Computational Linguistics and Lexicography: English Monolingual General Purpose Doctionaries Freely Available on the Internet

INTRODUCTION 6
nicate by sharing information.” (Berners-Lee, 1998). In a few years,
WWW grew into a powerful global information system based on the In-
ternet and on the hypertexts: “Users can explore them freely, following
personal and non-sequential schemes, and they can even modify the
documents: users almost become co-authors” (Salerno, 2001). Today,
WWW can contain multimedia information which gives us the possi-
bility to listen to sound, and to watch static and dynamic images. But
“the whole world of multimedia information can only be structured,
indexed and navigated through language” (Uszkoreit, 2000). First of
all, the World Wide Web is a web of words, and human language is its
fabric; it is therefore especially interesting for linguists:
A linguist can’t help but be impressed by the Internet. It’s
an extraordinarily diverse medium, holding a mirror up to
so many sides of our linguistic nature. The World Wide Web,
in particular, offers a home to virtually all the styles which
have so far developed in the written language. . . . The Web
is truly part of a new linguistic medium, more dynamic than
traditional writing, and more permanent than traditional
speech. It’s often been said the Internet is a revolution - yes,
indeed, but it’s also a linguistic revolution. (Crystal, 2002)
Statistically, the most common language on the Internet is English4:
it is sometimes even called ’Netglish’, or ’Netspeak’ (Crystal, 2001a, p.
28). Konrad Lischka maintains that “80 Prozent der Seiten im Internet
in Englisch geschrieben sind”5 (Lischka, 2001). English is sometimes
called the Lingua Franca of the Internet: Lingua Franca was a pidgin
language of traders and merchants, spoken from the Middle Ages until
the 19th century around the Mediterranean (Corre, 2003). Also Latin
used to have the status of a Lingua Franca since the period of the Ro-
man Empire until the Renaissance, and it is still extensively used in
medicine and law. “Latin became an international language through-
out the Roman Empire, but this was not because the Romans were
more numerous than the peoples they subjugated. They were simply
more powerful” (Crystal, 1997, p. 5).
Why is English the global language, and not some other?
There are two answers to the question: one is geographical-
historical; the other is socio-cultural. (Crystal, 1997, p. 24)
4See the Global Internet Statistics (by language) http://www.glreach.com/
globstats/index.php3
5Eighty percent or web pages are written in English.
6
INTRODUCTION 7
Also English, as Latin, “became a world language primarily through
imperialist conquest” (Horvath, 1997). The colonial expansion and de-
velopment caused English to become a semi-official language also in
the newly independent countries (Crystal, 1997, p. 24). Moreover, the
political life, business, safety, communication, entertainment, media,
and education are all based on the culture of the English-speaking
countries. “If anything were to disestablish the military or economic
power of the USA, there would be inevitable consequences for the global
status of the language” (Crystal, 1997, p. 117). Yukka Korpela (1995)
agrees on this: “The reason for the position of English are the impe-
rialism and economical and political importance of English-speaking
countries”.
Nevertheless, the English language is “extremely unsuitable for in-
ternational communication” (Korpela, 1995): in fact, there is no stan-
dard English valid for everyone, but many regional varieties (British,
American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South Africa, Caribbean,
South Asia). However, there are no alternatives to using English in in-
ternational contacts; in fact, all attempts to introduce constructed lan-
guages such as Esperanto in the communication between people with
different native languages have failed, and machine translation has
not yet reached sufficient level of reliability to provide for the interna-
tional communication needs. In the near future, English will surely
hold its position of a world language: it has achieved global status be-
cause its special role is recognized in every country (Crystal, 1997, p.
2). “Economists have now formulated the approximate value of English
in the global economy at nearly $8 billion dollars” (Dean, 2002).
Although the WWW is becoming more and more multilingual, and
other languages gain ground continuously, being able to communicate
in English still remains the necessary condition to access the bulk of
information on the Internet. For this reason, we have chosen English
dictionaries as the subject of this thesis. There are many valuable free
resources on the Internet, which can nowadays be widely exploited, ow-
ing to the availability of fast flat rate connections. Unfortunately, as we
have ascertained, there is little literature which would treat online dic-
tionaries, and digital dictionaries in general, as a subject. In fact, also
Howard Jackson in his recent book (Jackson, 2002, p. 73) complained
about this shortage: “Material on electronic dictionaries is still sparse”.
