A c r u m p e t , in the sense of 'cake', is sweet in Scotland equivalent to an English p a n c a k e , while it is unsweetened in England. The word has a further meaning, not geographically restricted, denoting 'a sexually desirable woman' that must be considered a metaphorical extension of meaning see 3. Further examples of regional variation from other semantic fields are: bucket, which to some people in Scotland is 'a dustbin', and c h a p e l , which denotes a place of worship 'for non-conformists' in England and Wales, and 'for Roman Catholics' in Scotland.
In the second type of varieties social class or standing , usually two differ- ent items are used as a shibboleth U or n o n - U. But within this type, there are also lexical items with identical form and different referent. Thus d i n n e r is the chief meal eaten 'at midday' by some people and 'in the evening' in other social classes in Britain. Thus, there are only five types left and "field of discourse" defined as "type of activity engaged in through language" replaces "subject matter".
However, as already mentioned, the discarded category "Interference" is particularly relevant for the lexicon, especially from a diachronic point of view. Most entries in any dictionary will be neutral with regard to the six variety classes. In other words, the items can be used anywhere in the world where English is spoken or written.
This also holds for the entries in the L D C E. If, however, the usage of a word is limited or restricted to a particular geographical area, subject matter, or type of discourse, this is marked by the label. Sometimes several labels can be combined, which is not surprising if we think of Strang's remarks about the overlap of different scales and the reference to the interdependence of variety classes in the U G E. Here are two examples.
Strang In the second edition of the dic- tionary, the label changes to o l d - f a s h. The marking of a regional variety is in combined with one of restricted frequency of use, which refers to diachrony- in-synchrony.
G r a n is explained as 'grandmother' and labelled B r E infml, a combined reference to the variety classes 1 and 5. In the following, some further correlations between the labels of the L D C E both editions and the variety classes in the U G E will be mentioned for illustration.
Pommy is defined as 'an Englishman' in and in non-sexist language in as 'an English person'. It furthermore belongs to slang and is therefore assigned to both variety classes 1 and 5. It has the additional label often d e r o g , defined as words which show that "the speaker dislikes or disapproves of something". This is clearly a matter of "attitude".
Beck, meaning 'stream', is characterized as a word used in the North of England NEngE and is obviously related to Ger B a c h , although definitely a Scandinavian loanword. It is much more difficult to fmd examples for illustrating the second variety class "education and social standing" in the L D C E. F a g , defined as 'a young pupil who has to do jobs for an older student' and cha- racterized as "in certain English public schools" by the L D C E , certainly applies to both aspects of the variety class 2.
However, there is no specific label to indicate this. There are certain interdependences which allow us, probably, to relate both the labels l i t for literary and si for slang to variety class 2.
But the association is not a necessary one. Also, literary l a m b e n t 'softly shining' is certainly restricted to educated 17 English.
The examples just mentioned clearly reveal the problems of discussing words in isolation, without linguistic or extralinguistic context see 5. Today, a terminological distinction is often made between c o - t e x t linguistic context and c o n t e x t extralinguistic context, including context of situation. The choice of a lexical item or lexical unit is not only determined by the language user's more or less permanent property of belonging to a specific social group, but also by the situation of language use see diagram 9 , and cf.
Lipka a: f. Not only educated speakers have more than one level or "style" at their disposal, a phenomenon which is well known in sociolinguistics under the term c o d e - s w i t c h i n g cf. Halliday According to situation, all speakers may rapidly move from one 'code' to another - here code denotes different language varieties or even, in multilingual societies, entirely different languages e.
Spanish and Guarani. Decisions on the next class "subject matter" are easier to make. For this, there is quite a range of labels in any dictionary. Words from legal or medical language are clearly marked. Words used by specialists in various other subjects are labelled t e c h. We are obviously concerned here with 'register' or 'field'. Lexical items used predominantly in the Bible labelled b i b t clearly also belong to variety class 3.
