Words_about_words_An_introduction_to_Eng

Lexical Strata in English

It’s a shame that the film marketing has had a detrimental effect on its

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half-century” (Jackson 2002: 129). After the publication, in 1948, of Hornby’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, which, since then, has been reprinted twelve times, at least four major dictionaries for learners of English have been compiled: the Macmillan English Dictionary for

Advanced Learners (2002, 2009), the Longman Dictionary of

Contemporary English (1978, 1987, 1995), the Collins COBUILD English Dictionary (1987, 1995, 2001) and the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (1995). Other monolingual dictionaries – the “general-purpose” ones - target the adult English native speakers and are as numerous and diverse as the learners’ dictionaries. Within this category, there are the Collins English Dictionary (1979, 1986, 1994, 1998), the Concise Oxford Dictionary (with eleven editions since 1911), the Longman Dictionary of the English Language (1984, 1991), the Webster’s Third New

International Dictionary of the English Language (1961), etc.

A wide range of specialist reference books adds to the two categories of monolingual dictionaries already mentioned. Some of these focus on linguistic aspects of language. There are dictionaries of pronunciation, such

as the English Pronouncing Dictionary (1997) and the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (2000), dictionaries of spelling, such as A Dictionary of Spelling. British and American (1964), dictionaries of etymology, such as An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1967) or Douglas Harper’s continuously updated online etymological dictionary or dictionaries devoted to particular lexical units from among which one may quote the Cambridge Phrasal Verbs Dictionary (2006), the Longman

Phrasal Verbs Dictionary (2007), the Cambridge Idioms Dictionary (2006), the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms (2005), A Dictionary of American Idioms (2003), the Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English (2002), the Dictionary of Selected Collocations (1999), the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (1935), etc. Quite a number of monolingual dictionaries have been compiled based on semantic relations between words, especially, but not only, on synonymy and antonymy. Thus, the market has recent publications such as the Oxford Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms (2007), the Oxford Learner’s Thesaurus: A Dictionary of Synonyms (2008), the Wordsworth Dictionary of Homonyms (2007), etc.

Besides these, there are various dictionaries that define the terminology specific to a domain (which share characteristics with encyclopedias, in terms of the extent of their definitions or explanations and in that they include entries for personalities in the field to which the dictionary is dedicated): the Longman Business English Dictionary (2007),

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (2006), the Dictionary of Law (2006), the Oxford Dictionary of Chemistry (2009), The Dictionary of Cell and Molecular Biology (2007), etc.

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7.2. English lexicography

7.2.1. British lexicography

As Jackson (2002) explains, the beginnings of English lexicography may be traced back to the Old English period, specifically to the sixth century, when the Roman form of Christianity was introduced and the monastic life flourished. The language of the Roman Church being Latin, the manuscripts that the priests studied at the time were written in it. On reading them, they would sometimes write corresponding English words for the foreign ones, below or above the latter, to help their own understanding of the texts or as a guide to future readers. These “interlinear glosses” (Hullen 1989) were later gathered in a separate manuscript, as a glossary, which may be considered a “prototype dictionary” (Jackson 2002: 31). In time, the words in the glossaries started to be ordered alphabetically, initially, after the first letter, then, by the second and subsequent letters or topically.

During the Middle Ages, Latin continued to play a very important role not only in church, but also in the educational system. It used to be the lingua franca of teaching and learning at European universities (Cambridge and Oxford being at the forefront of these) so that, when schools for preparing students for entry to these universities were founded, the demand for instructional material for teaching and learning Latin vocabulary and grammar increased. As Jackson (2002) indicates, two dictionaries were compiled to meet this demand: the Latin-English Hortus Vocabulorum (printed in 1500) and the English-Latin Promptorium Parvulorum (printed in 1499).

During the Renaissance, the significance of Latin reached another level, through the publication of Roman literature works either in the original or in translation. In numerous cases, translators chose to add a Latin-English glossary at the end of their translations, a practice which continued until lexicography developed enough to make it unnecessary. The Renaissance witnessed not only the revival of the classical Latin and Greek, but also an increase of the interest in Europe’s vernacular languages, due, especially, to a boost in traveling. Such interest lay at the basis of the publication of several bilingual dictionaries, among which there are, as pointed out by Jackson (2002): for French and English - John Palsgrave’s

Esclarcissement de la langue francoyse (1530) and Randle Cotgrave’s A Dictionaire of the French and English Tongues (1611); for Italian and English - John Florio’s A Worlde of Wordes (1598); for Spanish, English and Latin - Richard Percyvall’s Bibliotheca Hispanica (1591), etc.