With this thesis we want to contribute to fill this gap by gathering
up-to-date knowledge in the fields of lexicography and computational
linguistics, organizing and summarizing it, and above all by classifying
and evaluating the dictionaries found online during the long phase of a
7
INTRODUCTION 8
meticulous Internet research. The focus will be on monolingual general
purpose dictionaries because of their importance for the international
community. British Council has estimated that there are about 1 bil-
lion people in the world who want to learn English (Landau, 2001, p.
176); many of these people live in the developing countries, and will
remain at their homes while studying English. Using the World Wide
Web will be their best opportunity to learn the global language with
the goal to acquire knowledge, and improve the life conditions in their
homelands. The free availability of valuable reference works will be an
aid of essential importance: in fact, free exchange of knowledge was
the the fundamental idea Tim Berners-Lee (2000) had in mind when
he invented the World Wide Web.
Although computers today give a priceless support to dictionary
making, the meticulous work of lexicographers remains the fundamen-
tal basis for the whole enterprise. In the first chapter we will therefore
describe main principles of lexicography, pay attention to the work of
lexicographers, and question the impact of lexicography on society. We
will define the object of our examination as opposed to similar refer-
ence works such as lexicon and encyclopedia, and describe the process
of compilation of a dictionary which should always be based on the
needs of its intended users either native speakers or learners.
The second chapter will be devoted to the development of English
and American lexicography starting from its bilingual beginnings: first
rudimental word lists were transcriptions of English glosses written on
margins in Latin books being translated by monks in Christian monas-
teries. The translators imported many Latin words into English which
were not understood by ordinary people who started reading books in
Renaissance: the first printed dictionaries contained explanation of
those “hard words”. Samuel Johnson was the first lexicographer who
based his famous dictionary on evidence of usage from quotations he
collected. Noah Webster, the first American lexicographer, tried to pro-
mote a spelling reform in order to create a distinguished American va-
riety of language as a confirmation of the independence from Britain.
James Murray’s Oxford English Dictionary represents a milestone in
the English lexicography, it was the first dictionary based on historical
principle which tried to trace history of the English language to its very
origins. No other dictionary has ever reached its extent.
6Also mentioned by Mr Tim Renton in The United Kingdom Parliament
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199596/
cmhansrd/vo960501/debtext/60501-05.htm
8
INTRODUCTION 9
In the third chapter we will draw attention to the general struc-
ture of monolingual dictionaries. Macrostructure of a printed dictio-
nary refers to its physical appearance, and to how the pages in the
book are used: besides the main section with the alphabetical list of
carefully selected headwords there are “front matter” which contains
the presentation of the dictionary, and “back matter” with additional
information. Microstructure refers to the organization of the informa-
tion within the entries: most important is the definition which aims
at describing the meaning of the headword, or of its various senses.
Illustrative examples complete the definition by showing the usage of
the word. The other information on the headword includes spelling,
pronunciation, grammar, usage, and etymology.
The fourth chapter will describe the overall impact of the computer
on the dictionary making. The enormous capacity of the computer stor-
age, and the speed of elaboration allow lexicographers to create large
corpora of texts: extrapolating concordances from the corpus linguistic
enables them to reach high precision in describing the different senses
of words, and to add real examples to complete the definition. Since the
publication of the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary (Sinclair, 1995),
frequency became the main criterion for ordering the different senses
within the entries, especially in learner’s (ESL or EFL) dictionaries.
Not only English is called Lingua Franca of the Internet, but also XML,
the Extensible Markup Language has gained such status: it has be-
come the new standard for tagging documents and databases; this will
allow different system to communicate with each other easily. XHTML
is its latest development: it adds extensibility to the descriptive power
of HTML.
In the fifth chapter we will delineate the main features of an online
electronic dictionary: it is not a physical object like a printed dictionary
or a CD-ROM, but a dynamic repository of knowledge, each time dif-
ferent. The macrostructure of an online dictionary consists of the ways
of accessing the information either through information retrieval (IR),
or by hypertext browsing. Alphabetical order is no longer important in
an electronic dictionary, and the information can be quickly accessed
whatever the original order of data. The possibility to link elements
of the dictionary with each other in any way makes it possible to add
functionalities of a thesaurus to the dictionary, and so create unique
works that could not exist in another form. Also the possibility to add
sound and video is typical of the electronic medium.
