What I can learn from Chapter 2
张颖
We have finished Chapter 2 in this week, which is about the study of phrase and
some learner’s dictionaries. I will make a brief conclusion about what I have learned
from this chapter as following:
1. A bout the study of phraseology
The first large-scale research of phraseology begins from 1920s. It was carried
out by Harold E· Palmer in Tokyo and extended by A· S Hornby. They published
The Second Interim Report on English Collocation in 1933. It is a remarkable
landmark of phraseology. Because it provides a detailed classification of
word-formation in English, it also forms the theoretical basis of English phrase
–ological dictionaries of the 1970s and 1980s.
Palmer was interested in collocations in 1927. Then, he decided to compile a
list of collocations. Later, Hornby was invited to join the job in 1931. Hornby and
his wife made great contribution to the work. During the Report of 1933, there
was only 3879 items, while because of their hard work, the total number of items
increased to 5749 in the revised edition in 1935.
Palmer believes that “a collocation is a succession of two or more words that
must be learned as an integral whole and not pieced together from its component
parts.” For Palmer, collocation is a generic label, which has no settled status. But
there is not a technical term on the category in modern linguistics.
2. Some learner’s dictionaries
There are some dictionaries referred in the chapter.
(1) A Grammar of English Words (GEW)
Harold Palmer published A Grammar of English Words in 1938. It first
used the material classified in the Interim Report. A Grammar of English
Words included a great deal of specific information on the syntax, meaning,
and phraseology of a core vocabulary of about 1000 words, items which had
not been given the attention they deserved in either dictionaries or grammars
until that time.
There was improvement in the arrangement and presentation of
word-combinations in GEW. They distinguished the idioms in the strict sense
by the use of bold print. Idioms were placed within the entry for the principal
open-class word they contained and arranged according to the sense of
headword to which they are judged to be closet.
GEW introduces the useful and well-defined phrase, which is a class made up
of word- combinations. They function as conversational formulae, sayings,
and proverbs.
GEW is a specialized dictionary. It precisely focuses on the core of the
lexicon, and provides an exceptionally rich treatment of word-combinations.
(2) The Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary (ISED)
The Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary is a general-purpose
dictionary for the advanced foreign learners. It establishes precedents for the
subsequent treatment of word-combinations in general EFL dictionaries and
some of its features set an example for the phraseological dictionaries of the
1970s and 1980s.
There is a helpful distinction drawn between lexical combination and
grammatical combination. The former consist of two or more open-class
words. Open-class words refer to phrases like: verb + noun, adjective + noun,
noun + verb, adverb + adjective, verb + adverb, etc. the latter are made up of
an open-class word and a closed-class word. Closed- class word refers to
phrase like: preposition + noun, adjective + preposition, noun + preposition,
verb + preposition, etc. the two types refer to different learning problems. In
the lexical type, the two parts of collocations need to be known. In the
grammatical type, the information of the preposition is often fixed. The
differences have great implications for the followers.
Hornby makes four basic structural types: complex and compound words,
noun phrase, to-infinitive clause, and full sentence. Phrase and clause
examples account for a high rate in ISED. During the 506 entries and
sub-entries, there are 95 phrases, 34clauses, and 115 sentences out of a total
of 258 examples.
ISED plays an important role on the way to the specialized phraseological
dictionary. On the basis of Palmer’s achievement, Hornby creates a model of
the general-purpose dictionary, which helps to pave the way for the
dictionaries of idioms and collocations of the 1970s and 1980s.
(3) The Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, volume 1
Ronald Mackin is the first person to respond to the need for a specialized
dictionary of word-combinations. He assembled more than 30,000 citations in
order to produce a dictionary of multi-word items that were in the broadest
sense of collocations. He is a specialist of EFL in British Council and a
teacher of Applied Linguistic at Edinburgh University. Ronald Mackin and
A · P Cowie published Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English,
Volume1 in 1975. He also edited two classic texts which were written by
Harold Palmer.
