The lexicography of English : from origins to present / Henri Béjoint.

Author
Béjoint, Henri [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2010.
Description
xxiv, 458 pages, 32 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 26 cm

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks PE1611 .B45 2010 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    This book looks at how English words have been recorded, ordered, dissected, and displayed in dictionaries in Great Britain and the USA from the seventeenth century to the present. In the process it offers a complete introduction to how dictionaries are made. It considers the aims of their authors, the methods of their compilation, and the concepts and beliefs that lie behind them. Henri Bǰoint compares the descriptive approach of English lexicography with its more prescriptive American counterpart, and contrasts both with the lexicography of France. Computers have transformed the way dictionaries are produced and presented. Yet, as the author shows, many aspects of lexicography have hardly changed over the centuries: the challenge of distinguishing a word's senses, for example, and of tracing the history of its forms and uses. Problems equally remain: how to treat taboo-words and insults is as difficult as it ever was and the nature of meaning is subject still to fierce debate.--From publisher description.
    Notes
    "An earlier and much shorter version of this book was published by Oxford University Press in 1994 as Tradition and Innovation in Modern English Dictionaries and reissued in paperback in 2000 as Modern Lexicography: An Introduction" -- verso t.p.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (p. [387]-441) and index.
    Contents
    • Dictionaries and the dictionary
    • A brief history of English dictionaries
    • The British tradition of the scholarly dictionary
    • The American tradition of the utility dictionary
    • A new tradition : the dictionary for foreign students
    • English dictionaries of the twentieth century : the cultural, the functional, and the scientific
    • The study of dictionary users and uses
    • Lexicography and linguistics
    • Computers and corpora in lexicography
    • A theory of lexicography?
    ISBN
    • 9780198299677 ((hardcover))
    • 0198299672 ((hardcover))
    LCCN
    2010278542
    OCLC
    437305844
    Statement on language in description
    Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...
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