The first monolingual English dictionary is considered to be Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall, printed in 1604, and, as the author quoted by Jackson (2002: 33) explains, “conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard, usuall English wordes, borrowed from the

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Hebrew, Greeke, Latine, or French”. There are around 2500 words in this dictionary, for which synonyms or explanations “in plaine English words” (Cawdrey, cited in Jackson 2002: 33) are provided.

John Bullokar’s An English Expositor followed A Table Alphabeticall in 1616, with more numerous and diverse entries and more extensive explanations. Both these publications led the way to Henry Cockerman’s The English Dictionarie, first published in 1623. Though inspired by the two previous publications, Cockerman’s dictionary differed from them in some respects. On the one hand, it addressed a larger audience, of which the learners of English as a foreign language were part. On the other, besides the lists of “hard words” with their explanations, it also contained “a list of ‘vulgar’ words together with their ‘refined or elegant’ equivalents, as an aid to writing with good style and, … following the practice of some Latin-English dictionaries, … a list of Gods and Godesses’” (Jackson 2002: 35).

Monolingual dictionaries continued to expand, mostly in the direction of lexemes outside the everyday vocabulary. Etymology began to be of concern to English lexicographers so that, by the end of the seventeenth century, two etymological dictionaries had been published: Stephen Skinner’s Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (1671) and the anonymous Gazophylacium Anglicanum (1689).

The beginning of the eighteenth century brought changes as far as the focus in monolingual English dictionaries is concerned. Dictionary compilers began to show a more consistent interest in including in their works, besides borrowings, as numerous native words as possible. Such interest, together with that already manifested for etymology, is obvious in the two dictionaries that dominated the period, Nathaniel Bailey’s An Universal Etymological English Dictionary, published in 1721, and his

Dictionarium Britannicum, of 1730, the latter, a rich source of inspiration to Samuel Johnson. Largely similar, these publications had a more extensive scope and addressed a wider group of users than their predecessors. As the author described the former dictionary (quoted by Jackson 2002: 37), it was meant for “comprehending the derivations of the generality of words in the English tongue, either antient or modern, from the antient British, Saxon, Danish, Norman and Modern French, Teutonic, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, each in their proper characters … and also a brief and clear explication of all difficult words … and terms of art … together with a large collection and explication of words and phrases us’d in our antient statutes … and the etymology and interpretation of the proper names of men, women, and remarkable places in Great Britain; also the dialects of our different countries. To which is added a collection of our most common proverbs, with their explication and illustration”.

Lexicographers’ attempt at introducing native words rather than so many borrowed ones in their dictionaries was paralleled in the eighteenth

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century by the scholars’ and authors’ concern for the state of the English language, especially for its being spoiled, as they considered, by loan words. The example of the Academie francaise, who thought of dictionaries as instruments that could help in codifying the French language and in prescribing what was acceptable in it, prompted similar opinions on the part of the English scholars. Of them, Samuel Johnson embodied, in a monumental work, his awareness of the important role a dictionary may play in ascertaining and fixing a language.

His Dictionary of the English Language, printed in 1755, “remained the foremost dictionary of the English language for a century, and its author was acclaimed as the one who had done for English single-handedly what it had taken forty French academicians to do for their language. Johnson not only produced a monumental dictionary by a method, involving the collection of evidence (citations) and using the evidence to construct the entries, which became standard lexicographical procedure, but he also reflected in the Plan … on the nature of the dictionary compiler’s task and the issues that face lexicographers” (Jackson 2002: 46).

The methodological aspects that the author addresses in the Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (1747) and which he adhered to in the making of the dictionary proper concern the selection of the words to be included, their orthography and pronunciation, their etymology, morphology, syntax and “interpretation” (i.e. definition) and the use of citations to support his statements. The chief intent of the dictionary was, the author declared (quoted by Jackson 2002: 42), “to preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of our English idiom”, in other words, to include as many native words as possible, without completely excluding loans (those belonging to the professional jargons were considered of special interest to the users of the dictionary). In terms of orthography, Johnson suggested that no major changes away from the then practice should be made where this was clear and that innovation should be introduced only if it could have been given sound reasons for, while, in respect of pronunciation, “the stability of which is of great importance to the stability of a language, because the first change will naturally begin by corruptions in the living speech” (Johnson cited by Jackson 2002: 43), he proposed to “determine the accentuation of all polysyllables by proper authorities” and to “fix the pronunciation of monosyllables, by placing them with words of correspondent sound” (Johnson cited by Jackson 2002: 43). As far as etymology is concerned, Johnson distinguished between “simple” and “compound” words and, within the former category, between “primitive” and “derivative” ones. Primitive words were necessarily traced back to their original form, and those for which this could not be determined were excluded from the dictionary, in a declared attempt to “secure the language from being over-run with cant, from being crowded with low terms, the spawn of folly or affectation” (Johnson quoted by Jackson 2002: 43). The inflections of English words being irregular, they were “diligently noted” in

