PERIODS of ENGLISH:
Freakishly neat:
Old English 450- 1066/1100
The
Anglo-Saxons.
A rather inflected, Germanic language. Difficult to learn, but
well worth it.
Middle English: 1100-1500
Early Modern English
1500 +
printing press; Great vowel shift
Shakespeare
Modern English/PDE: 1700 +;
1900+
HEL
: Dictionaries
Where do
dictionaries come from?
History of
dictionaries (from Stockwell and Minkova
Appendix)
A very recent phenomenon
Human language: at least
50,000 years old
Early medieval glossaries:
Latin to Latin
hard words (or Greek
to Latin)
Latin to Old English
first glossing,
then glossaries
First English Dictionary:
A
Dictionary of the English Language: Samuel Johnson, 1755 (250 years ago)
really
before that: 1600s: dictionaries of “very hard words” due to the large influx
of Latin and Greek vocabulary
HOW did people know what words meant?
“ain’t aint’ a word, cause ain’t aint’ in the dictionary”?
What about before
dictionaries?
All our greatest writers did fine
without dictionaries
Lexicon,
Lexicography, Lexicographer
What is a word?
Do, doing, does
doer?
“It was raining
cats and dogs”
“Come in” “put up
with” “face the music”
Lexemes
Counting
“words”--near impossible
·
When do you separate headwords?
·
Do hyphenated words count?
·
Do phrasal verbs count as separate
words?
·
What of homonyms?
o Saw
(verb), saw (noun) saw (noun)
o lock
(of a door) lock (of a canal)
CRYSTAL’s comparisons
Bilingual
Dictionaries
for foreign
language help
beware
of assuming equivalencies
General purpose English: English
dictionary
1.
Unabridged
Not shortened
*Not that is
contains every word
CRYSTAL’s comparisons
what
is a word?
HOW many words?
Generally exclude technical
words
2.
Desk
1.
Unabridged:
http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.lib.ipfw.edu
Greatest of all
dictionaries in any language
Compiled from it’s own citation files
How
a dictionary is written
based
almost exclusively on WRITTEN texts
OED organized
Johnson’s system of quotations to support meaning
Johnson's s
sources: almost exclusively literary,
·
“[prefers] writers of the first
reputation to those of an inferior rank”
·
[examples in the main] “from the
writers before the restoration, whose works I regard as the wells of English
undefiled”
50% of Johnson’s
citations:
Shakespeare
(15.5%
Dryden (10%
Milton (5.7
Bacon, the Bible,
Addison, and Pope (4.5 each
OED: First ed., 1884-1928
Attempts to included every word in the English language since the Norman
Conquest
Still based, in
the main, on literary sources, with a very traditional view of the Canon:
Citations, in
order of frequency:
Shakespeare, the
Bible (KJB), Walter Scott, Cursor Mundi, Milton, Chaucer, Dryden, Dickens,
Tennyson
Contains a very
large number of archaic/obsolete words
What is Etymology?
Lists entries in the historical order of the development of
a word
20 massive volumes
Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of
the English Language, 3rd ed. 1961
Greatest American Dictionary
The only one with any legal connection
to Noah Webster (1828, 1841)
fewer
obsolete words
more
technical vocabulary
Controversy: Includes many words and
expressions without judgment:
Attempts to
describe how the language IS used, not prescribe how the language OUGHT to be
used
2.
Desk
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
American Heritage Dictionary:
with Usage Panel!
Logical order vs.
historical order
Using the OED
online
Other
dictionaries