Here, temporal variation is involved at the same time. In contrast to the preceding group, assignment to the next class "medium" is not entirely unproblematic. In my opinion, we can assume that literary and poetical expressions, as well as obsolete words, can 17 To be precise, according to the LDCE 2 mere are four lexical items fag, namely three nouns marked as 1. B r E si 'cigarette' , 2. A m E derog si 'homosexual man' , 3.
The dictionary gives two meanings each for noun 3. The verb 4a can be interpreted as a zero-derivative from the noun 3b which is equivalent to Ger F u c h s in student fraternities. Transatlantic misunderstandings may arise, e. Moss Again, we can see the overlapping of categories. V e l o c i p e d e in the meaning 'bicycle' has the label obs, defined in the L D C E as "often found in old books". It is therefore correlated with the written medium. Incidentally, the C O D gives two different meanings of the noun: 1.
Light vehicle propelled by rider, esp. Obsolete words may be used inten- tionally in spoken language, which results normally in a humorous effect. Lexical items marked by the label h u m o r may definitely also be assigned to variety class 5 "attitude" , since they pertain to 'attitude', 'style', or 'tenor'. As with the group indicating regional variation, the L D C E here has a wide range of finely differentiated labels.
This can be seen from the following examples. Polite words for things that for some reason or another are regarded as unpleasant, are marked euph euphemistic.
Nag, when meaning an old or bad horse, is labelled n o t f m l in , but is marked infml in the second edition of the L D C E. Words that should be avoided in formal society or in conversation with foreigners and children are marked t a b o o. Items that "show a foolishly self-important attitude" are labelled p o m p pompous , such as t o pen 'write with a pen'. There are two particular areas, within the variety class 5 of attitude, which are not marked by the system of labels used in the L D C E : racist terms and sexist language.
These have become extremely important for good English in the s cf. Howard and the differences between the two editions of the LDCE. Certain words are considered offensive by certain groups of people, but this is only pointed out in the "usage notes" of the dictionary.
For example, b l a c k is the word preferred by many black people today, but c o l o u r e d , and especially n e g r o are con- sidered to be offensive. These two examples are only given in the latest L D C E and exemplify clear cases of language change s. The problems of the new, non-discrim- inatory title Ms are discussed in great detail by Howard and mentioned in the L D C E also in the "language notes" on "addressing people".
They are frequently pronounced in an un-English way. Here, we may have labels which refer to the language of origin Fr, G e r , I t , Sp , but the origin may also be named in the definition itself.
Obviously, words contained in the class interference frequently also belong to other variety classes. Thus, loans from certain languages often belong to certain topics, i. For example English, like many other European languages, has borrowed a number of expressions from the register of music from Italian. In this field, terms like a n d a n t e , d a c a p o , and p i a n o have become so familiar that they are not marked by the label I t in the L D C E at all.
In general, the dictionary does not contain a specific technical label m u s i c but cf. A mistake due to interference which is unfortunately often made by German linguists is the use of Ger l i n g u i s t i s c h in the sense of 'sprachlich', due to the convergence of both l i n g u i s t i s c h and s p r a c h l i c h in the English lexical item l i n g u i s t i c.
One could even argue that this is an instance of language change extension of meaning in the technical register of linguistics. This brings to a close our discussion of the marking of varieties of English in a modem dictionary. We have noted some quite fine distinctions, particularly in the first and fifth class. It is important, however, to repeat that the majority of entries in dictionaries are neutral with respect to variety classes.
Furthermore, even those words that are marked by specific labels often belong to the "common core" of English, at least with regard to the passive vocabulary of many speakers. Dictionaries of English An outline of English lexicology would not be complete without a sketch of 2 the most important and most relevant English dictionaries cf. Strang 2 ff. We will have a look at the great tradition in English lexicography, consider some medium or concise dictionaries beyond the pocket dictionary in greater detail, and look at various dictionaries for specific purposes.
