1. What is the origin of the term “lexicography‘?

The word “lexicography‘ is derived from Greek: λεξίκόs (lexicos) “belonging to

word‘ and γπαφω (grafo) “I write”; if we translate it into English it means “I write words”

2. What do lexicography and lexicology have in common? Enumerate their

differences.

The difference between them lies in the degree of systematization and

completeness each of them is able to achive. Lexicology aims at systematization
revealing characteristic features of a word. The province of lexicography is the semantic,
formal, functional description of all individual words.

3. What are the main functions of practical/ theoretical lexicography?

Functions of practical lexicography:

1) educational function presupposes teaching language both native andforeign;

2) ‘legislativ’ function relates to the problems of description andnormalization of
language;
3) communicative function deals with realizing intercultural communications;
4) scientific function fulfills studying vocabulary of a language periods of practical
lexicography

Practical lexicography performs socially important functions:

1) providing language training,

2) description and normalization of the language,
3) interlanguage communication,
4) scientific study of the language.

4. What periods is practical lexicography divided into?

Practical lexicography is concerned it is divided into 3 periods:

1) pre-dictionary period;
2) period of early dictionaries;
3) period of developed lexicography.

5. Name the main landmarks in British Lexicography.

1604 - first unilingual dictionary explaining 3000 words by English equivalents (by
Robert Cawdrey)
 1721 – “Universal Etymological Dictionary” - first etymological dictionary,
explained etymology of words and included pronunciation (Nathaniel Bailey)

1798 – “A School Dictionary” (by Samuel Johnson Jr.)

1828 – “American Dictionary of the English Language” (Noah Webster)

1858-1928 – New English Dictionary (NED), 12 volumes, included all words

existing in the language

1933 – Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 13 volumes

1911 – “The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English”, contained only words
of current usage, no quotations

“English Dialect Dictionary” by Joseph Wright

Etymological English Dictionary by W.W.Skeat

6. Who is considered to be the founder of American Lexicography and why?

Noah Webster is universally considered to be the father of American lexicography,

who emphatically broke away from English tradition and embodied in his book the
specifically American usage of his time. His great work, The American Dictionary of the
English Language, appeared in two volumes in 1828 and later sustained numerous
revised and enlarged editions.

7. What are the main problems lexicographer’s encounters in their work?

1. There is the problem of whether a general descriptive dictionary, whether

unilingual or bilingual, should give the historical information about a word.

2. For the purpose of a dictionary, which must not be too massive, selection
between scientific and technical terms is also a very important task.

3. There is a debatable point whether a unilingual explanatory dictionary should try

to cover all the words of the language, including neologisms, nonce-word, slang, etc. and
note with impartial accuracy all the words actually used by English people.

B.C.B

1. How can the dictionary entries be arranged in the dictionaries? What information is
contained in the dictionary entry?

Arrangement of entries:
  alphabetical the basic units are given as main entries that appear in alphabetical
order while the derivatives are given as subentries or in the same entry
 cluster type: words are arranged in nests, based on this or that principle

2. What are the main types of linguistic dictionaries according to the nature of word
entry?
Main types of linguistic dictionaries According to the nature of word entry
 General dictionaries
 Special dictionaries
 Synchronic dictionaries
 Diachronic

3. Give examples of specialized dictionaries.

1) phraseological (An E.-R. Phraseological Dictionary by A.V. Kunin)
2) dictionaries of slang (Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by
E.Partridge)
3) pronouncing (The English Pronouncing Dictionary)
4) reverse (Stahl and Scavnicky's Reverse Spanish Dictionary)
5) etymological (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology by C.T. Onions)
6) ideographic (Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases by P.M. Roget.)
7) rhyme dictionaries (Walker's Rhyming Dictionary)
8) concordances (Shakespeare concordance)

4. What are concordances?

Concordances it is dictionaries recording the complete vocabulary of some author

are called concordances. They should be distinguished from those that deal only with
difficult words, i.e. glossaries. To this group are also referred dialect dictionaries and
dictionaries of Americanisms. The main types of dictionaries are represented in the
following table. Concordances it is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a
book or body of work, with their immediate contexts

5. What are the different ways of defining the meaning?

Definition of meanings:

 encyclopedic definition
 descriptive definitions or paraphrases
 synonymous words and expressions
 cross-references.
 6. What is special about Learner’s Dictionaries?

Learner’s Dictionaries it is specially compiled dictionaries to meet the demands of

the learners for whom English is not their mother tongue. Features:

 a strictly limited word-list;

 a great attention to the functioning of lexical units in speech;
 a strong normative character of the lexical units included;
 their compilation is focused on the native linguistic background of the user.

7. How is a dictionary structured?

Structure of the dictionary includes:

 introduction or preface;
 dictionary itself;
 addendum.

8. What are the modern trends in Lexicography? Why are corpora studies so
important today?
The field of modern lexicography presents a great number and variety of
dictionaries of all types. Within English lexicography there are monolingual and bilingual
general dictionaries, etymological and present-day English dictionaries, those which deal
with jargon, dialects and slang. Modern lexicography distinguishes between historical
and pragmatically oriented or learner’s dictionaries. Pragmatically oriented dictionaries
are those which side by side with meanings of words recorded in works of literature
register functionally prominent meanings, thus giving the readers a clear idea of how the
word is actually used in speech.
Modern trends in English Lexicography are connected with the appearance and
rapid development of such branches of linguistics as Corpus Linguistics and
Computational Linguistics.
Corpus-based Linguistics deals mainly with compiling various electronic corpora
for conducting investigations in linguistic fields such as phonetics, phonology, grammar,
stylistic, discourse, lexicon and many others. Corpora are large and systematic
enterprises: they contain conversations, magazine articles, newspapers, lectures, chapters
of novels, brochures, etc. Among them The British National Corpus, Longman Corpus
Network, Spoken British Corpus, International Cambridge Language Survey, etc. Corpus
provides investigators with a source of hypotheses about the way the language works.
A large and well-constructed corpus gives excellent information about frequency,
distribution, and typicality of linguistic features – such as words, collocations, spellings,
pronunciations, and grammatical constructions. The development of Corpus Linguistics
has given birth to Corpus-based Lexicography and a new corpus-based generation of
dictionaries.

The use of corpora in dictionary-making practices gives a lexicographer a lot of

opportunities; among the most important ones is the opportunity:

1) to produce and revise dictionaries very quickly, thus providing up-to-date

information about the language;
2) to give more complete and precise definitions since a larger number of natural
examples are examined;
3) to keep on top of new words entering the language, or existing words changing
their meanings;
4) to describe usages of particular words or phrases typical of particular varieties and
genres;
5) to organize easily examples extracted from corpora into more meaningful groups
for analysis and describe/present them laying special stress on their collocation.
6) to treat phrases and collocations more systematically than was previously possible
due to the ability to call up word-combinations rather than words due to the
existence of mutual information tools which establish relationship between co-
occurring words;
7) to register cultural connotations and underlying ideologies which a language has.