Kernerman Dictionary News • Number 16 • July 2008
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Thierry Fontenelle (ed.) Practical Lexicography, A Reader 405 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-929233-2
(hardbound) ISBN 978-0-19-929224-9
(paperback) practical (Adjective) 1.
Based on practice
or action
rather than theory or hypothesis
2.
Being likely to effective
and applicable
to a real situation; able to be put to use1 From http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/practical
(viewed April 2008)
In the 20 years that I worked for Van Dale,
a Dutch publishing house specialised in lexicography, I regularly met people
who were not linguists, but who nonetheless showed an interest in the dictionary
phenomenon. Once, we received a letter from a user of our comprehensive
English-Dutch dictionary who complained that the – in his opinion rather
common - word is was not included. He felt disappointed about this
lacuna in his expensive and respectable dictionary. It’s easy to respond with
disdain to such criticism, but I too have sometimes sought in vain for words
in French, English and Spanish dictionaries. Some of these may well have been
irregular verb conjugations that I did not recognize as such. If one fails to
connect an unfamiliar inflected form with the infinitive, it is difficult to
look up the word in its alphabetical place
[in printed books], and the meaning will remain obscure. Including only the infinitive of a verb as a
keyword in a dictionary is an efficient, space-saving convention in
traditional lexicography, but it is by no means user-friendly. As far as I am
concerned, one of the blessings of consulting dictionaries on a computer is
that looking-up is, will immediately show the entry be (and in
French va and ira will lead to aller). But not only to disappointed users have I
explained lexicographic conventions. There are quite a few non-linguists
around who want to know how to bring about a dictionary. Sometimes life
itself creates a need for a dictionary that does not already exist. And
sometimes individuals decide to go and put it together themselves. Such
people encounter all kinds of practical questions. I remember the owner of a transport company
who saw opportunities in All these people sought practical advice and
they turned to a specialized publishing house for help. That is how I came
into contact with them. Some of their many questions were: ·
Under which entry keyword do I
place fixed phrases and idiomatic expressions? ·
Which percentage of the words
begins with A, with B, and so on? ·
What does the blueprint of an
empty dictionary look like? Which building blocks are universal and
essential? ·
What are the typographical
conventions, such as the use of bold and italics? ·
Where can I find information on
tools/software to build a dictionary with? ·
What are the conventions for
the clustering of words derived from the same base (for example active,
activist, activism, activity, activate)? I would have liked to be able to refer them
to Lexicography for dummies, which no doubt would have had the
answers to such questions. However, this title was not available then, and to
my knowledge is still not. (For lack of it, I usually referred to the English
edition of Bo Svensén’s Handbok i lexikografi or Sidney Landau’s Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of
Lexicography.) With potential users such as those described
above in mind, I looked at Practical
Lexicography, A Reader compiled and introduced by Thierry Fontenelle and
recently published by Oxford University Press in the series Oxford Linguistics. It immediately became clear to me that this
title aims at a completely different user group. There is a deep gap between
the basic practical questions of lay persons who pursue their first steps on
the path of lexicography, and what the academic world holds for practical.