Completeness is clearly impossible in this field, and there is rapid change and development in the publication of dictionaries, as in the lexicon itself, reflected in the dictionaries. We will only be concerned with unilingual dictionaries. He further raises the question of how much "encyclopedic information 2 about the referents" f.
It is an old and knotty problem how to distinguish between linguistic and encyclopedic knowledge cf. In principle, knowledge of language and knowledge of the world have to be separated, but it is not always easy to draw a neat line in specific cases. This is tied up with the problem of the "fuzzy" nature of language to which we will return.
In dealing with practical dictionaries, we have to keep in mind that they are not "the true repositories of lexical knowledge" as the man-in-the-street believes, and that a "reverent attitude to dictionary authority is mere 2 superstition" Strang As Strang points out, in the layman's view a dictionary is not a work written by somebody.
This false impression is further enhanced by the fact that most titles of dictionaries do not mention an author. The absence of an author definitely contributes to the awe-inspiring authority of the dictionary, especially if the lack of originator is coupled with the illustrious name of Oxford. It is contained in the title of a series of reference books that derive from the most comprehensive and impressive work of English lexicography, the Oxford E n g l i s h D i c t i o n a r y OED. It has rightly been referred to as the greatest dictionary ever written for any language.
Although it certainly cannot be up- to-date due to its history and its genesis it is without any doubt a most astonishing achievement and an inexhaustible storehouse of knowledge about 18 the English language. A glance at its history will reveal why the O E D is unique cf. McArthur ff. Around the middle of the last century it was felt in England that existing dictionaries of the language were inadequate. So the Philological Society in London, around , started the project of a new dictionary.
For this purpose, in a contract was signed with the old and famous Oxford University Press for the financing and publication of the dictionary. During the long and eventful years of writing and publishing, several editors were in charge of the process. The most important of these was probably James A.
Its editors always tended to be conservative cf. Marsden , which is most obvious from the fact mat Americanisms only began to be admitted in the Supplement, other Englishes were only recognized in the second Supplement ff. For the reliability of the OED's first citations and voluntary readers cf.
The plan which was in fact carried out was to give for every word of the English language and for each of its meanings, quotations from actual written texts. To find such examples by the systematic reading of texts could only be done by the help of many volunteer readers, over the course of years and years.
The material contributed by hundreds of readers formed the basis of the editing of the dictionary. At one point there were over of them cf. The C o m p a c t E d i t i o n of t h e O E D : vii and all in all 2, readers sent in 5 million quotations over a period of 70 years cf.
McArthur This title is responsible for the abbreviation NED, still occasionally used today. The final part with the letter Z appeared in Thus the whole project had taken exactly 70 years since the resolution of the Philological Society calling for a new dictionary was passed in However, the 20 undertaking was not completed with the issuing of the last instalment. In an important supplement volume appeared containing new and omitted words, as well as corrections necessitated during the long publication process.
The completed work treats more than , words and phrases. Together with the supplement it is bound in 13 large volumes, occupying 16, pages. Since the original format of the huge work takes up an enormous space, a micrographic reproduction in two volumes was produced in Most of it can only be read with a magnifying glass, but it is sold at a reasonable price which individuals can afford. But this was by no means the end of what Mc Arthur calls "the unendable dictionary". In the New Zealand scholar Robert W.
Burchfield became editor of the new supplements to the dictionary OEDS which led to a shift of viewpoint away from the original "Britocentric" approach cf. Weiner In Edmund Weiner responsible for the computerization of the OED was appointed co-editor of the New Oxford E n g l i s h D i c t i o n a r y , which aims at integrating the O E D and its supplements into an electronic database, publicly 21 available both online and on compact disc.
Samuels, for a number of years. Modem electronic equipment machine- readable data, a mainframe computer is being used for storage, processing, and classification and it is hoped that the project will be completed in the early s. It favours an "inclusive approach" Weiner and attempts to become the historical dictionary of every variety of World English.
