The relation between lexicography and linguistics
冯晶
Linguistics is usually defined as the science study of language. It is an
interdisciplinary study which connects with society, psychology, and computer and so
on.
Lexicography is another course which at these days mixes up with the linguistics
though linguists at first didn’t pay attention to the study of lexicography.
Lexicographers also considered them not belonging to the linguistics. In fact,
lexicography which connects many theories of linguistics, such as contrastive
linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, computer linguistics and corpus
linguistics and so on, all of these theories can affect some matters of the lexicography.
Firstly, let’s talk about the relation between contrastive linguistics and lexicography.
Contrastive linguistics deals with the difference between two different languages,
such as the difference between English and Chinese. If lexicographers want to
compile a good dictionary, they must compare the differences of these two languages.
For instance, if lexicographers want to compile English-Chinese dictionary, they
should understand the different culture of these two languages, such as ,in China, we
always use “鼠”形容偷偷摸摸，目光短浅，比如说：贼眉鼠眼，鼠目寸光。However,
in English, they always use “mouse” to describe women and person who are always
very shy. Another example is that in China, people always consider owl as ominous,
but in English owl stands for clever bird. Lexicographers all need to know these
differences of the languages. In China, we also have many proverbs which also are
very difficult to be translated into English, such as the explanation of“小不忍则乱大
谋”is that one can not act wisely when one is angry or in a hurry, or you should calm
down before you decide the next move. Frankly speaking, it really gave us the true
definition of this proverb. However, I always deem it as informal English. Because
there are still something that seem lost from the original meaning. I am sure, through
the contrastive linguistics, lexicographers really can get many different opinions about
their compiling processes.
Secondly, we will talk about the relation between psycholinguistics and
lexicography. When the customers want to use or to choose a dictionary, they will buy
it according to their own usages or willingness. This also links up with some matters
of psycholinguistics, which means the inside structure of the dictionary. For instance,
if the lexicographers compile the dictionary for the elementary school students, they
need to design some lovely, cute covers of the dictionary which will attract more
students’ attention. For the lexicographers, they should find out “What does the
readers really wants and needs for the dictionary”. Readers always wanted to look up
the word meanings before. However, people always want to know how to use those
words nowadays, so as lexicographers. They must keep pace with readers’ demands.
This is also very important for the lexicographers to get the market share. So from this
point of view, I think that lexicography also is connected with the theory of
psycholinguistics.
Thirdly, we will look at the relation between the sociolinguistics and lexicography.
Sociolinguistics deals with the field studying the connections between language and
society, and the way we use language in different social situations. Actually, as
lexicographers, they really need to know who their target customers are. Because
many factors of people will directly affect the dictionary compiling, such as different
areas, societies and classes and so on, each of them will have influence on using a
dictionary. For instance, scholars will need different dictionaries from students’,
because they have different education background. For the scholars, they want to
learn more from the dictionaries and they want to find more syntagmatics in the
dictionary. However, when we buy a dictionary, we only consider which one is easy to
carry and can help us pass the exam. Therefore, for the lexicographers, before they
decide to compile a dictionary, they must consider different levels and classes of
people. Another matter is that they had to think about the difference of society, such as
the dictionary which is published in mainland won’t be suitable for Hong Kong
citizens. Why? It is because we use different letter form and pronunciation. Such as
“话语” in Hong Kong, it will be written as “話語” and the pronunciation is also
different. This also connects to the sociolinguistic study of the linguistics.
Fourthly, we will talk the corpus linguistics and lexicography. Corpus means where
we store our languages and data. For instance, lexicographers always store the words
in books before we have computers. It includes two types of words. The first type is
the words which people use in daily life. Another type is that the words which are
used in the context. The main purpose of the corpus linguistics is to deal with
description of the language structures and the usage of the words. This is also
associated with lexicography, because lexicographers also need to know “When
people always want to look up the word in the dictionary? What kinds of the words
people always look up?” This is also connected to the idiomaticity of the lexicography
which means nowadays people not only want to find the word meanings, but also how
to use of those words. For instance, in our corpus we will have many meanings of the
word “deal” which means “fir or pine wood, distribute cards in a game, agreement,
(especially in business), a great amount, treatment, assignment.” There are almost six
meanings of this word in the corpus. However, just a few of the dictionaries give us
all the meanings of this word. Some of the dictionaries, just like Oxford
English-Chinese dictionary only give us three of them, so sometimes corpus also
affects lexicographers when they choose the words. When lexicographers want to
compile a dictionary, they must find the corpus, because lexicographer could not use
the words as they know or understand. There are still many unfamiliar words to them.
Another advantage is that corpus is helpful for lexicographers to add the new words
and delete the antique words. This is also why people always consider the corpus as
their main tool to help them compile a dictionary.
Actually, there are many linguistic theories which can help us understand
lexicography much better, such as second language learning. If we can have a course
which helps students understand how to use the dictionary more efficiently, we also
can find some “negative transfer” in our usage of dictionaries.
Through this article, I want to say that when we learn a subject of the language, we
should not only see one feature of the language, we also need to look at it and learn it
from many different aspects, just like lexicography. We not only learn the theory of
dictionary, but also the related theory of the linguistics as corpus linguistics,
sociolinguistics, and some other theories. This also tells us that study does not mean
one factor; we also have to think it very carefully.