Specialised Dictionaries For Learners

The need for constructing a lexicographical theory with a particular focus on specialised dictionaries for learners is well documented in recent publications. This will imply paying attention to, at least, four basic lexicographic categories: learners; the learner's situation; the learner's needs; dictionary assistance. In one or other way, these categories are analysed in this book, whose eleven chapters are grouped into three parts. Part 1 reflects on some of the main ideas defended by the function theory of lexicography, perhaps the theoretical framework that has paid more attention to specialised lexicography. Part 2 presents some proposals that have already being explored in the field of general learner's dictionary and must be incorporated into specialised metalexicography: cultural aspects; figurative meaning; the inclusion of grammatical information; the use of corpora. Part 3 introduces the state of play regarding specialised dictionaries in China and offers some ideas for coping with the proliferation of terminological glossaries in Internet. The book also describes Enrique Alcaraz's academic achievements, together with some personal anecdotes, and a personal short tribute to his memory.

This stimulating new book, which combines dictionary research and linguistic knowledge, analyses the representation of meaning in business dictionaries from a pedagogical perspective. By examining in detail the macrostructure, mediostructure, access structure and microstructure of eight business dictionaries, this book presents interesting findings on how the dictionaries studied represent the 'noun-term', and on how they cope with the principles of new lexicography that aims at solving the needs of a specific type of user with specific types of problems related to a specific type of user situation. This exhaustive study, which makes simultaneous contributions to the theory of terminology, lexicography, and LSP teaching, defends a methodological confluence between LSP lexicography and terminology, and proposes some guiding principles towards the construction of pedagogically-oriented specialised dictionaries that must target students enrolled in LSP courses: Business English, Business Spanish, Business Translation, etc.

This is the first history of dictionaries of English for foreign learners, from their beginnings in Japan and East Asia in the 1920s to the present day. Anthony Cowie describes the evolution of the major titles, and their fight for dominance of what soon became an enormous market. He shows how developments in lexical and grammatical theory crucially affected the content and structure of ELT dictionaries.

These substantial volumes present the fullest account yet published of the lexicography of English from its origins in medieval glosses, through its rapid development in the eighteenth century, to a fully-established high-tech industry that is as reliant as ever on learning and scholarship. The history covers dictionaries of English and its national varieties, including American English, with numerous references to developments in Europe and elsewhere which have influenced the course of English lexicography. Part one of Volume I explores the early development of glosses and bilingual and multilingual dictionaries and examines their influence on lexicographical methods and ideas. Part two presents a systematic history of monolingual dictionaries of English and includes extensive chapters on Johnson, Webster and his successors in the USA, and the OED. It also contains descriptions of the development of dictionaries of national and regional varieties, and of Old and Middle English, and concludes with an account of the computerization of the OED. The specialized dictionaries described in Volume II include dictionaries of science, dialects, synonyms, etymology, pronunciation, slang and cant, quotations, phraseology, and personal and place names. This volume also includes an account of the inception and development of dictionaries developed for particular users, especially foreign learners of English. The Oxford History of English Lexicography unites scholarship with readability. It provides a unique and accessible reference for scholars and professional lexicographers and offers a series of fascinating encounters with the men and women involved over the centuries in the making of works of profound national and linguistic importance.

This volume undertakes a detailed analysis of the latest generation of learners' dictionaries of English. It assembles the papers delivered at the eponymous symposium held at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in April 1997. There are a number of reasons why these dictionaries are of special lexicographic interest: 1. the type of learners' dictionary associated notably with the name of Hornby can look back on a long tradition in British lexicography; 2. competition between various publishers since the late 70s has given crucial impetus to the development of these dictionaries; 3. these new dictionaries are decisively marked by the evaluation of large-scale computer corpora. Central to the volume is the in-depth comparison of four dictionaries published in 1995: OALD5, LDOCE3, COBUILD2, CIDE. The aim is to exemplify specific differences of approach in the four dictionaries from a wide range of viewpoints (definitions, information on valency and collocations, policy on usage examples, political correctness, etc.). A number of articles also enlarge on the history of learners' dictionaries of English, the significance of corpus linguistics for lexicography, and perspectives for the future, notably in connection with the electronic media.

This book is the first comprehensive monograph on the Function Theory of Lexicography, which originated at the Aarhus School of Business (Aarhus University). Function Theory considers dictionaries to be tools that are constructed for assisting specific users with punctual needs in specific usage situations, e.g. communicative-oriented situations and cognitive-oriented situations. The book's main focus is on defending the independent academic status of lexicography and its corollary: The process of designing, compiling and updating (specialised) online dictionaries needs a theoretical framework that addresses general and specific aspects. The former are common to all types of information tools, the latter are mainly dependent on the media for which the information tool is constructed and their specific target users. This books offers both aspects and moves from the highest level of abstraction to very detailed aspects of lexicographic work, e.g. how to convert an originally-conceived polyfunctional online dictionary into several monofunctional usage-based ones. The book illustrates that the theory and the methodology currently used by advocates of the Function Theory of Lexicography offers better results than other approaches and therefore makes its case for proposing the Function Theory for terminological/terminographical work.

From 1990 1994 the Danish Research Council for the Humanities granted a research project entitled translation of LSP texts, which was initially split up into five part-projects, one of which has been concerned with LSP lexicography."The Manual of Specialised Lexicography" is one of the results of the research undertaken by this project. The primary purpose of the Manual is to contribute towards an improved basis for practical specialised lexicography, which has so far had but a small share in the explosive development that has taken place in general-language lexicography since the early 1970s. One implication of this is that only to a limited extent has it been possible to build upon existing findings.The Manual thus has the twofold aim of offering guidance and direction to authors of specialised dictionaries as well as contributing towards the further development of lexicographical theories.

From 1990–1994 the Danish Research Council for the Humanities granted a research project entitled “translation of LSP texts”, which was initially split up into five part-projects, one of which has been concerned with LSP lexicography. The Manual of Specialised Lexicography is one of the results of the research undertaken by this project. The primary purpose of the Manual is to contribute towards an improved basis for practical specialised lexicography, which has so far had but a small share in the explosive development that has taken place in general-language lexicography since the early 1970s. One implication of this is that only to a limited extent has it been possible to build upon existing findings. The Manual thus has the twofold aim of offering guidance and direction to authors of specialised dictionaries as well as contributing towards the further development of lexicographical theories.

This book puts forward the specialised lexicographical approach (SLA) as the result of a natural evolution in the field of specialised dictionary-making that goes a step further the «mere» terminographical practice. The kind of specialised lexicographical works to be obtained with this approach are specialised, active, user-friendly, user-focused, corpus-based dictionaries deeply grounded on the belief that terminology has a practical, communicative dimension that terminographical works have not normally reflected. All through this book the theoretical and applied aspects of this approach have been illustrated by showing the elaboration process of an active, corpus-based, bilingual (English-Spanish, Spanish-English) dictionary of the ceramics industry. The first part of the book provides a sound theoretical framework in which the different aspects involved in the creation of dictionaries within the SLA for speciality areas of knowledge have been progressively disclosed - namely, a review on specialised languages, corpus linguistics, terminology and socio-economic aspects - all this leading to the final characterisation of specialised lexicography from a theoretical perspective. On the basis of this theoretical framework and according to the SLA, this book also presents an innovative, corpus-based method of work for specialised dictionary-making, closely linked to the use of corpora, terminotics and new technologies.