The Main Problems in Lexicography.

Lexicography, the science of dictionary-compiling.

There are many different types of English dictionaries. First of all they may all be roughly divided into two groups – encyclopaedic and linguistic.

Linguistic dictionaries are word-books, their subject matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc.

The encyclopaedic dictionaries, the biggest of which are sometimes called simply encyclopaedias are thing-books, that give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena), their relations to other objects and phenomena, etc.

It follows that the encyclopaedic dictionaries will never enter the items like father , go, that, be, if, black, but only those of designative character, such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, terms of science, some important events in history and also geographical and biographical entries. The most well-known encyclopaedias in English The Encyclopaedia Britanica (in 24 volumes) and The Encyclopedia Americana (in 30 volumes entries. Very popular in Gr.Brit. and the USA are also Collier’s Encyclopedia (in 24 vols) intended for students and school teachers, Chamber Encyclopaedia (in 15 vols) which is a family type reference book, and Everyman’s Encyclopedia (in 12 vols) designed for all-round use.

There are also numerous dictionaries presenting information about notable persons (scientists, writers, kings, presidents, etc.) often called Who’s Who dictionaries.

Classification of Linguistic Dictionaries.

A linguistic dictionary is a book of words in a language usually listed alphabetically, with definitions, pronunciations, etymologies and other linguistic information or with their equivalents in another language.

To restricted dictin-s belong terminological and phraseological word-books, dictionaries of new words, of foreign words, of abbreviations, etc.

All types of dict-s, save the translation ones, may be monolingual or bilingual, i.e. the information about the items entered may be given in the same language, or in another one.

Care should be taken not to mix up the terms monolingual and explanatory, on the one hand, and bilingual and translation dict-s on the other. The two pairs of terms reflect different dimensions of dictionaries. The terms explanatory and translation dict-s characterize the kind of information itself.

Explanatory Dictionaries.

Out of the great abundance of linguistic dict-s of the Eng. language a large group is made up of the so-called explanatory dict-s, big and small, compiled in English-speaking countries. These dict-s provide information on all aspects of the lexical units entered: graphical, phonetical, grammatical, semantic, stylistic, etymological, etc.

Most of these dictionaries deal with the form, usage and meaning of lexical units in Modern English (New English D, SOD – The Shorter Oxford Dictionary, COD – The Concise Oxford Dictionary).

Translation Dictionaries(sometimes also called parallel) are word- books containing vocabulary items in one language and their equivalents in another language. Many English-Russian and Russian-English dictionaries have been made in our country to meet the demands of language students and those who use English in their work. The most representative translation dictionaries for English are the New English-Russian Dictionary edited by I.R. Galperin, the English-Russian Dictionary by Prof. V.K. Muller, and The Russian-English Dictionary under prof. A.I. Smirnitsky’s general direction.

Also there are such types of Specialized Dictionaries as Phraseological dictionaries, Dictionaries of word-frequency, Reverse dictionaries, Pronouncing dictionaries, Etymological dictionaries, Ideographic dictionaries.

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