As we have seen already, the rate of language change is greatest in the 2 area of the lexicon cf. This development has caused a need for constant revision and publication of further supplementary volumes in the past. They incorporate and replace the Supplement and contain new words adopted into the language since the publication of the OED.
They are based on a collection of quotations from literary, scientific, and technical works, as well as from newspapers and magazines. In , sixteen years after the publication of The C o m p a c t E d i t i o n vols.
I and II , the four new supplement volumes edited by R. Burchfield OEDS were also published in a reduced compacted version as vol. I l l , thus completing the printed output of what an Oxford University Press release praises as "the culmination of about years' work on the complete Dictionary". In , a second edition of the O E D was produced in twenty volumes the O E D 2 , conflated by computer, integrating the supplements, thus making available all the wealth of material over half a million words and 2,4 million quotations, including some 5, new entries in a single alphabetical sequence, on 21, pages.
The OED claims to record every word in the English language and to give quotations for each of its "senses", "about one for each century" in which the word was not extinct. Beginning with its earliest appearance in Old English or at a later period, all recorded spellings, uses, and meanings are registered, in order to account for the history of the word as completely as possible.
A n attempt is also made to register the latest occurrence of words that have died out. However, words that were already extinct by are not included. This short sketch can certainly not do justice to the OED.
But it is necessary to draw attention to some further dictionaries derived from the OED. This in turn is the basis for a dictionary published in , which lists the English vocabulary not in alphabetical but in chronological order, and bears the title A C h r o n o l o g i c a l E n g l i s h D i c t i o n a r y CED. It was prepared by Th. Finkenstaedt, E.
Leisi, and D. Wolff and contains the 81, main entries of the SOED listed according compact disc. In addition there are indexes for etymology, definition, labels parts of speech, topics, registers etc. In spite of this origin, former editions of the COD contained relatively few quotations, illustrative sentences, or collocations, i. The latest editions, however, have adapted more to the pressure of competing dictionaries of comparable size and price. Furthermore, the long tradition in which it stands is a burden in some respects.
Thus the C O D 7 could still be characterized as conservative, in spite of the inclusion of recent usage. This was particularly evident in the strange, unorthodox scheme for the notation of pronunciation also used in O E D up to the Compact Edition , for which the intended non-specialized native speaker readership was responsible. The symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA were not used, but the transcription followed the orthographic conventions of English, which was believed to be easier for the layman.
After eighty years of C O D first published , the eighth edition of is a departure from the tradition in several respects. Up to the 7th edition, an attempt had been made to separate linguistic and encyclopedic information by emphasizing the distinction between "a dictionary" and "an encyclopaedia 8 [sic! The editor R. Allen now states 23 that this distinction "is rather less strictly maintained". Finally, as specified on the same page: With this eighth edition the COD has entered the computer age.
The text was initially assembled as a computer database This database contains material from a broad variety of printed and electronic sources and the dictionary articles have a completely new structure.
Other medium dictionaries of comparable size will be considered later cf. Standop , Hartmann , and Summers Hornby with the help of others , is also published by Oxford University Press, it is indirectly related to the preceding work. The character- ization "Advanced Learner's" in the title is somewhat misleading but cf. Cowie It is definitely profitable for other users as well.
In contrast to earlier editions, the fully revised one of Cowie has returned to the transcrip- tion system used by Gimson and now conforms to the notation found in the E n g l i s h P r o n o u n c i n g D i c t i o n a r y EPD. Compared to the C O D , the O A L D is rather restricted to more basic vocabulary and contains fewer learned and technical words, and of course no etymology.
On the other hand it is modem and up-to-date and is distinguished by its clarity. It further contains many typical examples and collocations and very useful illustrations cf.
Ilson Three advantages of the O A L D may be particularly emphasized: 1. It contains simple but nevertheless exact definit- ions and paraphrases of the concepts, 2.
