Types of dictionaries

Contents


Introduction
Classification of dictionaries
1. Various types of dictionaries and their features
2. Explanatory dictionaries
3. Dictionaries of quotations
Bibliography
Used dictionaries

Types of dictionaries

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Explana-
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Translati-onal or bilingual
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Thesaurus
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Active
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Nowadays besides educational, dialect, scientific and technical spheres of interest the general lexicography aims at some other criteria, thanks to which the particular author lexicography is distinctly allocated. The basic subject and the purpose of the particular author lexicography is creation of dictionaries of quotations, studying their manner of word use, having a rather narrow understanding of the word or collocation. The particular author lexicography extend due to the products reflecting in the dictionary form, except for actually stylistic features, figurative system of the author, a cultural - historical background on whichhis creativity, etc. was carried out. Therefore it is possible to speak, on the one hand, about actually linguistic author's dictionaries, on the other hand - about historic, literary, or and encyclopaedic author's lexicon.
Dictionaries of quotations13 reflect language consciousness, language picture of the world of the particular writer or of a number of writers and any other famous people. The basic function they carry out is scientific or descriptive one.
On the scope of the author’s word combination creativity these dictionaries can be subdivided into dictionaries of particular novels/ poems or any other text types, dictionaries considering a certain period of the author’s creativity, complete author dictionaries and so on. All these directories are personal and monographic.
Dictionaries of quotations can be divided depending on:
(1) the character of data given in them (about word or some cultural and national reality) – we can distinguish linguistic and philosophical, encyclopaedic dictionaries;
(2) the number of authors, whose texts are used as the sources of quotations – we can distinguish monographic and summary dictionaries;
(3) the basic object of description - we can distinguish dictionaries having historic and normative orientation), stylistic dictionaries (describing semantic-stylistic features of creativity of the author), dictionaries of images;
(4) the basic purpose of the description - - we can distinguish explanatory and "not-explanatory" directories);
(5) the scope of described material - we can distinguish complete author thesauruses and incomplete ones; in other terms - general and private ones;
(6) the unit of the description - we can distinguish dictionaries with the heading unit equal to one word, and heading unit consisting of a number of words (dictionaries of combinations, collocations, quotations);
(7) the ways of the description - we can distinguish one parameter, two parameter and multi-parameter dictionaries;
(8) the arrangement of heading units - we can distinguish dictionaries with alphabetic and not alphabetic entry order;
(9) the number of languages - we can distinguish monolingual, bilingual and multilingual dictionaries;
(10) the time prospect - we can distinguish historical (constructed on the material of authors of some past epoch) and modern dictionaries (constructed on the material of modern writers)14.
We can notice that author's lexicography is traditionally centred around the names of well-known authors, the recognized masters of the national literature: e/g/ Pushkin, Lermontov, Nolstoy, etc. in Russia – or Shakespeare, Milton - in England, Goethe, Schiller - in Germany... Experience of the modern writers’s manner description is less significant, though it certainly supplements, concretizes the picture of the literary language modern condition, its individual – some particular author's refractions.
To the indicated classification we can be add grouping of dictionaries depending on some other attributes. For example, depending on function and the addressee we can distinguish dictionaries having scientific descriptive orientation - dictionaries addressed to experts, and dictionaries of educational orientation, addressed to pupils or students.
2. Explanatory dictionaries
The major type of the monolingual linguistic dictionary is the explanatory dictionary15 containing words with an explanation of their values, the grammatic and stylistic characteristic.
The macrostructure of an ideal explanatory dictionary is theoretically determined by the following universal educational and systematizing parameters, parameters standard, simplicity, completeness, efficiency and semantic gradualness of the description of the word meaning.
In the explanatory dictionary the system of references, which dictionary makers use for convenience of the reader aspiring better to understand that terminological area to which the concept concerns and to receive the additional information on its meaning is actively used.
The majority of references concern to two basic groups:
1) Related concepts;
