These lexicographical principles derive from lexicological theory, e.g. the definition of lexemes, compounds, phraseological units, and others. Such sense relations as homonymy, polysemy, antonomy, and synonymy which are a part of lexicology are important in compiling dictionaries. Lexicography is also influenced by linguistics, e.g, the representation of pronunciation, which is a part of phonology. Traditional grammar plays a great part in compiling dictionaries, e.g., labeling parts of speech. The sphere of usage is a part of stylistics, and language variety is a part of sociolinguistics. We should not forget about the production of dictionaries, either. So, compiling dictionaries require wealth of knowledge in different spheres of language development.

The term dictionary is used to denote a book, which may contain the following information about a word: spelling (graphics), pronunciation (phonology), part of speech (syntax), inflections (morphology), etymology, meaning or meanings (comparative synchronic semantics), older meanings (historical semantics), usage labels (dialectology), derivative words (morphology), synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. “In a more general sense, the term dictionary is also applied to any alphabetically arranged compendium of special aspects of a language such as abbreviations, slang, or etymology, or in which the special terms of a subject are defined” (Dictionary, 2002). There are also dictionaries that concentrate their attention upon only one of these aspects: pronunciation (phonetical dictionaries), origin (etymological dictionaries), and meaning (dictionaries of idioms, dictionaries of homonyms, synonyms, and antonyms). In addition, dictionaries may give information not only about the words themselves but also about their referents. So, dictionaries may give a word’s referential meaning. They may also give notional meaning when they define a word by synonyms, antonyms, or longer expressions such as phraseological units. Larger dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary give illustrative quotations, which is a way of providing distributional meaning.

For dictionaries in which the words and their definition belong to the same language, “the term unilingual or explanatory is used, whereas bilingual or translation dictionaries explain words by giving their equivalents in another language” (Arnold, p.272). Multilingual or polyglot dictionaries such as The Multilingual Energy Dictionary, The Multilingual Computer Dictionary, Multilingual Illustrated Dictionary of Aquatic Animals and Plants, Multilingual Dictionary of Disaster Medicine and International Relief, Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, and others serve chiefly the purpose of comparing synonyms and terminology in various languages. “Multilingual lexicons are needed in various applications, such as cross-lingual information retrieval, machine translation, and some others” (Boguslavsky, Cardeсosa, & Gallardo, 2009).

Bilingual and unilingual dictionaries can generally represent the vocabulary as a whole with a degree of completeness depending upon the scope and bulk of the book. The group includes the thirteen volumes of The Oxford Dictionary alongside with any miniature pocket dictionary. Some general dictionaries may have very specific aims and still be considered general due to their coverage. They include frequency of occurrence in one or several sets of reading matter. A rhyming dictionary is also a general dictionary, though arranged in inverse order, and so is a Thesaurus in spite of its unusual arrangement.

General dictionaries are contrasted to special dictionaries whose stated aim is to cover only a certain specific part of the vocabulary. The first subgroup embraces highly specialized dictionaries of limited scope which may appeal to a particular kind of reader. They register and explain technical terms for various branches of knowledge. The second subgroup deals with specific language units. Taking up territorial considerations, one comes across dialect dictionaries and dictionaries of Americanisms. The main types of dictionaries are classified in the accompanying table.