In the sixth chapter we will outline all the types of online dictionar-
ies which were found in a careful Internet research over an extended
9
INTRODUCTION 10
period of time. Besides monolingual general purpose dictionaries there
are many other types of reference works available online: thesauri,
dictionaries dedicated to special aspects of language, and term banks
may also exist in a printed form, but multilingual dictionaries, meta-
dictionaries, language portals, and semantic networks are only feasible
in electronic form. Due to the instability of the WWW it is impossible to
foresee whether the dictionaries found now will still be available in the
future. Terminology banks for specialist subjects, very useful notably
for translation, probably have the best prospects for future develop-
ment.
Finally, the seventh chapter is dedicated to the evaluation of ma-
jor free English monolingual general purpose dictionaries found on the
Web. Before the analysis itself, parameters will be specified, by which
the analysis will be conducted; these parameters are based on a valida-
tion methodology used in the NLP research, but they will be adapted
to our scope, and to the size of the present thesis. First, the digitized
versions of printed dictionaries will be reviewed, followed by the orig-
inal electronic dictionaries. Eventually, the advantages and disadvan-
tages of online dictionaries will be summed up, and commercial product
compared to free ones by devoting attention to issues of copyright and
production costs.
To conclude, we will summarize the results achieved by this thesis,
and suggest further possibilities of development of online dictionaries.
Professor Crystal has already done that:
Access to large machine-dictionaries will become routine in
offices and homes. One day, we shall not look up a word in
a dictionary on a shelf but ask our home computer for the
information we need. That day is not far off. (Crystal, 1987,
p. 111)
10
Chapter 1
Lexicography
1.1 The Art and Craft of Dictionary Mak-
ing
Lexicography is the writing or compilation of a lexicon or
dictionary; ’the art or practice of writing dictionaries’. Ox-
ford English Dictionary (Murray and Bradley, 1961, vol. VI,
p. 233)
Lexicography not only means gathering data, selecting headwords, writ-
ing definitions, and publishing the final product, but it also includes
studies in history, theory, methodology and typology of dictionaries. It
is closely connected with all the disciplines which have language as
their subject such as linguistics, semantics, lexicology, grammar, stylis-
tics. (Devi, 2003)
John Algeo in Hausmann et al. (1989–1991, p. 29) pointed out that
dictionaries in the English speaking world have always been consid-
ered a kind of a sacred book; people have looked at them with rever-
ence. Dictionary is not only a respected authority in matters of lan-
guage, and a model of linguistic and social behaviour, but also a sym-
bol for the unity of language. Due to multiplicity of source languages
from which the English language derived, it is impossible to try and
maintain the ’purity’ of English, like the French and the Italians tried
with their languages, because there has never been a ’pure’ English
language, unaffected by any foreign influence. While in France and
in Italy academies were established to provide guidance and author-
ity in linguistic questions, English speakers sought it in dictionaries.
Many attempts have been done to found an English Academy (Monroe,
11
LEXICOGRAPHY 12
1910), but this goal has never been achieved. Allen Walker Read (1938)
affirmed that it was due to political and social factors.
Vocabulary of a language is constantly changing (Bailey, 1987, p.
24). For this reason, the purpose of the first English dictionaries was
to ’fix a standard’. They aimed at being prescriptive: what the dictio-
nary said should have been the way people use the language. This was
a difficult task for a language like English, spoken in many parts of
the world. Consequently, this concept has been generally abandoned.
Modern dictionaries, instead, tend to be more descriptive: speakers
create the language, and dictionaries should reflect the usage in their
description of the lexis, and try to record the changes that the language
undergoes. They register either new words from other languages that
continuously enter English (loanwords), or the changes in form or uses
of existing words. Einar Haugen (1950) discussed in detail kinds of
borrowing and the terminology.
Clarence L. Barnhart underlines that “the inclusion of the latest
words and meanings is one of the important features of commercial
or popular dictionaries. ’Newness’ appeals to buyers of dictionaries
and helps their sale” (Barnhart, 1978, p. 98). Most of the changes
are in specialized areas where existing words are employed to describe
new concepts. Typically, the Information Technology has introduced
many new senses of common words such as ’mouse’, ’bug’, ’desktop’,
’folder’, ’language’, ’server’, ’client’, etc. Even ’ferret’ and ’feather’ are
computer-specific terms.1 John and Adele Algeo list many of those new
terms, and give explanation on their origins (Algeo and Algeo, 1996).
Also Clarence L. Barnhart (1970) and Michael A. Covington (1981) de-
scribed the impact of technology on the vocabulary of English.
Although dictionaries no longer establish a standard, the responsi-
bility of dictionary makers is great. The product of their effort is going
to strongly influence the behaviour of many users, especially learners.
