King Saud University
College of Languages & Translation
Department of European Languages & Translation
"English Language Program"
Course Code: 193 NAJD
Course Title: Dictionary Skills
DICTIONARY SKILLS:
An
Introduction
Compiled by
Sarah AlOtaibi
Course Teachers:
Sarah AlOtaibi & Asia Shehab
2nd
SPRING 2010
Semester 1430/1431
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LEXICOGRAPHY
Source:
http://www.hrelp.org/events/workshops/eldp2008_6/.../lexicography.doc
Lexicography is used in two different senses:
 Practical lexicography is the art or craft of writing dictionaries.
 Theoretical lexicography is the theory or scholarly discipline of
analyzing and describing dictionaries.
The term lexicology is variously used. Some use it as a synonym for
theoretical lexicography, others use it for a branch of linguistics pertaining
to the treasure of words in a particular language.
Dictionary
A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with
its glyph or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages.
Many dictionaries also provide pronunciation information, word derivations,
histories, or etymologies, illustrations, usage guidance, and examples in
sentences.
Fundamental questions for lexicographers
1. Users – who will use the dictionary?
2. Uses – what will the dictionary be used for?
Answers to these questions will inform design and publication decisions for
dictionary maker, e.g. monolingual vs. bilingual, encyclopedic vs. compact,
symmetrical vs. asymmetrical bilingual, general purpose vs. specialist etc.
Structure of dictionary
1. macrostructure – overall structural organization of volume, typically:
 front matter, introduction, user guidelines
 body – entries and definitions (plus often other stuff), typically organized
alphabetically
 end matter – appendices and additional information, e.g. personal names,
place names, loan items etc.
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2. microstructure – internal structure of dictionary entry blocks, typically:
 headword (lemma, form to be looked up) – spelling
 pronunciation
 part of speech category or word class
 semantic specification – senses and reference
 cross-references to related items, related by sense
 collocations, co-occurrence strings
 usage with examples
 etymological or historical notes
Nature of Headwords
What is a word: are the following words? want, wanting, wanted, war
chest, war crime, courthouse, wannabe, half-baked
Distinguish:
1. orthographic word – written word surrounded by spaces word but what
about compounds, hyphenated forms etc. Distinguish
2. phonological word – sequence of sounds that forms phonological unit
(determined by rules of syllable structure, stress, etc)
3. lexeme – item of vocabulary that may occur as dictionary headword.
Lexemes can be more than one orthographic word
 Lexeme is an abstract concept – it is the set of word forms that comprise
a paradigm of related words forms, eg. sing – sings – singing - sang –
sung (cf. talk – talks – talking – talked – talked) – regular and irregular
paradigms
 word-form is inflectional variant of lexeme
 headword is typically a citation form of a lexeme (difficult when
language is highly inflectional and especially prefixing as root lexeme is
never found alone and hence not meaningful to speakers.
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Entry order
Dictionaries of alphabetic languages list words in alphabetical order. With
non-alphabetic languages, it may be different. The order in a dictionary with
ideographic entries such as Chinese character is often troublesome and
controversial because character has different readings. Collation systems
for logographs do exist. In Japanese and Korean, words containing Chinese
characters (called Kanji in Japanese and Hanja in Korean) can be spelled in
Hiragana and Hangeul respectively, and so are inserted in their proper
alphabetical order in dictionaries, alongside words not derived from Chinese
characters. Furthermore, in entries for words derived from characters, the
main entry words are spelled in Hiragana (for Japanese dictionaries) and
Hangeul (for Korean dictionaries), with the Chinese characters inserted in
parentheses after each entry word.
Introductory books and articles on lexicography
Frawley, William, Keeneth C. Hill and Pamela Munro Making Dictionaries: preserving
indigenous languages of the Americas. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Green, Jonathon 2002 Chasing the Sun - Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They
Made Pimlico
Hartmann, R. R. K. 2001 Teaching and Researching Lexicography
Haviland, John 2006 Documenting lexical knowledge. In Jost Gippert, Nikolaus P.
Himmelmann and Ulrike mosel (eds.) Essentials of Language Documentation, 129-162
Jackson, Howard 2002 Lexicography: An Introduction. Routledge.
Landau, Sidney, 2001 Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography, 2nd ed., Oxford
University Press
Mosel, Ulrike 2004 Dictionary making in endangered speech communities. In: Peter K.
Austin (ed.) Language documentation and description. Vol. 2, 39-54. London: SOAS.
Internet links
International Journal of Lexicography, http://www3.oup.co.uk/jnls/list/lexico/
Dictionary Society of North America, http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dsna/
Euralex - European Association for Lexicography, http://www.ims.unistuttgart.de/euralex/
Australex - Australian Association for Lexicography, http://australex.anu.edu.au/
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Translations:
Lexicography in different languages
Dansk (Danish)
n. - leksikografi
Nederlands (Dutch)
lexicografie, registratie van woordenschat
Français (French)
n. - lexicographie
Deutsch (German)
n. - Lexikographie
Italiano (Italian)
lessicografia
Русский (Russian)
лексикография
Español (Spanish)
n. - lexicografía
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - lexikografi
中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 辭典編纂
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 辞書編集, 辞書学, 辞書編纂
‫(العربيه‬Arabic)
‫ صناعه تأليف المعاجم‬,‫(االسم) الصناعه المعجميه‬
‫( עברית‬Hebrew)
n. - ‫ מילונאות‬,‫חיבור מילונים‬
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Types of Dictionary
Source: http://elc.polyu.edu.hk/advdicts/types.htm
*Types of Dictionaries in Relation to Form or Medium:
1. Books
2. CD-ROMs
3. Internet
Books