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Johnson’s dictionary, as was syntax, “too inconstant to be reduced to rules” (Johnson quoted by Jackson 2002: 43). Phraseology was also paid due attention. Defining the words and phrases “with brevity, fullness and perspicuity” seemed a difficult mission to the lexicographer, made so much so “by the necessity of explaining the words in the same language”. In order to accomplish this mission, Johnson did not only select monosemantic lexical items, but also set himself the task of distinguishing between the various senses of polysemantic words, which he decided to provide in the following order: “the natural and primitive signification first”, then the “consequential meaning”, then metaphorical sense, followed by the “poetical”, the “familiar” and the “burlesque” senses. All Johnson’s observations were to be supported by citations.

The popularity of the Dictionary of the English Language continued in the nineteenth century, when it was joined by another publication of the kind – Charles Richardson’s A New Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1837. By mid century, both these dictionaries were considered limited as far as their coverage of the English vocabulary, especially that of the earlier history of the language, was concerned. This opinion was made public by the representatives of the Philological Society, formed in 1842, “for the investigation of the Structure, the Affinities, and the History of Languages; and the Philological Illustration of the Classical Writers of Greece and Rome” (Jackson 2002: 47). The Society’s concern about the lack of coverage by the then existing dictionaries prompted its members to consider the necessity of having a new dictionary of English imperative. Under the circumstances, Herbert Coleridge was appointed the first editor of the dictionary to be and work on gathering the material needed started. Coleridge was succeeded as editor by Frederick Furnivall and, due to his not being able to efficiently deal with the task of compiling the dictionary as the sole editor, he was joined by James Murray in 1878. Ten years later, after around five million slips of paper containing words and their full bibliographical details had been collected from about one thousand readers and processed by the two editors and their assistants, the first volume of the

New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (later to become the

Oxford English Dictionary - OED), containing words under letters A and B was published. It took forty years and the addition of Henry Bradley, William Craigie and Charles Onions to the team of editors to complete de dictionary.

In the Preface to Volume I, Murray expresses its aim as follows (quoted by Jackson 2002: 51): “the aim of this dictionary is to furnish an adequate account of the meaning, origin and history of English words now in general use, or known to have been in use at any time during the last seven hundred years. It endeavors to show, with regard to each individual word, when, how, in what shape, and with what signification, it became English; what development of form and meaning it has since received; which of its uses have, in the course of time, become obsolete, and which

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still survive; what new uses have since arisen, by what process, and when; to illustrate these facts by a series of quotations ranging from the first known occurrence of the word to the latest, or down to the present day; the word being thus made to exhibit its own history and meaning; and to treat the etymology of each word strictly on the basis of historical fact, and in accordance with the methods and results of modern philological science”. The editors followed this initially stated goal very closely, though not all the common words of the language were included - to observe Victorian sensibilities, coarse slang vocabulary was left aside and so were some scientific and technical terms.

Words in the OED are divided into three classes: “Main” words, “Subordinate” words and “Combinations”. The first class includes single words – simple, derived or compound – which “from their meaning, history or importance, claim to be treated in separate articles” (Murray qtd. by Jackson 2002: 53). Subordinate words are “variant and obsolete forms of main words, and such words of bad formation, doubtful existence, or alleged use, as it is deemed proper, on any ground, to record” – eg. afforse (obsolete variant of “afforce”); afforest (obsolete variant of “athirst”), etc. (Murray qtd. by Jackson 2002: 53). Both Main and Subordinate words are headwords in the dictionary, the latter being printed in smaller letters than the former. Combinations are derived or compound words that do not need to be defined or which can be briefly explained on the basis of their cognates. They are dealt with under the main word that represents their first element.

The entry for a Main word consists of four parts: Identification (where spelling, pronunciation, grammatical class, inflections for irregular nouns and verbs and the particular domain or subject area to which the word belongs are mentioned), Morphology (where the “form-history” of the words is charted, by reference to their etymology, to subsequent changes of their form in English and to other various facts about their history), the Signification (where the focus falls on the meaning(s) of words) and the Illustrative Quotations (at least one for each century during which the meaning of a word was known to have been in use).

Although the first edition of the OED might have had flaws, it was for sure a monumental accomplishment in the field of lexicography, a valuable tool for students of English and scientists who explored its content for all kinds of scholarly endeavors.