In the latest edition, a new simpler verb classification scheme is introduced. Nouns are marked with special symbols according to whether they are countable or uncountable. As in most recent dictionaries, a number of useful appendices are added at the end. It was first published in as a completely new, original work, which uses the findings of modem linguistics to give a more precise description of language. This is a representative corpus set up for the analysis and description of the contemporary language, containing examples of many varieties of English.
There are very important and symptomatic changes and improvements in the second edition of It also contains grammatical information on word classes, countability, and the construction potential of verbs. As in the O A L D , illustrations are used, besides definitions, for the explanation of the words treated. Syllable structure is also indicated, which is relevant for end-of-line divisions.
The use of words is demonstrated in extensive typical contexts, and collocations are shown in three different ways: in example sentences, by explanation in the so-called Usage Notes, and by typographic emphasis if the collocation is idiomatic or found very often. The revised edition is furthermore improved by additional "Language Notes", i. It also consistently attempts to avoid racist and sexist language see 1.
Neologisms and natural and typical usage in the s are captured by constant updating of the Longman Citation Corpus. There are two features of this dictionary which were unique in First "Usage Notes" are appended to many entries in both editions. Thus, e. The note following h i r e not only provides information on the differences between British and American English, but also on the nouns that may be combined with h i r e in contrast to the usual collocations of r e n t , lease, c h a r t e r , a p p o i n t , engage, and employ.
The second peculiarity revolutionary in is the controlled basic vocabulary used for the definition of the main entries. The list of this defining vocabulary is printed at the end of the book. When a word had to be used that is less common and does not belong to the special list of 2, words, it is marked by small capital letters.
The careful labelling of different varieties of contemporary English, especially the detailed coverage of different national varieties, have already been discussed. A slightly revised edition appeared in It pays considerable attention to geographical variation and has special consultants for Scottish English, Caribbean English, Australian English etc. This may be illustrated by the following entries: B r e n n e r Pass 'a pass over the E Alps, between Austria and Italy.
Highest point: 1, m'; B r e t a g n e 'the French name for Britanny'; B r i d g e F r a n k ', English composer B r i d g e of Sighs 'a covered 16th- century bridge in Venice.
In this context it is worth mentioning that a proposal for a consistent abbreviated labelling system for the world's Englishes has been proposed in GfJrlach In the foreword to the C O L L I N S , the publishers claim in that: For the first time in a major dictionary of mis kind, computer technology has been used from the inception of the work. This feature, they continue: made it possible to survey every field of human activity subject by subject, defining technical as well as everyday vocabulary in an exceptionally short time.
Closely related to the new possibilities of the computer age, and particularly interesting in comparison with the quotation from the C O D given above, is the following statement in the foreword to the second edition :vii : Parallel to this concern with the contemporary language went a comprehensive treatment of modem science and technology, the most thorough and encyclopedic of any general single-volume dictionary to date.
This encyclopedic approach was extended by a generous provision of biographical and geographical entries mat provided information on people and places of cultural importance on an international scale. I w i l l return to this conflict between purely linguistic and encyclopedic knowledge, and the possibility of their separation, repeatedly in this book.
Let us now turn to a fourth medium-sized dictionary of contemporary English, produced by the same publisher, the C O B U I L D E n g l i s h L a n g u a g e D i c t i o n a r y , which was unique in many ways when it appeared in incidentally, our counting could be renumbered on good grounds, if we considered the second edition of the L D C E as a different, fifth book.
It is really a new edition, with a woman Delia Summers as a new Editorial Director, with a more progressive attitude, where women feature as protagonists in many of the examples given.
Since in the latter, the examples are only slightly adapted, we find a high percentage of proper names e. As discussed in the introduction by the Editor- in-Chief, John Sinclair, "The dictionary is designed to read like ordinary English", collocations are stressed see 4. The first-mentioned characteristic, which results in a sort of "folk definition", is considerably, and perhaps unnecessarily, space-consuming.
