English Lexicography Research Articles

Beyond Hobson Jobson

Indian English is one of the most important and widely-spoken varieties of English, and yet at present the pinnacle of lexicographical treatment of the variety remains the well-renowned and much feted Hobson Jobson, originally published in 1886, with a second edition in 1903. British English has the Oxford, American English the Webster’s, Australian English the Macquarie, but Indian English must do with a dictionary over a century out of date. More recent lexicographical works that focus on Indian English suffer from a number of deficiencies that do not do the variety due justice. This paper analyses a selection of the currently available dictionaries on Indian English in order to identify these deficiencies. Finally, suggestions are made as to possible dictionary projects that may move Indian English lexicography, and the lexicography of other New Englishes, beyond Hobson Jobson and towards the 21st century.

The lexicography of English: from origins to present

Introduction 1. Dictionaries and The Dictionary 2. A Brief History of English Dictionaries 3. The British Tradition of the Scholarly Dictionary 4. The American Tradition of the Utility Dictionary 5. A New Tradition: the Dictionary for Foreign Students 6. English Dictionaries of the Twentieth Century: the Cultural, the Functional, and the Scientific 7. The Study of Dictionary Users and Uses 8. Lexicography and Linguistics 9. Computers and Corpora in Lexicography 10. A Theory of Lexicography? Conclusion Bibliography 1 Dictionaries 2 Other Works Index

Problems of Usage Labelling in English Lexicography

Landau (1991: 217) stipulates that 'usage refers to any or all uses of language'. It is the study of good, correct, or standard uses of language as distinguished from bad, incorrect, and nonstandard uses of language. Usage may also include the study of any limitations on the method of use, whether geographic, social or temporal. Basically it alerts users that certain terms should not be uncritically employed in communication. This article discusses the treatment of usage in English lexicography. It analyses the labelling practices in six monolingual English dictionaries namely: the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD), the Macmillan English Dictionary (MED), the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE), the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (CIDE), the World Book Dictionary (WBD) and the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (NSOED). Discrepancies in the contextual usage labelling in the dictionaries were established and are discussed.

Gabriele Stein. Better Words: Evaluating EFL Dictionaries.

Gabriele Stein, a Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg, is one of the most authoritative academics in the study of English as a foreign language, and has published a wide range of research in the field of English lexicography. This book which is a collection of reprinted articles and previously unprinted papers, forms a cornerstone in EFL lexicography. It is a useful reference book for both EFL teachers and students alike, as well as for lexicographers.

HENRI BEJOINT, The Lexicography of English: From Origins to Present.

HENRI BEJOINT, The Lexicography of English: From Origins to Present.

Henri Béjoint: The Lexicography of English. From Origins to Present

Henri Béjoint: The Lexicography of English. From Origins to Present

Henri Bejoint, The Lexicography of English.

Professor Henri Béjoint probably no longer needs to be introduced to IJL readers. A former President of the European Association for Lexicography, this Professor Emeritus at the University of Lyon has published extensively on lexicography (whether monolingual or bilingual), including Tradition and Innovation in Modern English Dictionaries (OUP, 1994). He decided to strike again, this time with a magistral Lexicography of English, which, to quote the blurb on the cover of the book, ‘looks at how English words have been recorded, dissected and displayed in Great Britain and the USA from the seventeenth century to the present’. The first forty pages of The Lexicography of English are devoted to an attempt to define the word dictionary itself. All aspects of dictionaries are closely scrutinized in order to highlight the main elements and distinguish dictionaries from other reference works such as encyclopedias, grammars and other lists of words. The headings of the first chapter are worth quoting here, since they give a flavour of what kind of discussion the reader can expect to find in the book:

Lexicographical Method and Usage in Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall (1604)

Robert Cawdrey's Table Alphabeticall is the first printed monolingual English dictionary. The present paper puts Cawdrey into the context of the bi- and multilingual English lexicography that had developed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and investigates the contemporary currency of the lexical items recorded, focusing on nouns listed by Cawdrey in the plural. Suggestions are made for improving the coverage of Cawdrey in future editions of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The Lexicography of English: From Origins to Present

The Lexicography of English: From Origins to Present

The Oxford History of English Lexicography. Vol. 1: General-Purpose Dictionaries; Vol. 2: Specialized Dictionaries, ed. A. P. Cowie

Article The Oxford History of English Lexicography. Vol. 1: General-Purpose Dictionaries; Vol. 2: Specialized Dictionaries, ed. A. P. Cowie was published on April 1, 2010 in the journal Anglia (volume 127, issue 2).

