Multi Disciplinary Lexicography

The present book is based on presentations made during the IXth International School on Lexicography, “Multi-disciplinary Lexicography: Traditions and Challenges of the XXIst Century”, at Ivanovo State University, September 8–10, 2011, and continues a series of collective monographs devoted to the theoretical and practical problems of lexicography, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2007, 2009 and 2010. The scope of topics discussed in four parts (Dictionary as a Cross-road of Language and Culture, Dictionary Use and Dictionary Criticism, Terminology and LSP Studies, and Projects of New Dictionaries) is rather wide and focuses on burning problems of European, Russian and world lexicography, as well as on projects of new dictionaries. This book will be of interest to theoreticians, practitioners, and students of linguistic faculties.

In the era of information technology, the need to communicate data effetively and precisely has given a boost to research in terminology. This collection of 14 articles by experts from different backgrounds deals with linguistic problems and technical aspects of terminology; in addition, there are articles relating to terminology in specific subject fields – lexicography, physical sciences, chemistry, social sciences and medicine.By presenting various approaches and applications, the volume raises fundamental questions about the use of concepts and the ordering of knowledge. Moreover, important new insights into the principles and methods employed in terminology management are offered by the ways in which contributors have tackled problems of communication in their specific subject fields.

The urge to understand all aspects of human experience more and better seems to be one of the motives underlying cognitive development in many domains of human existence. Understanding more and better is at the basis of knowledge creation and extension. One way of getting access to how understanding comes about and how knowledge is the result of a continuous dynamics of understanding and misunderstanding is by studying the cognitive potential and the development of natural language(s) and more particularly of terminology, in specialized domains. In this volume on dynamics and terminology, thirteen contributors illustrate that human cognition is a dynamic process in a variety of socio-cognitive and cultural settings. The case studies encompass a panoply of methodologies and deal with subjects ranging from the dynamics of legal understanding in multilingual Europe, over financial, economic and scientific terminology in several cultural and linguistic settings, to language policy issues in multilingual environments. All thirteen contributors link the dynamics of cognition to the creative potential of language as a repository of past and present experience in cultural settings and to the creation of neologisms in domain-specific languages. Attention is given to the functionality of indeterminacy, vagueness, polysemy, ambiguity, synonymy, metaphor and phraseology. In this volume terminology is researched and discussed from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining insights developed over the last decades in communicative terminology, socio-terminology, socio-cognitive terminology, cultural terminology, with tools and methods from cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, frame semantics, semiotics, knowledge engineering and statistics.

This book includes the work of experts from a wide range of backgrounds who share the desire to understand how the human brain represents words. The focus of the volume is on the nature and structure of word forms and morphemes, the processes operating on the speech input to gain access to lexical representations, the modeling and acquisition of these processes, and on the neural underpinnings of lexical representation and process.

Given the new technological advances and their influence and imprint in the design and development of dictionaries and lexicographic resources, it seems important to put together a series of publications that address this new situation, dealing in particular with multilingual and electronic lexicography in an increasingly digital, multilingual and multicultural society. This is the main objective of this volume, which is structured in two central aspects. In the first of them the concept of multilingual lexicography is discussed in regard to the influence that the Internet and the application of digital technologies have exercised and continue to exercise both in the conception and design of dictionaries and new lexicographic application tools as well as the emergence of new types of users and forms of consultation. The role of the dictionary must necessarily be related to social development and changes. In the second thematic section, different dictionaries and resources that focus on a multilingual and electronic approach to the linguistic data for their lexicographical treatment and consultation are presented.

This book deals with monolingual English dictionaries from 1604 to 1702. The major scholarly reference works which individually treat early English dictionaries are De Witt Starnes and Gertrude Noyes’s English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson: 1604–1755 (1946) and The Oxford History of English Lexicography (2009) edited by A. P. Cowie. However, when we proceed with reading the dictionaries with primary attention to their provision of lexical information, an array of deficiencies in Starnes and Noyes’s account stands out. There are two main reasons for these deficiencies; one is the fact that Starnes and Noyes’s analyses of the dictionaries are mainly made in accordance with the contents of their title pages and introductory materials, and the other is that the two authorities are excessively conscious of the external history of the dictionaries they discuss. The method of investigation of the dictionaries in this book differs greatly from these previous studies. Through it, various facts, which have been unnoticed for centuries, come to be revealed, including not only an array of historically significant methods for the lexical treatment of words and phrases, but also the highly creative use of other dictionaries in one specific dictionary, as well as the previously unrecognized direct and indirect influence of one dictionary on others.

The Routledge Handbook of Lexicography provides a comprehensive overview of the major approaches to lexicography and their applications within the field. This Handbook features key case studies and cutting-edge contributions from an international range of practitioners, teachers, and researchers. Analysing the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries within the digital era, the 47 chapters address the core issues of: The foundations of lexicography, and its interactions with other disciplines including Corpus Linguistics and Information Science; Types of dictionaries, for purposes such as translation and teaching; Innovative specialised dictionaries such as the Oenolex wine dictionary and the Online Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language; Lexicography and world languages, including Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Chinese, and Indonesian; The future of lexicography, including the use of the Internet, user participation, and dictionary portals. The Routledge Handbook of Lexicography is essential reading for researchers and students working in this area.

Who compiles dictionaries and other reference works? Which are used by whom? How do they achieve their purpose? Lexicography is a very important subject and the product of lexicography, the Dictionary, is a valuable resource in language learning. Teaching and Researching Lexicography explains the relations between lexicographic practice (dictionary-making) and theory (dictionary research), with special reference to the perspectives of: * dictionary history * dictionary criticism * dictionary typology * dictionary structure * dictionary use The final section of the book contains a variety of useful resources, including relevant related websites, a glossary of terms and a bibliography of cited dictionaries. This section can also be found on the Teaching and Researching Lexicography companion web-site. Written in a highly accessible style, Teaching and Researching Lexicography provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date and international coverage of this field in English, and will be of great interest to lexicographers, language teachers and applied linguists.