The Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education

2.2. The aim and usage of dictionaries

Dictionaries set the forth options available to users of the languages and give as much information as they can about those options - including the responses they are likely to evoke. That is very ambitious goal. In fact, it is a goal that cannot be achieved completely. English providers and untold wealth of options, reactions of hose options are as diverse as the persons who use English, and both the options and reactions to them are constantly changing.

As all grammars leak, that is, fail to describe completely the regularities in the system of a language. Similarly, all dictionaries have holes. None can hope to present a full account of the English vocabulary because it is too large and too much in flux. The wonder is that dictionaries are able of tell as much as they do and to be accurate as they are.

A college dictionary aims to give reasonable full information about all the words we are apt to encounter in newspapers, but also important technical terms that a user might wish to look up. It aims at being as up - to - date as possible and at giving as accurate information as ever -growing knowledge of the language and the world makes available. It aims at setting forth the main variations in the language and providing such information about them as is necessary for an intelligent choice among the options. New dictionaries have to be made frequently because our language is ever changing as are our reactions to it and our knowledge of the world in which it is used.

To get the most out of a dictionary, its user must know its aims, limitations and method of presenting options.

Among the information in dictionaries are judgments made by speakers and writers of the language concerning what is proper or acceptable. Every one who uses English likes or dislikes some of the options that are available to them. Thus, some persons object to use of to refer to indefinite pronoun like everyone , as in the preceding sentence; others find it normal and convenient use. Some persons regard hopefully in the sense 'it is to be hoped' as in "they are to leave early, hopefully by sit" as ungainly; others think it fills a need. The variation in such opinions is part of the language that dictionaries try to record.

Dictionary users often come to the dictionary to be told what is correct

or incorrect in the language. Within certain limitations, that explanation is reasonable. However, the lexicographers do not make laws about what is right and wrong. Rather they observe now people who speak and write English use the language and what those same people think about the options available to them (acceptability).

When most people use a word and accept it without comment, the lexicographer records tat word without question. When most people do not use a word and reject it as impossible, the lexicographer simply omits it (or enters it with the label archaic or obsolete if it is an older word now used rarely or never). However, when a word is used by some people and not by others, or is accepted as right by some and rejected as wrong by others, the lexicographer records the word and notes the fact is use is restricted in various ways or that opinion about acceptability is divided.

Dictionaries do no tell their users how they ought, to speak and write the English language, but only how they can do so and what other speakers and writers think about the options available to everyone. Grammars and dictionaries are sometimes described as "descriptive" or "perspective", as "permissive or "purist', such dictionaries, however, are false. It is not the business of a dictionary either to give permission or to uphold pure standards. Nor is it its business to proscribe what people should do or to describe uses without reference to the reactions that others may have to those uses.

In conclusion I can say that dictionaries do not tell their users how they ought to speak and write the English language, but only how they can do so.The richest lexicography in the world is the English lexicography.¹ And we come across to many problems connected with the selection of head - words, the arrangement and contents of the vocabulary entry, the principles of sense definitions and the semantic and functional classification of words.²

In the first place it is the problem of how far a general descriptive dictionary, whether unilingual or bilingual, should admit the historical element. In fact, the term " current usage" is disconcertingly elastic, it may include all words and senses used by Shakespeare, as he is commonly read or include only those of the fossilized words that are kept in some set expressions or familiar quotations a distinctly modern criterion in selection of entries in the frequency of the words to be included. This is especially important for certain lines of practical work in preparing graced elementary text books.

A dictionary is the most widely used reference book in English homes and business offices. Correct pronunciation, spelling are of great social importance because they are necessary for efficient communication.

A bilingual dictionary is useful to several kind of people:

To those who study the foreign language, to specialists reading foreign literature, to translators, to travelers, to linguists;

It may have two principal purposes:

1. 
   reference for translation;
   
2. 
   Guidance for expression;
   

It must provide and adequate translation in the target language of every word and expression the source language. The entries of a dictionary are usually arranged in alphabetical order, except that derivatives and compounds are given under the same head word.¹

Different types of dictionaries differ in their aim, in the information they

provide, and in their size. They differ in their structure and content of the entry.

