Dictionaries. The Art and Craft of Lexicography (review)

Abstract

294Reviews Dictionaries. The Art and Craft of Lexicography. Landau, Sidney I. N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1984. xiii + 370 pp. $30.00. This book is perhaps the only one of its kind, the most thorough and complete introduction available for "all those interested in or professionally associated with dictionaries and other reference works . . . students . . . librarians . . . compilers of dictionaries, lexicons, glossaries, indexes, and other language reference books." The book does not pretend to be a complete bibliography of all of the important English-language dictionaries of the past one hundred years, nor does it pretend to be a roll call of this century's illustrious lexicographers or linguists and historians interested in lexicography. If one's name is not.mentioned in the book or one's most important work is slighted, the author meant no harm. This is not so much a reference work as it is an introduction and a "How to" book. First of all, the author has expertly pieced together information that in large part has already appeared in various sources. Secondly, he has generously recorded his own problems and solutions as a practicing lexicographer . Using a wealth of exemplary material from his long practical experience, he gives his reader an inimitable glimpse of the lexicographic atelier, the dictionary maker's workshop, and he takes the reader through the apprenticeship of the craft on to its complex, controversial problems. He is never patronizing or condescending as with a firm but kindly hand he strives to bring order for the understanding of complicated problems. The author avoids a ponderous and weighty style in favor of prose that is lean and clear. His comments are succinct and sometimes witty. For example, in order to illustrate a point, he quotes a badly written definition for frog test: "a test used to indicate pregnancy, in which a frog is used." He wonders how, according to the definition, the frog is used: "Do woman and frog stare at one another to see who blinks first?" His sense of humor is evident when he defends Samuel Johnson's much maligned definition of network: "Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections." Landau cautions the reader not to collapse in Reviews295 merriment before reading the definition for feather in MW9; the definition seems more recondite than Johnson's, and so is the handling of many deceptively "simple" words in standard dictionaries of the 1 980s. The first 119 pages of the book contain three chapters: 1) "What is a Dictionary?" including typological considerations , 2) "A Brief History of English Lexicography," 3) "Key Elements of Dictionaries and other Language References" (such as the entry term and alphabetization). By restricting himself to "English lexicography" on pp. 35-75, the author removes from his consideration the art and craft of dictionaries in various non-Western languages. (There are passing references to such languages, as on p. 91 in discussing the difference between handling a Japanese adjective and a Japanese verb.) The next fifty-four pages constitute a chapter on "Definition." Praise should be given the author on the directness and clarity with which he deals with problems of writing definitions. He explains three principles that are obligatory: avoid circularity, define every word used in a definition, and define the entry word. (Just talking about the entry word, giving examples of it, and telling how it is used do not constitute a definition.) He goes on to explain six points of "good defining practice." They are "priority of essence" (the most essential elements of meaning come first), "substitutability," "reflection of grammatical function," "simplicity" (the traditional rule is "avoid including difficult words in definitions of simpler words"), "brevity" (a good definer learns how to lose the least measure of truth with each shortening of a definition when the definition must be shortened to fit the space available), and "avoidance of ambiguity." After a thorough explanation of the foregoing principles of good defining practice, the author explains the art of defining each part of speech: nouns (the easiest to define from a formal point of view), adjectives (listing here over forty introductory adjectives such as "belong to," "given to," "made of," "resembling," etc., and the...