Main types of English dictionaries

Classification of dictionaries.

All dictionaries are divided into linguistic and encyclopedic dictionaries. Encyclopedic dictionaries describe different objects, phenomena, people and give some data about them. Linguistic dictionaries describe vocabulary units, their semantic structure, their origin, their usage. Words are usually given in the alphabetical order. Linguistic dictionaries are divided into general and specialized. To general dictionaries two most widely used dictionaries belong: explanatory and translation dictionaries.

Specialized dictionaries include dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, collocations, word-frequency, neologisms, slang, pronouncing, etymological, phraseological and others. All types of dictionaries can be unilingual (excepting translation ones) if the explanation is given in the same language, bilingual if the explanation is given in another language and also they can be polilingual.

There are a lot of explanatory dictionaries (NED, SOD, COD, NID, N.G. Wyld’s «Universal Dictionary» and others). In explanatory dictionaries the entry consists of the spelling, transcription, grammatical forms, meanings, examples, phraseology.

Translation dictionaries give words and their equivalents in the other language. Among general dictionaries we can also mention Learner’s dictionaries. They began to appear in the second half of the 20-th century. The most famous is «The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary» by A.S. Hornby. It is a unilingual dictionary based on COD, for advanced foreign learners and language teachers. It gives data about grammatical and lexical valency of words. Specialized dictionaries of synonyms are also widely used, one of them is «A Dictionary of English Synonyms and Synonymous Expressions» by R.Soule. Another famous one is «Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms». These are unilingual dictionaries. The best known bilingual dictionary of synonyms is «English Synonyms» compiled by Y. Apresyan.

In 1981 «The Longman Lexicon of Contemporary English» was compiled, where words are given in 14 semantic groups of everyday nature.

Phraseological dictionaries describe idioms and colloquial phrases, proverbs. Some of them have examples from literature.

Etymological dictionaries trace present-day words to the oldest forms of these words and forms of these words in other languages. Pronouncing dictionaries record only pronunciation. The most famous is D. Jones’ s «Pronouncing Dictionary».

Dictionaries of neologisms are: a four-volume «Supplement to NED» by Burchfield, «The Longman Register of New Words»/1990/, «Bloomsury Dictionary of New Words» /1996/.

22. Levels of language

Language is a system of units which are usually divided into segmental and super-segmental units.

Segmental units include phonemes syllables, morphemes, words, phrases and sentences.

Super-segmental units don't exist by themselves. They are actualized together with segmental units. Super-segmental units include accent, intonation patterns, patterns of word order and pauses.

The segmental hierarchy of a language includes the following levels:

1. Phonemic;

2. morphemic;

3. lexemic

4. Phrasemic

5. proposemic (sentence)

6. uper-proposemic (text).

The basic unit of phonemic level is the phoneme. The phoneme is the smallest distinguishing unit of a language. E.g.: sit-set, bad – bed.

The basic unit of the morphemic level is the morpheme. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language.

The lowest level of lingual segments is phonemic. The phoneme has no meaning. Its function is purely differential: it differentiates morphemes and words. Ex.: bad - bed

Phonemes are combined into syllables.

The morphemic level. The morpheme is the elementary meaningful part of the word. It is built up by phonemes, so that shortest morpheme includes only one phoneme. Ex.: ros - у [i], afire [e], come-s [z].

The morpheme expresses abstract, significative meanings, which are used as constituents for the formation of more concrete, nominative meanings of words. The third level in the hierarchy is the level of words, or lexemic level. The word, as different from the morphemes, is a directly naming (nominative) unit of language: it names things and their relations. Since words are built up by morphemes, the shortest words consist of one explicit morpheme. Ex.: man, will, but, etc.

The next higher level is the level of phrases (word groups), or phrasemic level. To phrases belong combinations of two or more notional words. These combinations, like separating words, having a nominative function. Like words phrases are naming units, but unlike words they name more complicated phenomena. Ex.: a picturesque village; to start with a jerk; extremely difficult the unexpected arrival of the chief.

Phrases name an object and its property, an action and its property etc. This kind of omination can be called "polynomination", as different from "mononomination" affected by separate words.

There are syntactic relations between the components of the phrase. Hence the shortest phrase consists of at least two words. So the phrase is the smallest language unit, which is characterized by syntactic relations.

Above the phrasemic level lays the level of sentence, or proposemic level. The sentence is the smallest communicative unit of the language. We can express our thoughts only with the help of sentences. Naming a certain situation, the sentence expresses predication, i.e. shows the relation of the denoted event to reality. It shows whether this event is real or unreal, desirable or obligatory, stated as a truth or asked about, etc.

In this sense, as different from the word and the phrase, the sentence is a predicative unit.

The sentence is not the highest unit of language in the hierarchy of levels. There is still another one the level of sentence - groups, supra- proposemic level. It is a combination of separate sentences forming a textual unity. The minimal text consists of at least 2 sentences which are thematically connected with each other.

To sum up:

1. The function of the phoneme is differential.

2. The function of the morpheme is significative.

3. The function of the word is nominative.

4. The function of the phrase is polynominative.

5. The function of the sentence is predicative.