Questions

1. What are the main differences between dictionaries and encyclopaedias?

2. Do the encyclopaedic and linguistic dictionaries often overlap? If so, why?

3. What are the most well-known encyclopaedias in English? Share your experience of using them.

4. Make a survey of the criteria according to them linguistic dictionaries may be divided into different types.

5. Classify linguistic dictionaries according to the scope of their word-list.

6. Classify linguistic dictionaries according to the information they provide.

7. How can linguistic dictionaries be divided according to the language of explanations?

8. How do linguistic dictionaries fall into with regard to time?

9. Provide the classification of dictionaries according to the arrangement of the selected lexical units.

Tasks

1. Classify the given dictionaries into two groups: a) encyclopedic dictionaries; b) linguistic dictionaries.

Model: The Concise Oxford Dictionary

The Concise Oxford Dictionary is a linguistic dictionary (group b).

NTC’s Dictionary of American Spelling, The Chambers Book of Facts, The Collins Dictionary of Allusions, The Longman Dictionary of the English Language, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, The Dictionary of Literary Terms, The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Brewer’s Dictionary of 20^th-century Phrase and Fable, The Collins COBUILD Roget’s International Thesaurus, The Merriam-Webster’s Geographical Dictionary, The Cambridge Guide to Fiction in English, The Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms, The Penguin Dictionary of English Grammar, The Cassell Companion to 20^th-century Music, Random House Webster’s Dictionary of American Slang.

2. Compare the beginning of the items in Britannica and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Comment on the differences.

Britannica	LDOCE
a cappella (vocal mus.) a lo divino (Sp. lit.) a posteriori knowledge a posteriori knowledge (philos.) A-ch'eng (Chin.) A-erh-chin Mountains (mts., China) A-kuei (Chin. gen.)	a A & E a- (pref) A-1 A3 A4 A5 AA AAA aard vark aargh

3. Compare the entries NIGHTINGALE from Britannica and Dictionary of Contemporary English. Comment on the differences.

nightingale

any of several small Old World thrushes, belonging to the family Turdidae (order Passeriformes), renowned for their song. The name refers in particular to the Eurasian nightingale (Erithacus, or Luscinia, megarhynchos; see photograph), a brown bird, 16 centimetres (6 ¹/₂ inches) long, with a rufous tail. Its strong and varied song, in which crescendo effects are prominent, is uttered by day or night from perches in shrubbery.

The thrush nightingale, or sprosser (E. luscinia), is a closely related, somewhat more northerly species with slightly darker plumage. Its song lacks the crescendo.

The term nightingale is also applied to other birds with rich songs, such as members of the neotropical nightingale thrush (q.v.) group, the Chinese nightingale (see Leiothrix), and, in the West Indies, the mockingbird (q.v.).

nightingale noun [countable]

a small bird that sings very beautifully, especially at night

4. State which type the given linguistic dictionaries refer to: general – restricted, explanatory – specialized, monolingual – bilingual, diachronic – synchronic.

Model: The Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs

The Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs is a restricted, explanatory, monolingual, synchronic word-book.

1) the Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology; 2) the Penguin Dictionary of English Idioms; 3) the New Oxford Dictionary of English; 4) the Modern English-Russian Dictionary; 5) the Longman Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs; 6) the Longman Language Activator; 7) the English-Russian Dictionary of Linguistics and Semiotics; 8) the English Pronouncing Dictionary; 9) the Longman Business English Dictionary; 10) the New Oxford Thesaurus of English; 11) a Dictionary of Neologisms; 12) the BBI Combinatory Dictionary of English.

Types and common characteristics of learner’s dictionaries