Some of the questions quoted above are touched upon in the very first
contribution by Samuel Johnson, written in 1747. The other twenty one
articles are of no help for those who need basic practical assistance. Useful
Anthology This observation is by no means a
disqualification of the book. It probably just illustrates the polysemy of
the word practical (see illustration). I hoped for a practical book in
sense no. 2. It turned out to be practical in sense no. 1. Practical
Lexicography offers fascinating reading for people like me, who feel at home on
lexicographical territory. The great merit of the editor, Thierry Fontenelle,
is that he compiled a reader’s digest from the huge mountain of
publications in congress proceedings, in magazines and in books. He divided
the field into twelve parts: I Metalexicography, Macrostructure, and the
Contribution of Linguistic Theory; II On Corpus Design; III On
Lexicographical Evidence; IV On Word Senses and Polysemy; V On Collocations,
Idioms, and Dictionaries; VI On Definitions; VII On Examples; For each part, Fontenelle selected one or
several articles – all of them published before – that thoroughly discuss the
subject. All chapters are written by people who practice or practiced the
lexicographical craft. In that sense, the title of the book is well chosen;
no academic theory but results of research and thought by professionals with
practical experience in dictionary making. For someone like me there is every reason to
be grateful to the compiler. All too often issues of the International
Journal of Lexicography remained unread, all too often congress bundles
landed on the bookshelf too soon. For those who work in commercial
lexicography, an excuse for not reading specialist literature is always
available. After all, we are in meetings all the time, busy with planning,
struggling with tight budgets and timetables. If someone takes the trouble to
pack the most relevant lexicographic baggage in one single volume, there is
every reason for gratitude. Since Thierry Fontenelle looks beyond the
horizon, with his experience as an academic researcher at the University of
Liège, as former president of Euralex and as program
manager
at Microsoft Natural Language Group, his selection is
hardly for me to criticize. I can report that from my experience as
lexicographer and publisher I have the impression that all areas are being
covered and that his choice of authors is excellent. Date:
up to, or out of Because the average age of the articles is
rather high, there is also a risk that important recent developments are not
mentioned at all. Nothing is said for example about what I will call Internet
lexicography. The size and reputation that the Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia
has acquired implies that its lexicographic counterpart – Wiktionary – needs to be mentioned in
a volume like Practical Lexicography.
Wiktionary claims to have more than
750,000 entries with an English definition, there are more than 55,000
registered users and since it was launched there were more than 4 million
editorial actions. Maybe its quality is disputable, but the fact that some of
the constraints of traditional commercial lexicography do not seem to be
applicable to this form of large scale democratic lexicography makes it
interesting enough to deserve a place in a recent book about the field. A related phenomenon is what I will call the
online community dictionary. Examples include the online bilingual
dictionaries for African languages to and from English, compiled within the
framework of Simultaneous Feedback, as the developer calls it. Such
developments are likely to influence the way dictionaries are being compiled
and consulted. Non-natives
read English too With the people I referred to at the
beginning of this text in mind, I would like to make a final critical
comment. But in all honesty, I am also talking about myself. Maybe it is less
a criticism than an observation and it is by no means limited to the field of
lexicography. It regards every area in which the dominant publication
language is English. For users of English as a foreign language,
native speakers can be the grindstones on which we sharpen our competence in
English. But in situations where we need all our concentration to follow a
line of thought, or understand a clever reasoning, the use of flowery
language and infrequent idioms, are obstructions on the road of
understanding. For example, an elaboration on the subtle nuances in meaning
and use of an English verb requires a far greater effort by a non-native than
by a native speaker of English. We, foreigners, have to make a double effort:
decode a text in a foreign language, and understand the complexities in a
language that is not our own. And so I am faced with the following
dilemma. May I discourage learned and lettered authors to write in the full
wealth of their mother tongue? I definitely would not mind if they showed
some awareness to the limitations in the competence of the English language
of foreign lexicographers. If learner’s dictionaries restrict their defining
vocabulary for the benefit of non-native users, maybe authors who write for
an international audience could make a similar effort. As an example of what I mean, I quote one
sentence: “There is no dearth of interesting and perspicacious commentaries
on this aspect of language”. Maybe the author just tries to encourage the use
of dictionaries and if so, she succeeded. I decoded the text into “There are
many interesting and clever commentaries on this aspect of language”. Notes 1 In a traditional (printed) dictionary the definition
would probably have been corrected after publication. For example, into “…
likely to be effective and applicable to …”. An interesting thing
about publications on the Internet is that it is very likely that soon after
publication of these pages the definition will be corrected. References Landau, Sidney I. 1984. Dictionaries: the Art and Craft of
Lexicography. Simultaneous Feedback: http://tshwanedje.com/sf Svensén, Bo. 1987, 2e 2004.
Handbok i lexikografi. Ordböcker och ordboksarbete i teori och praktik.
Rik
Schutz
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