Some of these flaws were eliminated in the two supplements (1933 and 1972-1986) and the second edition of the dictionary, which was published both in print (1989) and in electronic format (1992): a wide range of colloquial expressions and words belonging to regional dialects (English spoken in North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, etc) were added alongside specific terminology in the fields of sociology, linguistics, computer science (the use of subject labels was significantly extended), the distinction between “main” and “subordinate” words was

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abandoned (though the labeling of words as “obsolete” or “archaic” was preserved), Murray’s transcription system for pronunciation was replaced by the International Phonetic Alphabet, etc. Needless to say, the electronic version of the dictionary offers ways of searching for the information it contains that are not possible in the case of the paper variant.

The third edition of the OED, which Oxford University Press has planned to publish in the very near future, will surely bring even more improvements to the already existent dictionary.

7.2.2. American lexicography

Across the Atlantic, interest in asserting the identity of a new nation, freed from under the British influence (the American colonies became independent from Britain in 1776) fueled the scholarly concerns of a number of linguists. Of them, Noah Webster was a fervent proponent of the spelling reform which was supposed to individualize the American way of writing words as compared to the British (only a limited number of Webster’s suggestions were, however, put in actual practice and are still observed today – the ‘or’ spelling for ‘our’ in words such as favour, colour, labour, the ‘er’ for ‘re’ in words like theater, center, meter, and the single consonant where British English has a double – traveller, equalling,

programme).

Besides advocating the spelling reform as a means of strengthening a national American language (his endeavour in this area took the form of the Elementary Spelling Book, or the “Blue-Back Speller” as it was known to the very numerous readers who used it in the eighteenth century America), Webster attempted at compiling an American English dictionary, with the same nationalistic-oriented purpose in mind. This attempt was entitled A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. Published in 1806, it was not a fully original work, but rather an extension of John Entik’s New Spelling Dictionary of the English Language, printed in Great Britain in 1764. To it, Webster added about 5000 new words collected from his readings and believed to have reflected life in America and an appendix containing a range of “encyclopedic” information such as foreign currency conversions, weights and measures, a list of local post offices, and “Chronological Tables of Remarkable Events and Discoveries”.

The Compendious Dictionary paved the way to what was to be a truly American dictionary 20 years later. In 1828, Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language, containing about seventy thousand entries, of which only a limited number were words belonging to American English (some of them not even native, but borrowed) - bobsled, gerrymander, moccasin, squash, wigwam, etc. Unfortunately, the author’s preference for quotations from American authors rather than British ones to support the definitions of words in his dictionary only managed to illustrate the existence of insignificant differences between the two

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geographical varieties of English. To counterbalance the criticism of this shortcoming and that of the often flawed etymologies, much appreciation was directed towards Webster’s definitions, which were considered “more accurate, more comprehensive, and not less carefully divided and ordered than any previously done in English lexicography” (Morton 1994: 43), reason enough for Murray, the editor of the OED to call the American lexicographer “a born definer of words” (Jackson 2002: 63).

Webster’s view that America should distinguish itself linguistically from Britain was not supported unanimously. Some scholars continued to consider the latter the authority to look at for guidance in linguistic and lexicographic matters. One of these scholars was Joseph Worcester, who coordinated a new edition of Johnson’s dictionary, which he entitled

Johnson’s English Dictionary, as Improved by Todd, and Abridged by

Chalmers; with Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary, Combined. Two years after the publication of this work, in 1829, Worcester published an abridgement of Webster’s American Dictionary, from which he omitted many of the original etymologies and citations, but which, on the other hand, he enriched with words he encountered while editing Johnson. It was only in 1930 that Worcester published a work of his own – The

Comprehensive Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary. By comparison with the two previous dictionaries, this contained more words and a spelling system that combined features of what Johnson and Webster suggested. Special attention was paid to pronunciation, while considerations regarding etymology were abandoned altogether.

Webster reacted with accusations of plagiarism towards Worcester’s publications, which the latter denied. This exchange set the beginning of a twenty-year dictionary war, in which “Worcester’s dictionaries represented a conservative and Anglocentric approach to lexicography, and Webster’s championed the distinctiveness of American English and the necessity for America to set its own linguistic standards” (Jackson 2002: 63). In 1841, Webster published the American Dictionary, a revised and enlarged version of his 1828 dictionary. Worcester responded with the Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language, in 1846. This was followed, in 1846, by a single-volume, improved version of the American Dictionary, published by the Merriam brothers, who bought the publication rights from Webster’s heirs, immediately after the lexicographer’s death. The next to fire in the war was Worcester, who brought out a completely new work, in 1860, the Dictionary of the English Language, soon acknowledged as the best available work of its kind, on both sides of the Atlantic. But Webster was to triumph in the end, by launching by the editors Noah Porter and Carl Mahn of a thoroughly revised version of the American Dictionary, in 1864. This became “the dictionary of preferred use in education, the law and printing presses” (Jackson 2002: 64) and it went stronger and stronger on the market (the second edition was especially praised by both critics and users) until it reached its third edition, in 1961. This last version contained

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