“Lexicography is one of the few areas in which linguistic activity has
an immediate impact on many people” (Zgusta and Farina, 1988, In-
troduction). For instance, the selection of a certain part of the whole
vocabulary2 to be treated expresses a publisher’s policy, and putting
notes on usage of words determines the user’s attitude towards situ-
ations and towards other users. The authority of dictionaries should
imply responsibility for the current and future state of language, and
1See IT-specific encyclopedia Whatis? http://whatis.techtarget.com
2For the answer to the question “How many words are there in the English
language?” see Ask Oxford http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/
aboutwords/numberwords?view=uk.
12
LEXICOGRAPHY 13
of society.
Dictionaries reflect the cultural background of their creators. This
cannot be avoided because lexicographers do not work in a social vac-
uum, and have to base their description of the world on their own
knowledge of it. People’s world view is always strongly affected by their
experience in life, on which the natural and social environment has an
intense influence. Changes in society have effects also on the vocabu-
lary of the language, and a dictionary should record faithfully the state
of the language at a certain point of time.
Standard-descriptive dictionaries can be characterised as de-
scriptive dictionaries of the standard national language as
it is used at the point of time when the dictionary is being
compiled, and to a degree also as it is expected to be used
for some time after the publication of the dictionary. (Zgusta
et al., 1971, p. 210)
1.2 Lexicographers
Samuel Johnson (2003) in 1755 defined lexicographer as “a harmless
drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the
signification of words”. Generally speaking, a lexicographer is a person
whose job is to write dictionaries. Yet, this no longer involves a soli-
tary life among slips of paper of quotations, and authoring the whole
dictionary. Nowadays, lexicographers work in teams (Hausmann et al.,
1989–1991, p. 92), together with specialists from other fields who help
them write more exact definitions. Lexicographers often specialize in
one of the activities of dictionary making such as etymology or pho-
netics. Normally, publishing houses organize their own training to
transmit to lexicographers the philosophy of the house and its style.
Rigorous editorial checking of the definitions compiled is the norm.
According to Howard Jackson (2002) lexicographer’s main charac-
teristic is his or her feeling for the language, and a capacity of writing
well and accurately. They need to have analytical mind. A wide gen-
eral knowledge, and possibly experience of life, are useful. These days,
also the ability of using computers adequately is essential. In addition,
lexicographers need a particular social feeling: they are to decide what
kind of information will be included in the finished work which many
people will buy and use in their everyday life. They need to link linguis-
tic theories to the actual needs of final users, and their expectations of
13
LEXICOGRAPHY 14
authoritative data.
1.3 What is a Dictionary?
Dictionary is a book which presents in alphabetical order the
words of our language, with information as to their spelling,
pronunciation, meaning and etymology. (Hulbert, 1968, p.
11)
Dictionaries are reference books that give information about words, in
the sense of word as “any uninterrupted sequence of graphemes that
is commonly felt to correspond to a concept” (Béjoint, 1994, pp. 17-18)
There is a significant difference between the term dictionary, intended
as a list of words usually presented in alphabetical order, and the term
lexicon in the cognitive science sense of the word, intended as the in-
ternalised vocabulary of a native speaker, independent of the order in
which the words have been introduced. Victoria A. Fromkin (1987)
offers an explanation of the organisation and structure of the mental
lexicon based on observation of dyslexic patients: the lexicon consists
of phonological, semantic and orthographic sub-lexicons which need to
interact in order to produce and comprehend speech. A dictionary can
only contain a part of this lexicon, but everyone writing a dictionary
must take the native speaker’s lexicon of a language into account. “The
quality of a dictionary can be judged in terms of how closely its organi-
zation mirrors the organization of the mental lexicon.” (Béjoint, 1994,
p. 3).
There is also a substantial difference between dictionary and en-
cyclopedia. It is often said that “dictionaries are about words, ency-
clopedias are about things” (Landau, 2001). Dictionaries deal with
meanings of words, adding notes on pronunciation, usage, etymology,
grammar. Encyclopedias not only describe the meaning of a headword
(always a noun), but also explain many aspects of the whole subject.
