SPECIALIZED DICTIONARIES ENGLISH AND THE USA THE

SPECIALIZED DICTIONARIES ENGLISH AND THE USA

THE HISTORY OF COMPILING DICTIONARIES FOR ENGLISH The theory and practice of compiling dictionaries is called lexicography. The history of compiling dictionaries for English comes as far back as the Old English period, where we can find glosses of religious books (interlinear translations from Latin into English). Regular bilingual dictionaries began to appear in the 15 th century (Anglo-Latin, Anglo-French, Anglo-German). The first unilingual dictionary explaining difficult words appeared in 1604, the author was Robert Cawdry, a schoolmaster. In 1775 an English scientist Samuel Johnson compiled a famous explanatory dictionary. Every word in his dictionary was illustrated by examples from English literature, the meanings of words were clear from the contexts in which they were used. In 1884 the first volume of a dictionary including all the words existing in the language was published. It contained words beginning with A and B. The last volume was published in 1928. The dictionary was called NED (New English Dictionary) and contained 12 volumes.

CLASSIFICATION OF DICTIONARIES All dictionaries are divided into linguistic and encyclopaedic dictionaries. Encyclopaedic dictionaries describe different objects, phenomena, people and give some information about them. Linguistic dictionaries describe vocabulary units, their semantic structure , their origin, their usage. Words are usually given in the alphabetical order. Linguistic dictionaries are divided into general and specialized dictionaries. General dictionaries include explanatory and translation dictionaries. Specialized dictionaries include dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, collocations, wordfrequency, neologisms, slang, pronouncing, etymological, phraseological and others. All types of dictionaries can be unilingual if the explanation is given in the same language, bilingual if the explanation is given in another language and also they can be polylingual. There a lot of explanatory dictionaries: NED (New English Dictionary), SOD (Shorter Oxford Dictionary), COD (Concise Oxford Dictionary). In explanatory dictionaries the entry consists of the spelling, transcription, grammatical forms, meanings, examples, phraseology. Translation dictionaries give words and their equivalents in the other language. There are English-Russian dictionaries by I. R. Galperin (БАРС - Большой Англо-русский Словарь) consisting of two volumes, by Y. Apresyan (three volumes) and others.

Specialized dictionaries of synonyms are also widely used. There are unilingual dictionaries: A Dictionary of English Synonyms and Synonymous Expressions by R. Soule, Webster‘s Dictionary of Synonyms. The best known bilingual dictionary is English Synonyms compiled by Y. Apresyan. Pharsealogical dictionaries describe idioms and colloquial phrases, proverbs. Some of them have examples from literature. The most famous bilingual dictionary of phraseology was compiled by A. V. Koonin. It consists of one volume and contains a lot of data. Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the oldest forms of these words and forms of these words in other languages. One of the best etymological dictionaries was compiled by W. Skeat. Pronouncing dictionaries record only pronunciation. The most famous is D. Jones‘s Pronouncing Dictionary. Dictionaries of neologisms are : a four-volume Supplement to NED by Burchfield, Beyond the Dictionary by Brian Locket, Bloomsary Dictionary of New. Words and others.

THE ORIGINS OF DICTIONARIES History of human languages: 50, 000 years History of writing systems: a few thousand years History of dictionaries: 700 years The origin of an English dictionary: glosses

The history of English dictionaries can be divided into five periods: 1. the first period: from the Middle Ages to the end of the 16 th century This is a period of glossary-looking. We had Latin. English glossaries in the Middle English period, such as Thomas Cooper’s Thesaurus Linguae Romanae of Britannicae (1565)

2. THE SECOND PERIOD: THE BEGINNING OF THE 17 TH CENTURY This is a period of the glossary dealing with hard words, such as Robert Cawdrey’s A Tale of Alphabetical English Words (1604).

3. THE THIRD PERIOD: THE MIDDLE OF THE 17 TH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE CENTURY This is a period when etymology of words is added to the meaning. Stephen Skinner’s Etymological Linguae Anglicanae (1667) is a representative work of this period.

4 THE FOURTH PERIOD: THE WHOLE 18 TH CENTURY In this period, dictionaries had established the standards of spelling, meaning and usage of English words. Henry Cockeram’s English Dictionary (The English Dictionary, or An Interpreter of Hard English Words, 1623) first used the word “dictionary” in the sense in which we now understand it. An excellent example of this period is Samule Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language of 1755.