The Oxford history of English lexicography: v.1: General-purpose dictionaries; v.2: Specialized dictionaries

The Oxford history of English lexicography: v.1: General-purpose dictionaries; v.2: Specialized dictionaries

A.P. Cowie (Editor). The Oxford History of English Lexicography. Volume I: General-purpose Dictionaries. Volume II: Specialized Dictionaries

According to the blurb, The Oxford History of English Lexicography (volumes I–II) presents 'the fullest account yet published of the lexicography of English from its origins in medieval glosses, through its rapid development in the eighteenth century, to a fully-established high-tech industry that is as reliant as ever on learning and scholarship'. The term 'English lexicography' is interpreted broad-ly to embrace dictionaries not only of British English but also its national varie-ties such as Scots, American English, the varieties of English spoken in Aus-tralia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the English-based Cre-oles of the Caribbean (cf. vol. I, p. 1). In addition, throughout the topical pres-entation numerous references are made to developments in Europe and else-where which have influenced the course of English lexicography.

Genesis A: A through G

The publication of the letter G by the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) staff under the editorship of Antonette diPaolo Healey in 2007 was a significant milestone in itself, as is the publication of every fascicle, but also for Old English lexicography what stock-market technical analysts call a “breakout”—a moment when a line of psychological importance is crossed. Although the boundary between the letters G and His not with current alphabetization rules the halfway point in the Old English lexicon, that boundary has a peculiar history in Old English lexicography, peculiar enough that crossing it has resonance for those of us who have been working in the field for any length of time.

Morphology and Diachrony in A Grammar of Old English and the Dictionary of Old English

Just as Richard M. Hogg relied heavily on the resources of the Dictionary of Old English Project, particularly the Microfiche Concordance to Old English, in compiling the first volume of his Grammar of Old English, on phonology, the project of completing the second volume, on morphology, has yielded many reminders what an indispensable asset the Dictionary of Old English and the resources it has spawned are to the community of linguists and medievalists. Hogg was particularly concerned to distinguish diachronic and synchronic analysis of the language, in regard to nominal morphology actually separating the two concerns into discrete chapters; working with the resources of the DOE for the purpose of completing Hogg’s work has, thus, prompted some contemplation of the advantages and disadvantages of the dictionary’s approach to matters of diachrony and synchrony in respect to Old English morphology. The dictionary itself supplies some exceptionally useful information on morphology, particularly in its presentation of attested forms and inflected varieties. A peculiarity of the DOE, however, is the relative thoroughness with which considerations of language history have been excluded from the construction of the dictionary. Considering the very many difficulties that the editors would have had to address had they chosen to include much historical information — difficulties that surely would have strained the Project’s budget and pace of production — it would be unreasonable to expect them to have done otherwise. The consequences of this course of action, however, are far-reaching, and the following remarks will demonstrate that excluding most kinds of historical information from the DOE has had some unanticipated effects, creating problems, some quite serious, in connection with matters that might at first appear to be unrelated to language history. That is to say, the very idea of separating entirely synchronic and diachronic concerns in Old English lexicography is fraught with problems, and the result of excluding most sorts of diachronic concerns is detrimental to many kinds of synchronic analysis.