2) Concepts mentioned in interpretation to the given term, meaning or translation of which can be useful to the reader16.
The system of references is used also to reflect subsumption relations.
Synonyms are given in the explanatory dictionary so as to notify the user on their presence or to help him to understand difference in meaning of two or more similar terms. Full and partial synonyms are made out differently.
Explanatory dictionaries are classified according to the structure into a great variety of various dictionaries (the explanatory phraseological dictionaries, specialized dictionaries - on economics, jurisprudence, artificial intellect, etc. explanatory dictionaries of youth slang, computer terms, etc.)
In monolingual explanatory dictionaries the right part of the word entry or dictionary definition is usually an interpretation, which should contain the same set of ideal semes, as the explicated word.
Interpretation of a word in explanatory monolingual and bilingual dictionaries consists of four parts:
1. the definition containing the formal both semantic characteristic of the word and predicative relations;
2. the contextual characteristics showing combinative potentialities of words,
3. the display of semantic and stylistic oppositions including the indication of synonyms, antonyms, thematic, semantic, associative groups,
4. illustrative examples of the real use of the given word meaning in the wide context by means of fiction, scientific or colloquial texts17.
The given structure of the word entry is ideal and universal. But the ideal dictionary does not exist.
3. Dictionaries of quotations
In the dictionary of quotations the unit of the lexicographic description is more than one word, it represents an aphorism or well-known statement belonging to the certain author or a group of co-authors.
The examples are not thought up by the dictionary-maker and not taken by him from everyday speech as, for example, as in an explanatory dictionary, and quoted from the indicated source.
The macrostructure of the dictionary of quotations it is directly connected to a key word of the citation which is used in the organization of the list of various quotations.
In the dictionary of quotations necessarily a mention of the author of the citation.
In a microstructure of the dictionary (entry) does not have interpretation of the resulted{brought} citation and any other instructions{indications} (пометы, translation (if it not the translation dictionary of quotations, in this case is necessary a mention of the author of translation), references)18.
Examples of quotations are grouped together on the basis of use in the quotation.
Quotations can be found out not only in the dictionary of quotations, but, for example, in the linguistic-cultural dictionaries focused on national realities. Therein quotations concern to realities, catchwords and expressions. Almost in each work of art it is possible to find out sayings (for example, of statesmen) and quotations referred to some other texts. The understanding of quotation meaning does not represent special difficulty, but it cannot be understood, if the context from which it is taken is unknown19. [24, with. 28]
In the dictionary of quotations unit of the lexicographic description is more than word also represents an aphorism or widely known statement belonging to the certain author or group of co-authors.
So, it is possible to allocate a plenty of types of dictionaries, each of those having some its own distinctive features as to construction macro- and micro- entries. The most popular of them appears to be an explanatory dictionary, in which it is possible to find out both synonyms and antonyms, both homonyms and phraseological units, and quotations, and sometimes even etymology, but the given data cannot be as rich as in the dictionaries of antonyms, synonyms, homonyms, etymological dictionaries, dictionaries of quotations.
Conclusion
Each type of dictionaries has its own specificity and possesses its own functionality. Each separate type of dictionaries has some distinctive features in the choice of elements taken into consideration, the micro- and macro- structure. During the different periods this or that dictionary appeared to prevail. The most popular and widely used now is the explanatory dictionary, accumulating in itself the most basic information, but it can appear insufficient if there is a need for the detailed information concerning, for example, etymology of word, synonyms, and antonyms, homonyms, homophones, variants of spelling and pronunciation of the word in other dialects, quotations, etc. In this case we have to apply to other dictionaries, and in each separate case – to miscellaneous and different ones.
When studying concrete lexical sets it is necessary to address to the dictionary of lexical sets, when studying national colour - to the culture-oriented dictionary when studying unfamiliar term - to the terminological dictionary of the given area of knowledge.
We have tried to give classification of the existing dictionaries which are appearing in great number and, probably, have missed this or that version, in fact the orientation on studying lexical structure of language is constantly changing, there appear new types of dictionaries which have not been needed before.