They based on the analytical theory of phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs
of T. F. Mithchell.
In dealing with the grammatical questions, it borrowed ALD’s methods---the
use of number and letter “codes” to represent a variety of verb-parrerns. There
are verb transitivity and the choice between particle and preposition. For
example, they chose the letter A and B to represent intransitive and transitive
pattern. And 1, 2, 3 indicated whether the sentence pattern contained a particle,
a preposition or a particle and a preposition.
(4) Longman Dictionary of English Idioms (1979)
The grammatical classification of the phraseological research is a very
important subject, it also influences the design of two specialized idiom
dictionaries. One is Longman Dictionary of English idioms (1979), another
is the Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, Volume 2 (1983),
later is named the Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms.
According to Russian scholar V. V. Vinogradov and N.N. Amosova’s theory
of phraseology research, they gave a primary distinction between
sentence-like combinations and word-like combinations. Sentence-like
combinations included says, catchphrase, slogan, and speech formula. While
word-like combinations included free combination, restricted combination,
figurative combination and pure idiom.
Because the compilers did not referent any specific analytical model, the
dictionary was lack of the overall organizational framework, although it
recognized the important structural distinction between phrase idioms and
those full sentences. However, the dictionary had some strengths. There were
three ordering principles: the first one was that the first or only noun of a
combination was treated as the keyword under which the combination would
be looked up, and was made the capitalized heading under which all
expressions introduced by that word were grouped and defined; the second
one was that entries gathered under a specific keyword should be arranged in
strict alphabetical order; the third one was that within the alphabetical
arrangements for those keywords, the user would find the above-mentioned
idioms containing the headword and the cross-references to the headword.
In dealing with the grammatical questions, LDEI also adapted the codes to
treat the syntax of idioms and collocations. For example, it used a set of three
capital letters denoting major clause functions, D for direct object, I for
indirect object, and P for object of a prepositions and two superscript letter, o
to indicate that a word might inflect, and m to show that it could be
transposed.
(5) Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, Volume 2 (1983)
Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, Volume 2 is another
specialized idiom dictionary, appeared in 1983. It was based on the Russian
phraseological theory. It included a broad spectrum of sentence-like
expressions and word-like expressions. ODCIE2 assembled items according
to the alphabetical order to arrange the entries, which brought the readers
more difficulties. It also used the codes to demonstrate the verb-phrase
pattern.
(6) Selected English Collocations
SEC was regard as the first dictionary of English collocations worthy of the
name, and it was published in Warsaw in 1982. One of the compliers was a
native English speaker, and the materials came from a wide range of written
texts, so it guaranteed the facticity and reliability of the collocations.
Each collocation in SEC contains at least one noun and a noun features as the
headword. The order of the entries were arranged from noun headword to
verb, adjective, or noun collocate, which reflected the encoding function of
the dictionary. But it had its own drawback of this arrangement. For the writer
or learner, when he wrote, the problem he often faced was not the noun, but
the acceptable adjective or verb or noun collocations.
The BBI combinatory Dictionary of English made great improvement on
the problem.
(7) The BBI combinatory Dictionary of English
The BBI combinatory Dictionary of English was published in 1986. and
BBI was short for the three compliers’ names, which were Morton Benson and
Evelyn Benson and Robert Ilson.
This dictionary extended its entries to the adjective, verb, advbert and some
prepositions. It solved the problem of the acceptable collocations of both noun
phrase and other types of phrases. What is more, it provided the vocabulary
collocations and grammatical collocations. And they arranged the vocabulary
collocations before the grammatical collocations, which gave the learners
great help.
3. Conclusion
It is a brief summary of the Chapter 2. It mainly tells about the phrase study
and some relating dictionaries. These dictionaries play very important role in the
learners’ study. And these researchs pave the way for the followers. We will learn
more in the later.