Yet, it is difficult to avoid some encyclopedic information in dictionar-
ies. Richard W. Bailey believes that “the distinction between ’lexical’
and ’encyclopedic’ information is an artificial one; even the dictionary
makers who divide one kind of information from the other in their daily
work do not always agree where to draw the line” (Bailey, 1987). Cer-
tainly, dictionaries are reference works created for practical use. There-
fore, the main goal of a dictionary is to be useful to final consumers, and
what they often need is a more detailed description of things, a graph-
14
LEXICOGRAPHY 15
ical or pictorial representation of an object etc. Consequently, encyclo-
pedic information within a dictionary is fully justified. We now often
speak of ’encyclopedic dictionaries’, especially when referred to Amer-
ican dictionaries. They “give incidental descriptive information about
the referent beyond what is needed to define the term” (Hausmann
et al., 1989–1991, p. 2004), or include supplements with a variety of
non-lexical information.
A dictionary differs from a grammar book, too. A grammar book
describes the general rules of the language which are valid in all situa-
tions. A dictionary, instead, describes the usage in concrete situations,
in a context, using real examples to describe meanings of headwords.
In principle, a grammar book has a running text, not entries arranged
alphabetically.
1.4 Dictionary Users
The social role of the intended users, whether they are laymen, learn-
ers or specialists, is essential for the methodological decisions of dic-
tionary makers. While defining words, lexicographers always take for
granted some knowledge of the cultural environment in which the dic-
tionary is being created. If they presume the readers are not familiar
with a concept, they shall define it more deeply. This aspect is espe-
cially complicated in ESL dictionaries as the users will come from many
different cultural communities. Virginia F. Allen (1969) said that dic-
tionaries do not teach the meanings which depend on cultural context.
This is true in many cases such as the one cited by Allen: ’sat for’ and
’sat for by’ means nothing to who did not grow up in a community in
which mothers organize this kind of favour exchange. Yet, nowadays
many hidden meanings can be communicated to outsiders by giving
examples of real use of words in a dictionary.
Reinhard Hartmann in Hausmann et al. (1989–1991, p. 104) speaks
of ’needs analysis’ : analyzing user needs can give dictionary makers
hints on what the users will use the product for. As a result of analyzing
user questionnaires, diaries, or directly observing their behaviour, was
demonstrated that the main reason for consulting a dictionary usu-
ally is looking up the meaning of an unknown word. Native speakers
very often check spelling of words when they are in doubt. Learners,
instead, are interested also in pronunciation, grammar and syntactic
patterns, in usage, and in collocations.
Accessibility, i.e. how easily users get to the information searched
15
LEXICOGRAPHY 16
for, is an important aspect of dictionary making, vital also for selling
the end product. An easily accessible dictionary enables users to be
successful in looking for information they need. “A user’s success with
a dictionary depends on the product’s suitability for his/her particular
needs” (Hausmann et al., 1989–1991, p. 102). Users must consider a
dictionary ’useful’.
Nevertheless, users necessitate acquiring some reference skills to
be able to use a dictionary successfully (see Walz, 1990a and Walz,
1990b surveys on the use of the dictionary in foreign language classes,
also Scholfield, 2003). it is necessary that they become familiar with
conventions used in the body of the dictionary, abbreviations, organi-
zation of the headword list and of the entries. Many schools now ded-
icate some time to dictionary use, but most of the users do not have
any training (Landau, 2001, p. 26). Because of this, the front matter
which presents the dictionary should be written in a very comprehensi-
ble way, extremely concise, and possibly complete with graphic schemes
and pictures so that a short look at it is enough to start using the dictio-
nary. Obviously, a longer presentation for interested readers should not
be missing. Abbreviations used in metalinguistic explanations should
be reduced to minimum.
1.5 Dictionary Making
“Every dictionary has essentially three stages: planning, writing, and
producing” (Landau, 2001, p. 343). The first stage of planning is very
important, and must be compiled carefully because introducing modifi-
cations in later stages would be very costly and time consuming. Jane
Whitcut in her article in Hausmann et al. (1989–1991, p. 88) pointed
out that first of all must come marketing: it is necessary to decide for
which market the dictionary is going to be designated, for which cate-
gory of users, and what shall be its size.
Based on the intended size of the dictionary, a list of words to be in-
cluded as headwords will be selected. For this task Edward Thorndike’s
system of distribution of dictionary entries by initial letters can be very
useful. He calculated, for each letter of alphabet, how many words in
English start with it, and established that the words in a dictionary
should be distributed proportionally to his estimation (Landau, 2001,
see table on p. 361 ).
Subsequently, sources for definitions will be identified. They will
surely include preexisting dictionaries as a source for checking defini-
16
LEXICOGRAPHY 17
tions, although fraud is quite common in this area of publishing. Edi-
tors must decide whether they will use existing citation files (Landau,
2001, p. 190) and text corpora, or create new raw material for their
purpose. The lexicographic staff will be appointed which often consists
of free lance lexicographers working from their homes, and will involve
also experts who will help with definitions of more technical and spe-
cialized words.