Finally, a unique positive feature of the dictionary must also be mentioned, which is especially relevant with respect to sense-relations see 4. The highly competitive market for dictionaries aimed at students of English as a foreign language cf.
Summers has also produced a number of other Most reviews have been rather critical of the striking departures from lexicographical standards, e. Thus the entry for to nudge reads: "When you nudge someone, you push or poke them, usally with your elbow, in order to draw their attention to something or to make mem move".
Homographs are not distinguised s. The indication of pronunciation, a mixture of broad and narrow transcription, is also problematic. Jackson ff. As appears from the "Corpus Acknowledgements" in the COBUILD xxii , the bulk of quotations derives from texts produced in the s and s, with a very few earlier sources going back as far as Carter Manser and N.
Turton, can be mentioned here in closing. It is described by the publishers as a combination of thesaurus, usage guide, lexicon, and historical survey, with boxed notes about usage and etymology.
Diagram 10 gives a survey of British and American dictionaries the latter 24 to be discussed on the following pages most relevant for our purposes. It includes as an example of a particularly useful medium-sized American dictionary the college edition of Webster's New W o r l d D i c t i o n a r y of the A m e r i c a n L a n g u a g e , with the new editor-in-chief V. Neufeldt in charge of the latest edition Originally published in , the college edition was based on an earlier two-volume encyclopedic edition which first appeared in The schema does not contain dictionaries of synonyms, or other specialized works of reference.
Since, however, synonyms are especially important in our context see 4. A useful book, which also draws on the favourable connotations of the name Webster, is Webster's New D i c t i o n a r y of Synonyms, latest edition As the 4 subtitle indicates see bibliography Gove , it further deals with other sense-relations, in particular antonyms.
For the German user, the E n g l i s c h e 3 Synonymikfur Studierende u n d L e h r e r may be very helpful, originally written in by H. Klein alone. The newest relevant British publication is the L o n g m a n Synonym D i c t i o n a r y , with editor-in-chief Laurence Urdang, a renowned lexicographer. A n extremely useful contrastive dictionary of synonyms, particularly helpful for the English learner of German, is Farrell 2 Is this perhaps explainable from the fact that there are even two consultants for the field of horse-riding?
It is extremely instructive to compare entries for this item in various dictionaries. As we have seen, most British dictionaries, especially the recent medium- sized ones, give due consideration to regional variation of English. There are, of course, special dictionaries for English and American dialects, for Scottish English, for Americanisms, Canadianisms, etc.
Since, however, the American national standard plays such an extraordinary role, I will briefly consider some important American dictionaries mentioned in The nearest equivalent to the O E D although a far cry from the monumental original is A D i c t i o n a r y of A m e r i c a n E n g l i s h o n H i s t o r i c a l P r i n c i p l e s DAE published in four volumes by the University of Chicago Press between and It has the same lay-out, and one of its editors, W.
Craigie, was co-editor of the OED. It was originally published in 2 volumes, but a later edition of is in 3 volumes. The same year, a supplement appeared under the title Six T h o u s a n d W o r d s. Mish et al. An original venture with etymological information and usage notes, based on the deliberations of a panel, is The A m e r i c a n H e r i t a g e D i c t i o n a r y of t h e E n g l i s h L a n g u a g e AHD , which first appeared in A n abridged paperback edition was published in Symptomatically, the foreword of the first edition five years after W 3!
The enlarged and updated second edition, with the subtitle U n a b r i d g e d is based on the "Random House citation files". In addition to various charts, tables, and the Declaration of Independence, it further contains four or eight, counting both directions, e. Barnhart, S. Steinmetz, and R. Since the period covered by the DNE is restricted from the dictionary can provide much more detailed information and extensive quotations are often given.
The appearance of e. This already demonstrates that such dictionaries become old very rapidly like the NED! The second edition of the latter records all the items of the list except i n s i d e r t r a d i n g , but gives i n s i d e r information instead. Incidentally, of the parallel checklist of formal, historical, and literary words, all are contained in the COD.