The connection of lexicology and lexicography can be illustrated in the discussion of the number of vocabulary units in Modern English. All the words and phraseological units existing in the language are said to be recorded in dictionaries. Different dictionaries register different number of words. The entries even in the most comprehensive dictionaries range from 500,000 to 800,000.

The problem of vocabulary counts is closely connected with the divergent - views concerning the nature of basic vocabulary units and also with difference in the approach of dictionary compilers to some of the criciar problems of lexicological science.

Counting up the entries in the dictionaries we are struck by the basically different approach to the vocabulary units as such and one and the same lexical item, say seal is treated differently in different dictionaries, some regarding it as one word and some as five different words. One and the same phrase by chance is included entry under the head word chance in the dictionary, but is not to be found in another dictionary approximately the same size.

The selection and the number of vocabulary units to be included In the dictionaries also depends on the aims set before dictionary compilers.

The dictionaries whose object is to present a picture of spoken and written Modern English, contain about 75,000 entries. It is also supposed to contain all the inflectional, derivational, semantic and syntactic information that its reader might ever need and also information on spelling and pronunciation.

The number of bilingual dictionaries for various branches of knowledge and engineering is ever increasing.

A completely new type are the machine translation dictionaries which present their own specific problems, naturally differing from those presented bilingual dictionaries for human translation. It is highly probable, however, that their development will eventually lead to improving dictionaries by general use.

The very first uncertainty a lexicographer has to solve and a dictionary users has to cope with is the decision about what is the same word and what are different words.¹ Are an ear of corn and the ear with which we pear the same or different words. Are the head of a river and the head on a body the same or different? Are run the noun and run the same or different words? Are a and an the same or different words?

It is generally agreed that if two different forms have different meanings, they are different words. So flour, and flower, which are spelled differently even though they are generally pronounced alike, are different words.

However, when there is an overlap of either form or meaning we have to be careful. Different forms for the same meaning may be different words - synonyms, such as sphere and globe. Those forms are different words because, although they can refer to the same basic thing, they have distinct uses: we can talk about "social sphere" but hardly about "social globe".

Sometimes, however, different forms for the same meaning may be variants of the same word such as a and an. Those forms are the same words, because, although they are pronounced and spelled differently, they are used in exactly the same way, except that a comes before words beginning with a consonant and an beginning with a vowel. There is no meaningful difference in their uses, so they are not different. In such cases, only one form is given full treatment, and the other is referenced to it. When there is one form but two different meanings, we say that there are two words that are homonyms, such as die 'become dead and die' a tool used for shaping something.

These two die's are so different in meaning , what we are unwilling to say they are the same word.

When however, the meanings are more alike, the decision can be difficult. What about the head of a river and on a body? Or an ear of corn and for hearing? In both cases, we can think of a similarity between the two senses. The head or source of a river is in a sense at the "top" of it just as the head on a body is. An ear of corn sticks out from the plant just as an ear does from a body.

To avoid arbitrary decisions in such cases, lexicographers often rely on history. The two meanings of ear are from different historical sources. The ear of corn comes from an Anglo - Saxon word aer; the ear for hearing, from the Anglo - Saxon word eare. Through historical development they have come to be pronounced and spelled alike, and any similarity in their meaning is accidental. And so they, like the two die's, are said to be homonyms, different words with the same form.

On the other hand, the two meanings of head are historical developments of one sense - the head of a river is indeed a metaphor based on the human body. It therefore is said to be a casa of polysemy, one word with several meanings.

The case of run, the noun, and run, the verb, is more problematical. Some dictionaries regard any forms belonging to different parts of speech as different words. Others, however, including this one, treat the two form as the same word provided they are closely related in meaning and have a common origin. Thus run is also example of polysemy.

The most important problems lexicographer came across in compiling dictionaries are the selection of words, the selection, arrangement and definition of meaning, and the illustrative examples to be supplied.

The semantic structure of words and the semantic system of a vocabulary depend on many linguistics, historical and cultural factors.

In explanatory dictionaries of the synchronic type the entry usually presents the following data:

Spelling pronunciation

Grammatical characteristics

Meanings, illustrative examples

Derivatives The order and the number of this items may vary. Not all of them are to be found in every word book of this type.

Pronunciation is shown either by means of International Phonetic