Advantages

Familiarity
Ownership





Disadvantages

Large size
Slow retrieval

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CD-ROMS
Fast retrieval
Lots of
information
Light-weight
Small size
Some contain
pronunciation
files
Some contain
English
learning
materials
Some contain
lots of pictures
Computer
needed
Slower
retrieval
process if users
are computer
dummies
Some are not
well-designed
Internet






Free
Wild-card
searching
Computer
needed
Internet
connection
needed
Slow internet
speed
Free ones often
have advertising
1. Books
Advantages:


Familiarity - you have very probably used a book dictionary before.
Ownership - you've probably got one already, so you don't need to
buy one.
Disadvantages:


Size - many dictionaries are large and heavy. Small (pocket-sized)
dictionaries have much less information and can be hard to read.
Speed - finding a word can be a slow process (click here for some tips
on how to find words faster).
2. CD-ROMs
You can buy dictionaries on CD-ROM.
Advantages:







Finding a word is faster
CD-ROMs can contain a lot of information
They are light-weight
They are small
Some contain sound files for pronunciation (e.g. The Longman
Interactive CD-ROM Dictionary)
Some contain English language learning materials (e.g. The Longman
Interactive CD-ROM Dictionary.
Some contain pictures (e.g. The Longman Interactive CD-ROM
Dictionary.
Disadvantages:


You need a computer
It takes longer to start your computer, start the dictionary program and
look up the word than it does to use a paper dictionary. If you are
already using the computer however, this is not really a problem
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

Some CD ROMs are not well-designed as they seem not to use the
abilities of computers (e.g. hyperlinking) very well
Due to the above disadvantages you should test the CD before you
buy it, though not all shops will allow this.
Here is a screen shot from the Longman Interactive CD-ROM dictionary,
showing a definition, a sound recording, a picture and some grammatical
information.
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3. Internet
You can find some dictionaries on the Internet, click here for some
examples.
Advantages:


They are free.
Wild cards - you can type ? if you don't know a letter, or * for a group
of letters you don't know; e.g. b?t will find bat, bet, bit, & but. b*t
finds babysit, backseat, bait, ballet etc.
Disadvantages:




You need a computer
You need to be connected to the Internet
The Internet might be very slow
Some have distracting advertising
Here is a screen-shot of the Virtual Language Centre's on-line lexicon:
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*Types of Dictionaries in Relation to the Dictionary Content:
1. General Dictionaries
These are normal dictionaries that give you information about the most
common words in English. However, new words are often not included in
these dictionaries until they become very common. Therefore you should
look for new fashionable words and new technical words (especially
computer terms) in a dictionary of slang or informal expressions or in a
technical dictionary.
Here are some general dictionaries:
2. Specialized Dictionaries
These are dictionaries :
 Useful for special groups of people. E.g.: Advanced Learner's
dictionaries, college students, children, etc.
 Useful for special fields or professions (technical dictionaries). E.g.:
medical, chemical, physical, literary, linguistic, computer dictionaries,
etc.
 Concentrating on one part of language. E.g.: dictionaries of idioms,
collocations, phrasal verbs, abbreviations, etc.
 Translating between different varieties of a single language. E.g.:
British-American dictionaries.
 Having a special organization. E.g.: thesauruses, which are
dictionaries that list words with similar meanings together. This is
useful for writing, where it is sometimes bad style to use the same
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word many times. However, you will need to use a general dictionary
to discover the differences between the similar words. Some wordprocessing programs have a thesaurus in the Tools menu. Also,
glossaries which are alphabetical lists of defined terms in a specialized
field usually come at the end of certain books.
Here is a photo of some of these specialized dictionaries:
*Types of Dictionaries in Relation to the Dictionary language:
1. monolingual dictionaries: all entries come in one language.
2. bilingual dictionaries: each entry has translations of words in another
language.
3. multilingual dictionaries: each entry has translations of words in two or
more languages.
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The required dictionary in this course
OXFORD
ADVANCED
LEARNER’S
DICTIONARY
7
TH
EDITION
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