Foreword: A Paean for the Dictionary of Old English

In retrospect the foundation of the Dictionary of Old English reads like the New World coming to the aid of the Old. Its founder, Angus Cameron, had the vision and the hope needed. His dissertation on a difficult Old English word had shown to him the insufficiency of Old English lexicography, no better really in the late 1960s than it had been a hundred years before. Neil Ker’s Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon had been published in 1957, and Angus for his thesis had rearranged its contents by turning it into a classified catalogue of texts for him to use as he hunted through the texts for his word in its many divergent senses. The standard dictionary at that time was effectively a work of the 1830s and earlier, supplemented by a good Mancunian scholar at the turn of the century. The work was mainly at second hand, relying on two good German lexicographers and on glossaries and translations of Anglo-Saxonists some good, others less so. Angus’s vision was that the basis was the textual evidence of the manuscripts and that a new age of technology had dawned, available in Canada, rich then, and led and encouraged by John Leyerle, of the States (resident as a professor in Toronto), a conference was organized to give substance to a hope. The assembled Anglo-Saxonists were united in spirit — rye, in my recollection — and it was determined that Toronto, with space provided in the Robarts Library by the University of Toronto, would be an excellent place for a new dictionary based on new technology, photocopies of manuscripts, so that all texts could be checked rather than merely used at second hand, and on the new electronic invention, the computer, at that early stage of its rapid development, especially good for concordances. A Canadian, Elaine Quanz, who had worked with Angus, was given the task of typing out all the texts of Old English, several thousands of them, for concording by the computer. If you wish to build high you need a firm foundation, and Angus saw to it that the foundation of the new dictionary was firm.

Mutual Illumination: The Dictionary of Old English and the Ongoing Revision of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED3)

In a volume of papers on the Dictionary of Old English (DOE), it will not seem out of place for the perspective of the new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary(OED3) to be represented, as both are major current projects in the historical lexicography of English which are now progressing simultaneously and often in close collaboration. The aim of this article is to illustrate how ongoing work on the DOE informs and complements work on OED3 and vice versa. Once both works have covered the whole range of the alphabet, together they will, on the one hand, make it possible to obtain a more up-to-date and comprehensive account of the Old English lexicon than was previously available and, on the other hand, relate that lexicon to the overall development of the English vocabulary from its pre-history to the present day, while the etymological coverage in OED3 will help to place it even more comprehensively in context. As the online preface states, the ultimate aim of DOE is to complement “the Middle English Dictionary (which covers the period C.E. 1100-1500) and the Oxford English Dictionary, the three together providing a full description of the vocabulary of English.”

B. T. Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell. The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography.

The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography, the first, detailed, step-by-step guide to English lexicography, fully embraces the use of a computerized language corpus to analyze linguistic data and compose dictionary entries. It is written by B. T. Sue Atkins, a distinguished corpus linguist and bilingual lexicographer, and Michael Rundell, a leading editor of dictionaries for foreign learners. He has also written a dictionary of cricket. Both authors have many years of experience and have collaborated with Adam Kilgarriff in teaching English lexicography, as few others have done. Thus they are eminently well qualified to write this guide. In addition, Atkins has long been associated with Charles Fillmore in the development of frame semantics, which informs the discussion of various aspects of grammatical analysis in some chapters of this book. It is thus a welcome addition to the store of basic sources of information for the would-be or working lexicographer. The experience of the authors, though deep, does not range over the broad spectrum of dictionary types. They are thoroughly familiar with the leading British monolingual dictionaries for native speakers, much less so with American dictionaries. Some of the examples given are of British English and would confound speakers of other varieties. Their guide applies mainly to ESL/EFL dictionaries (hereafter, for brevity, called ESL dictionaries) and to bilingual dictionaries – admittedly very large and vibrant areas of lexicography, but not the whole of it. That said, even lexicographers working in other branches of the field could certainly profit from parts of this guide.

La lexicografía plurilingüe inglesa en los siglos XVI y XVII: los diccionarios de James Howell

In this article we study the development of English lexicography in the 16th and 17 th centuries and its relation with Spanish, French and Italian, especially the former. I have taken as an example James Howell’s multilingual dictionaries because they are a good example of how these dictionaries were made out, sometimes taking bilingual dictionaries as the starting point. I consider that his Lexicon Tetraglotton must be taken with caution because his contribution with new words is not important; but his Nomenclature is a dictionary that deserves the attention of lexicographers.

