Summary of Section 6.1
王 静
Section 6.1 mainly discusses three questions, they are, the relations
between lexicographers and linguists in the past and at present, the
relations between dictionaries and linguistic schools as well as the
linguists’ opinions on the dictionaries.
First, what the relation between lexicographers and linguists is in the
past and at present. Generally speaking, their relations keep changing
with time. At the beginning, the linguists rejected lexicographers though
lexicography was a part of linguistics. The reasons were as follows. On
the one hand the dictionary was regarded as a commercial product and
was seen as too unscientific to be worthy of academic interest; on the
other hand the dictionary was closely to lexis and semantics whose
prestige was dwarfed in the linguistics of the nineteenth and the first
three-quarters of the twentieth century. Next, the lexicographers needn’t
linguists’ help, for lexicographers considered linguistic theories to be
unpractical. In the forties and fifties, linguists became interested in the
general-purpose dictionary everywhere. The problem was that it was hard
to apply linguistic theories to dictionary-making and there wasn’t
standard to evaluate practicality. Nowadays, the relations between the two
are intense; however, some experts are approval of the interaction, and
others are not.
The second problem is about the relations between dictionaries and
linguistic schools. The historical linguistics has a great influence on OED,
which focuses on individual word and neglect other information. In the
sixties, some dictionaries were clearly influenced by structuralists,
particularly in France. In the U.S.A. Bloomfield held that dictionaries
should only deal with the world itself and needn’t consider word phrases
and grammar. The influence of transformational and generative grammar
on dictionary-making has been even more limited.
The final problem is what linguists think of dictionaries. Most
linguists began to compile dictionaries in which the definitions are not
satisfied. The fact is that linguists are not skillful at dictionary-making.
Lexicography and linguists are now inextricably mixed. No modern
lexicography can ignore linguists’ offer and linguists’ should consider the
practicality of compiling dictionaries.