Summers f. The dictionary could be partnered with a corpus of authentic written text As a third group, besides the major British and American dictionaries, those for specific purposes should be briefly discussed here. Hoad, must be mentioned. There are countless dictionaries of English idioms, which cannot be dealt with individually here.
More or less idiomatic fixed collocations cf. Lipka 76 ff. Partridge alone. There is a related dictionary, of rather restricted scope, that deals with a unique phenomenon only found in one specific variety of English, namely 2 Cockney, A D i c t i o n a r y of R h y m i n g S l a n g by J. Rhyming slang has some characteristics of a secret language, and consists of the replacement of a complex expression for a single word.
Often the expressions are abbreviated, which destroys the connection by rhyme. Thus, daisy r o o t s for boots is shortened to d a i s i e s and c h i n a p l a t e , for m a t e , according 2 to Franklyn is "invariably reduced to C h i n a ". Some terms have gained wider currency, beyond Cockney, as e. As with idioms, there are many books on good current usage, especially for teaching purposes. I shall single out two here, which I believe to be most valuable for foreign users, particularly German ones.
A balanced and objective look at contemporary vocabulary is given in Howard , A G u i d e t o G o o d E n g l i s h i n t h e s, with helpful advice about sexist, racist, and four-letter words. In case of need the larger dictionaries must be consulted. The latter contains only word lists based on the L O B and Brown corpora, without differentiating senses and not even 25 homonyms.
In the fourth category, there are dictionaries of a very different kind, not organized according to the normal alphabetical principle and without any explanations or definitions. Lehnert is a list of words arranged according to the letters they end with. Such "dictionaries", which merely list words in reverse order, may be useful to the philologist for the emendation of mutilated texts, the intelligence expert for the deciphering of codes, as a rhyming dictionary, and for research in word-formation, in particular connected with suffixation.
The last type of non-alphabetical, thematical reference book is the thesaurus. In such a work, lexical items are arranged on a more or less intuitively determined basis of similarity of meaning and association. This principle of arrangement is more linguistic than a mere alphabetical listing.
However, in practice, explicit semantic criteria are not used and normally modem linguistic research in the area is not drawn upon but cf. McArthur :esp. It was devised by Peter Mark Roget, as his own personal instrument for improving his powers of expression. In , as a young doctor, he started setting up a "classed catalogue of words".
Since then the work has gone through many editions, and has been published by various editors and publishing houses. The latest edition was prepared by Betty Kirkpatrick, and published in by Longman. According to the preface vii : The GSL does consider "semantic frequencies", as mentioned in its subtide. However, since it was originally produced in and revised in with a number of subsequent impressions , it is questionable how far it represents good contemporary usage.
Thus there seems to be a need for up-to-date frequency counts, which are of considerable importance for language learning cf. Carter , ff. This strongly reminds us of the never-ending story of the OED. McArthur f. Sets are established by deduction and association and may be compared to our "lexical sets" as opposed to "lexical fields", see 4.
The classification starts from 6 very general classes, which are then split up into larger categories, or "sections", and ultimately into roughly "heads" oder "topics". These are intended to subsume practically the whole range of ideas expressed in the vocabulary. The six general classes are: 1. These are further split up into subclasses called "sections".
These distinctions are not based on linguistic principles, such as paradigmatic or syntagmatic relations between words or their contents. It is therefore no strict semantic classification. However, since R O G E T ' s Thesaurus groups together words related logically and by subject matter, it is an inexhaustible treasure house for finding the appropriate and "correct" word in the writing of texts.
Following ROGET's example, the L e x i c o n attempts a combination of: a thematization, as in the work of compilers of human knowledge over the centuries, and b semantic structuring, as proposed by linguists like John Lyons and certain anthropologists cf. As stated in the preface, the L L C E vi "has only fourteen 'semantic fields' of a pragmatic, everyday nature", e.