영어 사전학 강의

The purpose of this paper is to make practical suggestions about how to teach an English lexicography course in Korea based on reviews of previous studies on lexicography courses around the world. The study begins with an analysis of the term 'lexicography' with a view to presenting the scope of the study of lexicography. Then the review of lexicography courses made by Gates (1997/2003) is introduced, followed by the detailed description of the postgraduate courses in the U.K. As an example of a current English lexicography course for MA students in Korea, the course held at the International Graduate School of English since 2004 is reported, focusing on the syllabus of the course and the responses from students. It is suggested that the teaching of English lexicography is an essential part of English teacher training for the understanding of effective use of English dictionaries which will eventually lead to the teaching of dictionary use to students.

A history of Roget's Thesaurus : Origins, development, and design (review)

Reviewed by: A history of Roget’s Thesaurus: Origins, development, and designby Werner Hüllen Pramod K. Nayar A history of Roget’sThesaurus: Origins, development, and design. By Werner Hüllen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 410. ISBN 9780199281992. $39.95. Werner Hüllen’s exhaustive study of the history of one of the most influential books in the English language, Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus, moves across a range of subjects—biography, sociolinguistics, the history of the book, and, most importantly, the history of English and European lexicography. Since Roget’s Thesaurusfirst appeared in 1852 it has been an indispensable reference book on the English language. Though this was not the first meaning-finder, or even the first synonym dictionary, it was the first to combine the synonym dictionary with the topical dictionary. H sets for his historiography three organizational principles: synonymy outlined as an experience of everyday linguistic behavior, the historical path of English dictionaries of synonyms, and the topical tradition of English lexicography. Preceding this is a detailed account of Roget’s life and work. H underlines the fact that Roget trained as a natural philosopher and it was the framework of natural history that he employed in his thesaurus. H then outlines the basic definitions and semantics of notions such as synonymy, homonymy, semantic fields, modes of ascertaining and describing word meanings, and contemporary ‘reverse theories’ of synonymy. Roget’s Thesaurus, suggests H, not only inscribes itself into earlier ideas of synonymy and onomasiology but also anticipates post-Saussurean semantics. H then moves on to map the history of early practices and theories of synonymy, paying particular attention to the autonomous and deliberate traditions, going back to antiquity in order to do so. Starting with Plato, through Cicero, William Shakespeare, and Richard Trench, H suggests that we can have either of two ways to look at synonyms: we collect synonyms to show semantic overlap(cumulative synonymy), or we collect them to show semantic difference(differentiating synonymy). Roget’s Thesauruscombines both modes. H argues that practical synonymy is a part of interpretative lexicography right from the seventeenth century, and shows the marked influence of John Locke’s philosophical theories. Human experience of the world (sensations) and of one’s mind (reflections), for Locke, leads to ideas that are expressed in words. The lexis of a language represents an idea-driven order that originates in reality but extends beyond it. Locke was proposing a ‘mental lexicography’ where ‘vocabulary identifies and gives order to reality because it provides the inalienable signs for the expression of ideas’ (170). Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary, argues H, illustrates Lockean semantics. In Ch. 6, H opens with a study of Abbé Gabriel Girard (1718) who formulated a detailed theory of synonymy. Girard argued that there are synonyms in the sense of semantically similar lexemes and that there are no absolutely identical synonyms in the French language. He also suggested—and here he prefigures Ferdinand de Saussure—that meanings of words are constituted relative to the meanings of other, semantically related, words. The next chapter maps the history of the topical tradition of lexicography in England and the European continent. The two ways of organizing the macrostructure of the dictionary are the alphabetical (semasiological) and the topical (onomasiological). These indicate two modes of perceiving and processing language—finding meanings for particular words/signs, and finding suitable words for concepts/meanings. Linked to the Enlightenment project of organizing the universe, the topical dictionary sought to encapsulate, classify, and provide a ready reference to the lexemes of reality itself. The concluding chapter is a structural analysis of Roget’s great work, cast in the usual macrostructure-microstructure-pragmatic structure model. H’s work situates Roget’s great effort in a tradition of lexicography. The history of European lexicography enables H to mark continuities and discontinuities in theories of language. It also helps him present linguistics and language studies within larger epistemessuch as the Enlightenment, thereby showing how ideas about the world or reality not only inform but also generatevocabularies and modes of linguistic analyses. Language and language ‘games’ are as much epistemological as political, and this work provides a...