The publishing house then normally edits a style manual for the
dictionary which will describe rules for every aspect of the preparation
of the dictionary. Since each dictionary is a unique product, it will have
its own specific style manual. Budget calculation and scheduling are
not easy tasks as they could be subject to change during the execution
of the lexicographic project; in fact most of the projects are “not finished
in the time and for the money originally planned” (Landau, 2001, p.
347).
At this point the second stage, writing the dictionary, can start. It
usually consists of the first-run defining which will be then submitted
to scrupulous editorial checking. This is the longest stage in the com-
piling of a dictionary, but owing to use of computers, it is becoming
shorter and shorter. Yet, as Sidney I. Landau pointed out, publishers
often overvalue the role of computers, and reduce the editorial staff to
just a few people (Landau, 2001, p. 400). But at the end of the day, it is
people who make the dictionaries, not computers.
The last stage, production of the dictionary, can nowadays be con-
siderably reduced because all the editorial work has been already done
electronically, therefore the finished product is almost ready. Some-
times, the dictionary does not even get printed, but is published on
CD-ROM, or directly on the Internet.
17
Chapter 2
Development of English and
American Lexicography
The vocabulary of English contains words from more sources
than the vocabulary of any other language, as a consequence
of its history and the contacts between its speakers and those
of other languages. (Jackson, 2002, p. 10)
Most of the common words in English regarding everyday life of people
such as familiar relations, names of domestic animals, rural activities
etc. come from Anglo-Saxon, the language of the first invaders of the
British Isles. Some place names come from Old Norse, the language
of Vikings. With the arrival of the Roman Church, Latin became the
language of educated Christian scholars (Jackson, 2002, chapter 4.1).
Monks in monasteries worked on translating religious texts from Latin
into Anglo-Saxon. They used to annotate translations of Latin words
in the body of text or on its margins. The collections of these glosses
became the first rudimentary predecessors of dictionaries. The begin-
nings of the English lexicography were thus bilingual.1
The glosses were later put into alphabetical order, initially accord-
ing to the first letter, and later including also following letters. After
the Norman conquest, many French words were added to the English
vocabulary. During the Renaissance, many Roman authors were trans-
lated into English. When the translators were not able to find a suit-
able expression of a Latin word in English, they simply used the origi-
nal word, adding explanation glosses. Therefore many Latin words en-
tered the English language. Due to frequent travels to Europe, many
1A brief history of the English lexicography in tables can be found on http://
angli02.kgw.tu-berlin.de/lexicography/b_history.html
18
HISTORY 19
words from European vernacular languages were introduced.
Most of the imported words were not known to ordinary people. As
a result, during the Renaissance period, dictionaries of so called “hard
words” (Jackson, 2002, chapter 4.2) started being created. Initially,
only very short definitions or even just synonyms of loanwords and
technical expressions were given. Slowly, also common everyday words
were included into dictionaries.
The most important milestones in the history of English language
lexicography were the following dictionaries:
2.1 Cawdrey’s “A Table Alphabetical” (1604)
Robert Cawdrey is the author of the first monolingual English dictio-
nary which was published in 16042. His list had 2543 headwords, de-
fined mainly just by giving a synonym or a short explanation of the
meaning. The purpose of ’A Table Alphabetical’ was predominantly
didactic. Cawdrey was a school master, and his aim was to aid less
educated people in comprehending the sense of loanwords which were
not yet widely used.
His work is not totally original, but based on some previous indexes
of ’hard words’ (Jackson, 2002, chapter 4.2), on Latin-English dictio-
naries and glosses, and on some didactic texts. His method was very
close to modern lexicography since he was using a standard procedure
in defining and marking the words. “The ’Table’ was the largest dictio-
nary of its type at the time and, when viewed in the full context of Early
Modern English lexicography, it exemplifies the movement from word
lists and glosses to dictionaries which more closely resemble those of
today.” (Siemens, 1994)
2.2 Johnson’s “Dictionary of the English Lan-
guage” ( 1755)
Neither Samuel Johnson did start his famous dictionary from scratch.
As a basis he used Nathaniel Bailey’s ’An Universal Etymological En-
glish Dictionary’ (1721) which was one of the first attempts at a com-
plete historical description of language. David McCracken (1969) de-
2Available on line at http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/ret/
cawdrey/cawdrey0.html
19