BY

MS. SADIA
IRSHAD
PhD, Scholar, The Department of English
THE ISLAMIA UNIVERSITY OF BAHAWALPUR
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
● TWO VIEWS
● A branch of applied linguistics
● A discipline in its own right
Definitions
● Samuel Johnson(1755): first English lexicographer
“art or practice of writing dictionaries”
● David Crystal (1987)
“the process of compiling dictionary”
“the art and science of dictionary-making”
● Oxford Advanced Learner Dictionary
“the theory and practice of writing and
editing dictionary”
History of lexicography
● not a new discipline
● developed to the present stage by passing through
various phases
● Earlier dictionaries had a practical aim
● BILINGUAL OR POLYGLOT WORD-LISTS
to help travellers, missionaries, traders
● GLOSSARIES
to help people understand dialectal, technical or rare
terms
History
● Glossai
in 5th BC to explain words in authors as Homer
● Anglo-Saxon Glosses
in 8th century, English words were written between
Latin lines.
only random word-lists were produced
 History
● PROLIFIC PERIODS

● Compilation of Arabic dictionary in 8th c

● Invention of printing press
● Dictionary by Academia Della Crusa in 1612
● Polyglot dictionary appeared in 17th c
● Comparative philologists compiled historical
dictionaries in 18th c
● In 19th c pictorial, specialized, dialectal etc.
encyclopedia
● In 20th c lexicography was developed as a scholarly
subject under the influence of linguistics
History of English lexicography
R. Cawdrey (1604): A Table alphabeticall
● explains “hard words”
S. Johnson (1755): Dictionary
● Citations from literature. Full vocabulary coverage.
N. Webster (1828): American Dictionary of the English Language
● A nationalistic adventure. Webster’s debt to Johnson.
● “consulting the opinions of some gentlemen in whose judgment I
had trust” (seeking agreement on definitions –
convention)
J. A. H. Murray et al. (1884-1928): OED
● Historical principles. Interaction with literary, medieval and Indo-
European scholarship.
Isaac Funk (1894): Funk and Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of the
English Language.
● put the “most important current definition” first.
Merriam Webster’s Second New International Dictionary (1933)
Lexicography is accretive
One dictionary builds on another.
● William Dwight Witney (1891): The Century Dictionary
● “neither in meaning nor in form is language to be dominated by its past”
● Clarence Barnhart (1947): American College Dictionary (1947)
● Jess Stein and Laurence Urdang (1966): Random House Dictionary
● Patrick Hanks (1971): Hamlyn Dictionary (UK)
●Arthur Delbridge (1981): Macquarie Dictionary (Australia) All
these dictionaries attempt to “put the modern meaning first”.
(Without corpus evidence, it is hard to decide what is the “modern
meaning”.)
Some 20th-century
English dictionaries
W. Geddie (1901): Chambers 20th-Century Dictionary
● A vast ragbag. Many rare Scottish dialect terms. Some witty
definitions, e.g.
“éclair, a confection long in shape but short in duration”
H. W. Fowler (1911): Concise Oxford Dictionary
● A distillation of OED. Interesting approach to sense
groupings.
P. Hanks (1979): Collins English Dictionary
● Coverage of technical vocabulary and names. Guidance on
usage.
P. Hanks and J. Pearsall (1998): New Oxford Dictionary of
English
● Corpus-based and citation-based. Distinguishes core senses from
subsenses. Major vocabulary surveys, e.g. of languages, flora and
fauna, technology etc. Syntactic information. Corpus-based
Lexicographer
● Person devoted to lexicography
● Dr. Samuel Johnson (1755) in the Dictionary of
English Language defines
“A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge who
busies himself in tracing the original and
detailing the significance of words.”
Types of lexicography
Field of lexicography
Practical lexicography
● Compiling
● writing
● Editing
Theoretical lexicography
● A scholarly discipline
● Focuses on analyzing and describing semantic
relations of lexicon of the dictionary
● Developing theories of dictionary components and
structures
● Linking data in the dictionaries
● Also referred to as metalexicography and
lexicology
● A branch of linguistics pertaining to inventory (stock)
of words in a particular language
Theoretical lexicography
Lexical semantics
● Semantics usually involved in lexicological work is
called lexical semantics
● Studies semantical relations between words
● Homonymy e.g band, bowl
● Polysemy
● Homograph e.g bow, conduct
● Synonymy
● Antonymy
● Homophone
Phraseology
● Studies compound meanings of two or more words
● Studies whole meanings of phrase
● Idioms
● Proverbs
● Phrasal verbs
Etymology
● History of lexicon
● Etmology of words gives information about the
historical changes and development e.g thou to you
Practical lexicograpphy
● involves several activities,
● the compilation of really crafted dictionaries require
careful consideration of all or some of the following
aspects:
● Need analysis
● Profiling the intended users (i.e. linguistic and non-
linguistic competences)
● identifying their needs
● Defining the communicative and cognitive functions
of the dictionary
Lexicon acquisition
● Questionnaire
● Corpus based
● Building on existing dictionaries
● Lexicography is accretive
● Danger of mindlessly copying errors and out-of-date information
● The reading program:
● research to find millions of citations But not a balanced corpus
● Directed reading research – specialist areas
● Searching corpus data:
● low yield for new words
● high yield for phraseology, collocation, usage
● Trawling the internet. Problems:
● sorting the “new words” from the corpus
● many “new words” are in fact multiword expressions
● They are hard to find by web crawling programs
Structuring lexicon
information
● Stating relation of data categories
● Choosing lemma forms for each word or part of word
to be lemmatized
● Collection of data categories may be language specific
or application specific
● Selecting and organizing the components of the
dictionary
Structuring lexicon
information
● Choosing the appropriate structures for presenting
the data in the dictionary (i.e. frame structure,
distribution structure, macro-structure, micro-
structure and cross-reference structure)
● Selecting words and affixes for systematization as
entries
● Selecting collocations, phrases and examples
● Defining words
● Organizing definitions
Structuring lexicon
information
● Specifying pronunciations of words
● Labeling definitions and pronunciations for register
and dialect, where appropriate
● Selecting equivalents in bi- and polylingual
dictionaries
● Translating collocations, phrases and examples in bi-
and polylingual dictionaries
● Designing the best way in which users can access the
data in printed and electronic dictionaries
● Table structure
● Tree or graph structures
● L1 dictionaries and their users
● Words and their histories
● Research: getting the words in
● Macrostructure: the lexical item
● Words, multiword expressions, idioms, affixes
● Abbreviations? Names?