5 THE FIFTH PERIOD: THE 19 TH CENTURY TO THE 20 TH CENTURY This is a period when English dictionaries saw much improvement and reached maturity. The representative works of this period are: Charles Richardson’s A New Dictionary of the English Language (1836)

THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (1928) The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (1911) Noah Webster’s The American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language (1961)

TYPES OF DICTIONARIES Bilingual dictionaries Monolingual dictionaries Specialized dictionaries General-purpose dictionaries

UNABRIDGED Compiled from scratch, largely from its own files of citations, with all definitions and arrangements of meanings and examples determined by its own editors Not a shortened version of some other dictionary Oxford English Dictionary: include every words in English since the Norman Conquest

SECOND EDITION IN 1989 Three versions: Twenty very large heavy printed volumes Two-volume compact edition(1/4 size) A compact disk, the whole dictionary and search program: $200, $400 Third edition: 2005

WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE 1961 published by the Merriam-Webster Company Contains a lot of technical terms 450, 000 entries Replaced the Webster’s New International dictionary of 1934 600, 000 entries: largest

DESKTOP DICTIONARIES The Chambers Dictionary(90 s) All derived forms are listed under within the entry under a single head word.

FOR AMERICAN USERS The American Heritage Dictionary Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Random house Webster’s College Dictionary Websrter’s New World Dictionary of the American language.

WHAT IS IT SPECIALIZED DICTIONARY? Specialized dictionary deals with lexical units only in relation to some of their characteristic features, i. e. only in relation to their etymology, pronunciation, usage, e. g. the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.

A specialized dictionary is a dictionary that covers a relatively restricted set of phenomena. The definitive book on the subject includes chapters on (among others) dictionaries of: synonyms pronunciations names (place names and personal names) phrases and idioms dialect terms slang quotations etymologies

WORLD BOOK DICTIONARY The World Book Dictionary is a two volume English dictionary published as a supplement to the World Book Encyclopedia. It was originally published in 1963 under the editorship of Clarence Barnhart, who wrote definitions for the Thorndike. Barnhart graded dictionary series for children, based on the educational works of Edward Thorndike whom Clarence Barnhart had known and worked with decades before. In some editions it was called the World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary.

Like the encyclopedia, it is designed to be user friendly to young people, yet comprehensive enough to be useful to adults. The definitions are designed with consideration for the age at which a person usually encounters the word. Quotations or sample sentences are offered with many words. Most proper names are excluded, leaving their treatment to the encyclopedia. The word list is based on a formula for calculating frequency of use. Originally covering about 180, 000 words, it has expanded to nearly a quarter million, making it considerably larger than most dictionaries, though not of "unabridged" scope

DOUBLE-TONGUED DICTIONARY The Double-Tongued Dictionary is an online dictionary. It catalogs a growing lexicon of undocumented or under-documented words on the fringes of English, focusing on slang, jargon, and new words. Formerly known as the Double-Tongued Word Wrester, the dictionary strives to record terms and expressions that are omitted, or are poorly covered, in mainstream dictionaries. It also features definitions and citations of strange and unusual words or phrases such as "parergon, " "epigenetics, " and "bleeding deacon. " The information on this site is compiled, written and edited by lexicographer Grant Barrett.

URBAN DICTIONARY Urban Dictionary is a Web-based dictionary of slang words and phrases, which contains more than seven million definitions as of 2 March 2013. Submissions are regulated by volunteer editors and rated by site visitors. Time's Anita Hamilton included it on her 50 best websites of 2008 list. The site was founded in 1999 by Aaron Peckham while he was a freshman computer science major at California Polytechnic State University. One of the first definitions on the site was "the man", referring to "the faces of the establishment put in place to 'bring us down'". The website was referenced in a 2011 District Court complaint by ATF agents to document the meaning of the vulgarism "murk" as used in a criminal threat. It also consists of names and slang

CONTENT n the context of Urban Dictionary, "definitions" include not only literal definitions, but also descriptions. As such, "to define" a word or phrase on Urban Dictionary does not necessarily entail providing a strict definition; merely a description of some aspect of the word or phrase could suffice for inclusion in the dictionary. Originally, Urban Dictionary was used mostly to define slang or cultural words or phrases not typically found in standard dictionaries, but it is now used to define any word or phrase. Words or phrases on Urban Dictionary may have multiple definitions, usage examples, and tags. Visitors to Urban Dictionary may submit definitions without registering, but they must provide a valid e-mail address. Before they are included in the dictionary, all new definitions must be approved by voluntary editors. Editors are not given any guidelines to use when approving or rejecting definitions.

TRAFFIC AND USERS As of March 2013, the site contains over 7 million definitions. As of April 2009, an average of 2, 000 are submitted every day; the site receives approximately 15 million unique visitors per month, with 80% of users being younger than 25. т. As of February 2013, Urban Dictionary's Alexa rating is 845, with a rating of 396 in the United States and 43, 559 sites linking in.

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