Introduction chapter. I. Fundamentals of english lexicography

CHAPTER.II.CLASSIFICATION OF THE ENGLISH DICTIONARIES
2.1 Encyclopedic and Linguistic Dictionaries

These two large groups of reference books differ chiefly in the choice of items included and in the sort of information given about them.

Linguistic dictionaries are word-books, their subject matter is lexical units and their linguistic properties such as pronunciation, meaning, peculiarities of use, etc.
The encyclopedic dictionaries, or simply encyclopedias, are thing-books, that give information about the extra-linguistic world, they deal with concepts (objects and phenomena), their relations to other objects and phenomena, etc. It follows that the encyclopedic dictionaries will never enter items like «father», «go», «black», but only those of denotative character, such as names for substances, diseases, plants and animals, institutions, terms of science, some important events in history and geographical and biographical entries.
As distinct from an encyclopedia, a dictionary presents a systematic description of the vocabulary of a given language highlighting the special features of lexical items: their orthography, pronunciation, etymology, grammar as well as semantic and pragmatic characteristics. All these aspects of representation are discoverable in dictionaries where words, their differences and similarities, become a priority. For example, a dictionary distinguishes between neutral and stylistically coloured (emotive) vocabulary and uses a special set of labels indicating the stylistic values of words: archaic, colloquial, dated, derogatory, euphemistic, slang, formal, literary, jocular etc. These are distinctions that are made within language vocabulary. They are crucial for the functioning of lexical items, such as «die» and «kick the bucket»; «marry» and «join in holy matrimony», although within each pair they denote the same referent.
In terms of the historical development of the English lexicography, we can say that the difference between encyclopedias and linguistic dictionaries is found even in the time of appearance each of these types. Linguistic dictionaries, represented at the beginning in the form of glosses, organized alphabetically, appeared much earlier than encyclopedias, as linguistic dictionaries only listed the word stock and reflected the structure and diversity of the language at the given period of history. For compiling an encyclopedia, more or less fundamental and comprehensive knowledge of subjects were demanded, so it took some time to collect them and learn how to use them.

2.2 General Dictionary

The main difference between general and specialized dictionaries is that a general dictionary deals with more or less the whole lexicon of the language and its functions are wider and more general than that of a specialized dictionary.
The key characteristics of a general dictionary are the following:

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  It consists of the words which are most frequent in texts of different genres,
  
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  It denotes concepts that are central to human life,
  
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  It suffices to paraphrase and explains any word from the English word stock.
  

General dictionary also has a variety of applications in linguistics:

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  It may be used to construct a set of semantic primitives which suffice to represent all the possible meanings of a language in theoretical linguistics,
  
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  It may suffice to define the meanings of all the other dictionary entries in lexicography,
  
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  It may provide most of the vocabulary to be learnt in language learning or teaching,
  
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  It may represent the core of the lexicon of a language in language comparison.
  

Explanatory and Translation Dictionaries

The key features of a general dictionary, mentioned above, answer a question why this type of a dictionary includes explanatory and translation dictionaries. The main characteristics of a general dictionary is that it deals with the whole lexicon of a language, so its functions are to explain words of the given language and find equivalents for foreign words in the word stock of the given language.
The main difference between explanatory and translation dictionaries is the language that is used in them. Explanatory dictionary is a monolingual one. In this dictionary the entries consist of the spelling, transcription, grammatical forms, meanings and examples. Explanatory dictionary helps to understand the words from the word stock of one given language.
Translation dictionary is a bilingual one. It gives words and their equivalents in the other language. Translation dictionary has some characteristics of an explanatory dictionary, i.e. it can include spelling of the words, their grammatical forms, meanings and examples of usage of the foreign words. These two types are closely connected to each other.
The special feature of a translation dictionary is also that it is used basically by translators or tourists, i.e. only by a limited group of people, while an explanatory dictionary can be used by any person in any society group, so its range of usage is much wider.