A BLURRED BOUNDARY BETWEEN ENCYCLOPAEDIC AND LINGUSTIC DICTIONARIES

Abstract

In theory encyclopaedic lexicography is opposed to linguistic lexicography. This dichotomy is based on principles of megastructure design, selection of headwords, general outline of a dictionary entry, and construction of definitions. A number of researchers adhere to the opinion that systematization of knowledge about language prevails in linguistic dictionaries and about surrounding world – in encyclopaedias. However, lexicographic practice demonstrates that this rule is often violated.
This paper presents a study of Western European encyclopaedic lexicography and English linguistic lexicography evolution in historical aspect. It also investigates how two types of information (linguistic and encyclopaedic) have been mixed, juxtaposed, or separated with the course of time in the process of dictionary compilation development.
Results show that the difference between encyclopaedia and linguistic dictionary has not always been clear-cut and realized by lexicographers. Encyclopaedias tended to define words both in their connection with extralinguistic reality and as elements of language system, and meanwhile English linguistic lexicography registered headwords of encyclopaedic nature trying to arrange them in accordance with the hierarchy of ideas about the world around us applying encyclopaedic approaches to their semantisation.
Thus knowledge about language (linguistic information) and cognition of the surrounding reality (encyclopaedic information) have not been considered as separate aspects for a long time, but closely got entangled in a lexicographic work.
Modern English linguistic dictionaries are characterized by incorporation of various encyclopaedic information into their mega-, macro-, medio-, and microstructure.