Theoretical Lexicography and Its Relation to Dictionary-making

POSITION PAPERS Theoretical Lexicography and Its Relation to Dictionary-making1 B. T. S. Atkins 1. Introduction Does theoretical lexicography exist? If this forum is to discuss its nature, we must at least grant it the benefit of the doubt, although its counterpart, practical lexicography, has a tautological ring to it. I propose here to interpret the term theoretical lexicography in the very general sense of "a body of theory related to lexicography," and, drawing inspiration from the title of Landau (1984), to define lexicography as "the art and craft of dictionary-making." A more traditional definition of this latter term is to be found in the 1990 Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD): "the compiling of dictionaries ." That plural form is very important. Abstract terms like lexicography and generic concepts like the dictionary form a smoke screen between theoretical discussions and the real, hard world of dictionary-making. What I have to say here concerns making dictionaries , not making "the dictionary." Dictionaries may be considered from the point of view of form or of content, and both are relevant to this discussion. First, form: a dictionary (to quote the COD again) is "a book that lists . . . and explains the words of a language. ..." Much is written nowadays in artificial intelligence circles about electronic dictionaries, but almost the whole of dictionary production still consists of books—and I know no publisher who sees an imminent profitable market for custom-built electronic dictionaries. The electronic dictionaries that exist today all started life as books, with the tiny exception of lexicons built expresslyfor a computer. To my knowledge, apart from the Japanese EDR Electronic Dictionaries, none of these is even as big as a small pocket dictionary. Books are the focus of professional lexicography, Theoretical Lexicography and Its Relation to Dictionary-making and the dictionaries discussed, reviewed, praised, or criticized are books. Theoretical lexicography must be relevant to books. Second, content: along this axis, there are two main types. The first is the scholarly and historical dictionary, a work often with few length constraints, and sometimes little pressure to complete within a specific time period—but also with a tendency to run out of money around letter C, or take 50 years to get there. The second type is the trade dictionary, a product created to be sold in the marketplace . I am principally concerned here with this type of dictionary, partly because all my experience lies in this area,2 and partly because once again these are the dictionaries on which scholars traditionally focus their attention. A trade dictionary, as the name implies, is a commercial object. Ifit is to be ofany real value today (and not simply in some future when the computerized dictionary is commonplace), then theoretical lexicography must be relevant to books created by a publishing house to sell the product in a competitive market. The theory of dictionary-making is, however, too vast a canvas for this forum. Although theoretical lexicography is certainly not synonymous with lexicology (the study of the lexicon), nor with its daughter science lexical semantics (the study of word meaning), a large proportion of the decisions made by the lexicographer are linguistic decisions, and so we should consider particularly, but not exclusively, the contribution of theoretical linguistics to theoretical lexicography, and hence the role of the theoretical linguist in dictionary-making. Many people in contemporary lexicography deal with theoretical linguists by keeping their heads down below the barricades and getting on with writing dictionary entries. Sometimes an academic title whistles past, like "What Linguists Might Contribute to Dictionary-making If They Could Get Their Act Together" (McCawley 1986); or a plaintive sentence crashes onto one's desk, such as "Lexicography has no theoretical foundations, and even the best lexicographers , when pressed, can never explain what they are doing, or why" (Wierzbicka 1985, 5). I am happy to put the case for the practical lexicographers, although Dr. Johnson has already done so far better than I could ever do. Discerning linguists in search of a raison d'être will find in his "Plan of a Dictionary," addressed to Lord Chesterfield in 1747, many suggestions about what they might contribute to dictionary-making if only they "could get...