As only explained in McArthur f. They each contain a range of "sub-themes", or "supersets", like e. These, in turn, are further sub- divided into "lexical sets" or "word sets", which form the "microstructure" of the L e x i c o n.
The author openly admits the subjectivity of the method and labels its result "Tom McArthur's taxonomy of semantic fields". Thus, the L L C E is based on the view that language and the world cannot be interpreted inde- pendently of each other, and that our linguistic and encyclopedic knowledge is stored as a network of associations in a conceptual framework.
This approach is clearly compatible with our discussion of association and "lexical sets" in 4. After discussing some problems of a general nature, we now turn to various aspects of the linguistic sign. First and foremost we have to look at some important models of the linguistic sign 2. Secondly, many words not only refer to some object but have an aura of associations expressing the attitude of the speaker.
They have not only denotative but connotative meaning as well. Fourthly, a word may be polysemantic, that is it may have several meanings, all interconnected and forming its semantic structure. It will be useful to remind the reader that the grammatical meaning is defined as an expression in speech of relationships between words based on contrastive features of arrangements in which they occur.
The grammatical meaning is more abstract and more generalised than the lexical meaning, it unites words into big groups such as parts of speech or lexico-grammatical classes. It is recurrent in identical sets of individual forms of different words. This being a book on lexicology and not on grammar, it is permissible not to go into more details though some words on lexico-grammatical meanings are necessary.
Words in which abstraction and generalisation are so great that they can be lexical representatives of lexico-grammatical meanings and substitute any word of their class are called generic terms. For example the word matter is a generic term for material nouns, the word group — for collective nouns, the word person — for personal nouns.
Words belonging to one lexico-grammatical class are characterised by a common system of forms in which the grammatical categories inherent in them are expressed. They are also substituted by the same prop-words and possess some characteristic formulas of semantic and morphological structure and a characteristic set of derivational affixes.
See tables on word-formation in: R. Quirk et al. London, The degree and character of abstraction and generalisation in lexico-grammatical meanings and the generic terms that represent them are intermediate between those characteristic of grammatical categories and those observed on the lexical level — hence the term lexico-grammatical. The conceptual content of a word is expressed in its denotative meaning.
The term referent or denotatum pl. Any text will furnish examples of both types of denotative meaning. The demonstrative meaning is especially characteristic of colloquial speech where words so often serve to identify particular elements of reality. Especially interesting examples of significative meaning may be found in aphorisms, proverbs and other sayings rendering general ideas. The information communicated by virtue of what the word refers to is often subject to complex associations originating in habitual contexts, verbal or situational, of which the speaker and the listener are aware, they give the word its connotative meaning.
The interaction of denotative meaning and its pragmatic counterpart — connotation — is no less complicated than in the case of lexical and grammatical meaning. The connotative component is optional, and even when it is present its proportion with respect to the logical counterpart may vary within wide limits. Different approaches have been developing in contemporary linguistics. The emotional and evaluative meaning of the word may be part of the denotational meaning. Aznaurova, T. A powerful impulse for this awakening … Expand.
Highly Influential. View 11 excerpts, references background and methods. What makes a linguistic sign successful? Towards a pragmatic interpretation of the linguistic sign. Abstract In contrast to Saussure, the linguistic sign is not regarded as based on a stable relationship between signifier and signified, but is conceived as an element that is more or less … Expand. It runs: "Of the making of many books, there is no end, and much study is a weariness to … Expand.
Prototypes, Schemas, and cross-category correspondences: the case of ask. This paper addresses problems of categorization via a study of the meanings and selected lexicosyntactic frames of the verb ask. On the basis of a large data base, it is found that ask covers two … Expand.
Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. The Study of Meaning,. Euphemism and Dysphemism. L a n g u a g e Used as Shield or Weapon. Illustrations in Dictionaries. Related Papers. By clicking accept or continuing to use the site, you agree to the terms outlined in our Privacy Policy , Terms of Service , and Dataset License.
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