● Microstructure:
● Lemma, pronunciation, meaning, use, ...
● The future of L1 dictionaries
● Print? CD-Rom? On-line? Hypertext links?
Writing lexicon entries
● Writing systems

Time Method
Ancient Type writer
Old Text processor
More recent Database, tables
Recent Toolbox
Advanced Graph editors
Sorting lexicon entries
● Purpose
● Rhyming
● Radicals e.g homonym, synonym
● Building on existing dictionaries
● Lexicography is accretive
● Danger of mindlessly copying errors and out-of-date information

● The Oxford reading program:

● 150 years of research to find millions of citations
● But not a balanced corpus

● Directed reading research – specialist areas

● Searching corpus data:
● low yield for new words
Johnson (1755)
ALCHYMY,
1. the more sublime and occult part of chymystry, which proposes, for its
object, the transmutation of metals, and other important operations.
There is nothing more dangerous than this licentious and
deluding art, which changeth the meaning of words, as alchymy
or would do, the substance of metals, maketh of anything what it listeth,
and
doth,bringeth, in the end, all truth to nothing.
Hooker.
O he sits high in all the people’s hearts;
And that which would appear offence in us,
His countenance, like richest alchymy,
Will change to virtue, and to worthiness. Shakesp. J. Caesar.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honours mimick, all wealth alchymy. Donne.
Johnson (1755)
ALCHYMY,
2. A kind of mixed metal used for spoons, and kitchen utensils.
The golden colour may be some mixture of orpiment, such
as they use to brass in the yellow alchymy.
Bacon.
White alchymy is made of pan-brass one pound, and arsenicum
three ounces; or alchymy is made of copper and auripigmentum
. Bacon’s Physical Remains
They bid cry,
With trumpets regal found, the great result:
Tow’rds the four winds, four speedy cherubim
Put to their mouth the sounding alchymy,
By herald’s voice explained. Milton’s Paradise
Lost, book 2
New Oxford Dictionary of
English (1998)
alchemy … the medieval forerunner of chemistry,
based on the supposed transformation of matter.
It was concerned particularly with attempts to
convert base metals into gold or find a universal
elixir.
● figurative A process by which paradoxical results
are achieved or incompatible elements combined
with no obvious rational explanation: his
conducting managed by some alchemy to give a
sense of fire and ice.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary, 6th edition (2000)
alchemy noun [U]
1 a form of chemistry studied in the Middle Ages which
involved trying to discover how to change ordinary metals
into gold. 2 (literary) a mysterious power or magic that can
change things.
Comparison
● In Johnson Literary style of definition writing
● Citations from literature, especially poets
● Reliance on scientific and technical authority
● Very full coverage of the vocabulary
● Few concessions to make things easier for the reader
● In modern A verbless phrase or a full sentence
● Defining the ‘essence’ of something, or characterizing what it typically
is.
● How much technical detail to put in, and how to present it?
● The role of examples.
● How to express changing beliefs, scepticism (e.g. about alchemy).
● How to relate figurative extensions to the ‘literal’ meaning (e.g.
alchemy = a former science, but also apparent magic; alcohol = strong
drink as well as a chemical)
Updating lexicon entries
● New words are added
● New meanings of existing lexicon
● Narrowing of meaning
● Broadening of meanings
Archiving lexicon entries
● Historical principles place the earliest meaning of a word
first
● camera, noun [Latin camera ‘vaulted room’] 1686. 1. a small
room.
2. the treasury of the papal curia. 3. a darkened box or room with
a
screen in it, onto which an image is projected (camera
obscura).... 4. an apparatus for taking photographs or making
films. …
● Synchronic principles place the current meaning first.
● camera, noun. an apparatus for taking photographs or making
films. [from Latin camera ‘small room’]
● camera obscura, noun. a darkened box or room with a screen in
it, onto which an image is projected. ... [Latin: ‘dark room’]
Archiving lexicon entries
• The synchronic/historical distinction affects many words.
● field: enclosed land. [Old English feld ‘open country’]
● kind: considerate and friendly. [Old English: ‘noble, well-bred’]
● magazine: 1. periodical publication. 2. holder for cartridges on a
gun or revolver. [Arabic: ‘storehouse’ ]
● sock. [Latin soccus ‘light shoe worn by a comic actor’]
● size: dimension, magnitude. [from assizes ‘session of a local law
court’: a size loaf was a loaf of court-approved dimensions]
• Today’s exploitation may become tomorrow’s norm.
Thorsten Tripple (2006)

Corpus Lexicon
acquisition

Multimodal output

concordance lexicon
Conclusion
● Lexicography involves theory and practice of dictionary
making
● The purpose is to answer all of everbody’s questions
about words, without knowing in advance what the
questions are going to be.
● The lexicographer must consider the needs,
expectations, and limitations of the dictionary user.
● Coverage (in addition to core vocabulary)
● slang and neologisms (journalists love them!)
● technical vocabulary for a technological world
● names of famous people and places
● A dictionary entry can tell a story.