50. Lexical gaps

Consider the parts of the human finger: the finger has three joints, but we have a common language term for only on of them, the knuckle. This suggests that there are “lexical gaps” for the other two potential meronyms, but we presumably so rarely need to refer to them that a periphrastic expression will usually suffocate, e.g. the middle joint or the joint nearest the nail. That was an example from meronymy.

Let’s use the hyponymy relation to illustrate the unsystematic nature of hierarchical organization in vocabulary. The superordinate term is vehicle, and so we will look at different kinds of vehicles (Car / automobile, van, lorry / truck, bus, cycle, train). Further hyponyms might include various kinds of carriage and cart. But a more rational hierarchy might wish to distinguish engine – powered, pedal – powered, horse – drawn, hand – operated / pushed vehicles. However, these terms are not of quite the same kind as vehicle, car, van, etc.; they seem created for the purpose.

It demonstrates that, while the hierarchical semantic relations of hyponymy and meronymy are undoubtedly important in the structuring of vocabulary, they do not operate in an altogether systematic and unambiguous way. There are many lexical gaps that are shown up when we begin to build words into hyponymy and meronymy trees, and co – hyponyms may not always be distinguished on the same basis (size, purpose, mode of power, etc.).

51. Origin of dictionaries

Dictionaries are recent inventions. Human language has existed 50 thousand years, but writing systems of any kind are rather young. The earliest alphabetical writing system is that of Greek developed less than a thousand years B.C., but the Greek didn’t invent dictionaries. The monks coping books by hand in the middle ages didn’t know the Latin very well. They wrote translations on glosses between the lines. Other monks made lists of the glosses and these were the earliest English dictionaries. The first publication appeared in time of Elisabeth I. The first English modern dictionary appeared 100 years later – it was the work of S. Johnson published in 1755.

52. Types of dictionaries

Dictionaries that give information about equivalents between two languages are called bilingual dictionaries.

Monolingual dictionaries give information about the language we already know and one to know better. They can be of two types depending on the audience to which they are addressed:

1) Specialized dictionaries aimed to clarify the technical of various professional and scholar area.

2) General purpose dictionaries aimed to help to understand the precise meanings, pronunciation, spellings, usages and histories of the words, including some of the technical words.

General purpose dictionaries are of two types:

1) unabridged dictionaries don’t contain every English word as nobody knows how many words English has. It only means that the dictionary is not the shortened version of some other version. It was compiled from scratch (to start from nothing) with all definitions and arrangements of meanings and examples determined by its own editors. The most remarkable one is the Oxford dictionary 1989 (almost 21 million entries). It has high degree of originality. It was the first dictionary ever to try to include every word that had appeared in English since the Norman Conquest. The other great modern dictionary is Webster’s 3^rd new international dictionary of the English language (published by the Merriam Webster Company in 1961). It has 450000 entries, it differs from OED in that it has excluded older obsolete words but it considerably includes the OED coverage of technical words from all the major fields of knowledge.

2) Desk dictionaries are shortened form of full dictionaries. The Chambers dictionary 1998. The main conspicuous feature is that all derived forms are listed with the entry under a single head-word. It also has an appendix that least common phrases and even quotations from the classical languages and modern foreign languages and another appendix which gives the origin of many first names.

The number of Specialized dictionaries is vast - Dictionaries of Old English, of Middle English, pronouncing dictionaries, chronological dictionaries , rhyming dictionaries, dictionaries of proverbs, loan words, bibliographical dictionaries, legal terms, medical terms, music, astronomy, geography, computer terms. In dictionaries of synonyms the headwords are listed alphabetically. The editors’ choice of headwords is not part of illiterate universal classification system and in the entry all the semantically similar words are listed with explanations of the distinctions among them. One of the most famous is Webster New Dictionary of synonyms. Dictionaries of synonyms are basically tools for writers to help them avoiding repeating the same word in different contexts.