Modern trends in English lexicography.

MODERN ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY

The field of modern lexicography presents a great number and variety of dictionaries of all types. Within English lexicography there are monolingual and bilingual general dictionaries, etymological and present-day English dictionaries, those which deal with jargon, dialects and slang. Modern lexicography distinguishes between historical and pragmatically oriented or learner’s dictionaries. Pragmatically oriented dictionaries are those which side by side with meanings of words recorded in works of literature register functionally prominent meanings, thus giving the readers a clear idea of how the word is actually used in speech.

Modern trends in English Lexicography are connected with the appearance and rapid development of such branches of linguistics as Corpus Linguistics and Computational Linguistics.

CORPUS-BASED LEXICOGRAPHY

Corpus-based Linguistics deals mainly with compiling various electronic corpora for conducting investigations in linguistic fields such as phonetics, phonology, grammar, stylistic, discourse, lexicon and many others. Corpora are large and systematic enterprises: they contain conversations, magazine articles, newspapers, lectures, chapters of novels, brochures, etc. Among them The British National Corpus, Longman Corpus Network, Spoken British Corpus, International Cambridge Language Survey, etc. Corpus provides investigators with a source of hypotheses about the way the language works.

A large and well-constructed corpus gives excellent information about frequency, distribution, and typicality of linguistic features – such as words, collocations, spellings, pronunciations, and grammatical constructions. The development of Corpus Linguistics has given birth to Corpus-based Lexicography and a new corpus-based generation of dictionaries.

The use of corpora in dictionary-making practices gives a lexicographer a lot of opportunities; among the most important ones is the opportunity:

1) to produce and revise dictionaries very quickly, thus providing up-to-date information about the language;

2) to give more complete and precise definitions since a larger number of natural examples are examined;

3) to keep on top of new words entering the language, or existing words changing their meanings;

4) to describe usages of particular words or phrases typical of particular varieties and genres;

5) to organize easily examples extracted from corpora into more meaningful groups for analysis and describe/present them laying special stress on their collocation.

6) to treat phrases and collocations more systematically than was previously possible due to the ability to call up word-combinations rather than words due to the existence of mutual information tools which establish relationship between co-occurring words;

7) to register cultural connotations and underlying ideologies which a language has.

Some of lexicographical giants have their own electronic text archives which they use depending on the type of dictionary compiled.

38COMPUTATIONAL LEXICOGRAPHY: ELECTRONIC DICTIONARIES

Computational Linguisticsis the branch of linguistics in which the techniques of computer science are applied to the analysis and synthesis of language and speech.

The use of language corpora and the application of modern computational techniques in various lexicographical researches and in dictionary-making in particular, have stipulated the appearance of Corpus (Corpus-based) and Computational Lexicography.

Computational Lexicography deals with the design, compilation, use and evaluation of electronic dictionaries, which differ in form, content, and function from conventional word-books. Among the most significant differences are:

1)the use of multimedia means: sound, animation, audio, and visual elements as well as interactive exercises and games;

2)the navigable help indices in windows oriented software;

3)the varied possibilities of search and access methods that allow the user to specify the output in a number of ways;

4)the access to and retrieval of information are no longer determined by the internal, traditionally alphabetical, organization of the dictionary, but a non-linear structure of the text;

5)the use of hyperlinks which allow easily and quickly to cross-refer to words within an entry or to other words connected with the entry.

There are distinguished two types of electronic dictionaries: on-line dictionaries which require having access to the Internet, and CD-ROM dictionaries which are usually electronic versions of the printed reference books supplemented by more visual information, pronunciation, interactive exercises and games and allowing the user to carry out searches impossible with the book dictionaries.

In lexicography the developments in electronic instrumentation and computer science have revolutionized the dictionary-making process, shown new perspectives in this field, supported lexicographical studies in different directions.