Linguistic Society of America

Review
Author(s): Elisabeth Haggblade
Review by: Elisabeth Haggblade
Source: Language, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 922-923
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/413388
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 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 59, NUMBER 4 (1983)

sprachigen Worterbiichern. Ed. by

WOLFGANG MENTRUP. (Reihe Ger-

manistische Linguistik, 38.) Tubin-

gen: Niemeyer, 1982. Pp. viii, 188.

DM 56.00.

This book contains presentations by eight

German semanticists from the 3rd Colloquium

for Lexicography, held in February 1981 in

Mannheim. The aim was to introduce concepts

into the lexicograph

lexicography of monolingual dictionaries,

under the theme 'Praxis-oriented lexicology and

theory-based lexicography for the dictionary

user'. Hence lexicologists and lexicographers

were asked to pool their expertise in order to

improve semantic descriptions in standard ref-

erence works.

Presentations are divided into two major

groups. The first, 'Technical language for the

non-specialist', includes presentations on med-

icine, politics, and business. The main purpose

of these articles is to find a means for selecting

and describing, from major technical fields, ter-

minology which will warrant inclusion in general

dictionaries, and which will enable non-spe-

cialist users to interpret basic technical vocab-

ulary. The second, 'Non-technical language for

many users', consists of a discussion of adjec-

tives that describe various emotional states, as

well as a discussion of sentence adverbs and

interjections. This second group of articles fo-

cuses mainly on differences in intellectual ma-

turity among dictionary users, e.g. children vs.

students vs. adults. With few exceptions, each

article provides a list of almost exclusively Eu-

ropean references. No index is provided.

Although different methods are presented

in each article of the first group, their basic

approach may be outlined as follows: After a

vocabulary field (area of specialization) is speci-

fied, a basic vocabulary inventory is compiled,

and is profiled either by quantitative methods

(similar to frequency lists) or by pragmatic

methods (use of W-chains, akin to wH-ques-

tions). According to Mentrup, a dictionary

entry must contain a 'Handlungsausschnitt'

(delimitation of context), a 'Sprachausschnitt'

(delimitation of lexemes), and a 'Worterbuch-

ausschnitt' (qualification of synonym range).

Syntactic rules, and grammar in general, are

not discussed.

Though the approaches to semantic descrip-

tion are more diverse in the articles of the sec-

ond group, the basic method still begins with

dividing each word class into groups according

to shared characteristics. Thus, in one article,

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 BOOK NOTICES

handbook is to provide an overview of areas of

phraseology where none currently exists, and

to go beyond a discussion of the basic termi-

nology and classification system, aiming at new

perspectives in phraseology. The chapters on

contrastive and historical phraseology present

an overview of the research thus far done in this

field, with special attention paid to the Soviet

contribution. The authors particularly recom-

mend the study of historical phraseology-so

that, by observing the actual formation of phra-

seological units, one may avoid making hasty

generalizations.

Locating and identifying phraseological units

presents a challenge which, the authors feel, can

be met only by those who have gained a famil-

b

iarity with and an understanding of methodo-

logical problems-prerequisites which they ac-

cuse Soviet scholars of not having met. Thus,

in etymologies and reconstructions of phraseo-

logical units, care must be taken to distinguish

synonymy from variation.

Factors which make this book useful are the

non-technical German of the text itself, and the

references made to additional sources on a par-

ticular subject. The glossary is followed by a

bibliography consisting mostly of European and

Soviet sources, and an index of phraseological

units in several languages and dialects.

This book provides a wealth of language sam-

ples. After each sample, semantic detail is elab-

orated to show how much extra-linguistic in-

formation (e.g. culture, social level indicators)

may be transmitted by a particular phraseologi-

cal unit-information useful to sociolinguists

and dialectologists. Useful to psycholinguists

would be the analyses of phraseological mis-

takes committed by different age groups (e.g.

children vs. adults), and the degree in which

meaning was or was not impaired. The chapter

on pragmatic phraseology-particularly the dis-

cussion of translating, and of the role which

phraseology could play in foreign language

teaching-may be of interest to applied lin-

guists. [ELISABETH HAGGBLADE, California

State University, Fresno.]

Semantic structures for the syntax of

complements and auxiliaries in Eng-

lish. (Janua linguarum, series

minor, 171.) By JAMES W. NEY. The

Hague: Mouton, 1981. $19.00.

Ney here investigates two ideas: (i) that the

syntactic peculiarities of verb complementation

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