International Symponum on Linguistic & Specialist Dictionaries: Research Papers, and: The Penguin Dictionary of American English Usage and Style, and: Lexicology, Semantics and Lexicography, and: The Way We Talk Now: Commentaries on Language and Culture (review)

Short Reviews International Symponum on Linguistic & Specialist Dictionaries: Research Papers. 2000. Ed. Mohamed H. Heliel and others. Kuwait: University of Kuwait. A s ,his volume contains papers and abstracts of papers of the Symposium on Linguistic and Specialist Dictionaries that was organized by Mohamed H. Heliel in Kuwait in 1999. Four papers were published in extenso , in English. The first of these is Reinhard Hartmann's "Dictionary typology and pedagogical lexicography" (29-48) . This article argues that lexicography consists of two main branches, namely (1) dictionary research, i.e., the theory, which itself consists of history, typology, criticism, and use of dictionaries, and (2) dictionary making, i.e., the practice, which includes fieldwork, description, and presentation. It also compares several "learners' " dictionaries, some of them "bilingual" or "multilingual," depending on the actual comparison dictionaries . This classification is inspired by Wiegand's Wörterbuchforschung (1998; reviewed in Dictionaries 21 [2000]: 151-159). However, Wiegand's ideas need space — a short article must allow some reductions which produce asymmetries , if not lacunae. The second paper is Hashan Al-Ajmi's "The role of introductory matter in a bilingual dictionary" (49-64) . An empirical study shows that most introductions explain why a dictionary is compiled and describes its sources. It is good to remind readers of that; however a section on "how to use this dictionary," which is the other usual topic of introductions, would be quite important, as well, and one would like to see this aspect also discussed. The third paper, by Igor Burkhanov, "Fields, frames, and schémas in ideography" (65-85) discusses how some modern trends in semantics (Fillmore's frames, in particular) can be useful in lexicography. Finally, Mohamed H. Heliel's "Linguistic terms and their English/Arabic Dictionaries" (87-95) compares four Arabic dictionaries, bilingual with English or trilingual with English and French, analyzed as to the accuracy, clarity, and completeness of their treatment of linguistic and lexicographic terms. It also compares the Arabic equivalents offered by four Arabic dictionaries for English terms. The article concludes Arabic lexicography still tolerates too many synonyms and thus lacks a necessary unity, one of the greatest detriments of terminology in any language . This probably is the best article in the collection, because it offers the most new and interesting information. Other papers are represented only by their English summaries. George Mitri Abd-El Mesih writes about "General monolingual dictionaries," which ends with a discussion of the future Arabic monolingual dictionary. The Dictionaries:Journal ofthe Dictionary Soaety ofNorth America 22 (2001) Short Reviews227 main problem of future Arabic lexicography, namely the fate of diglossia, is not addressed, or only obliquely. Yacoub Al-Sarrah contributes "The role of the Arab Centre for Medical Literature (ACML) in the preparation of specialized medical dictionaries," an interesting remark on Arabic technical terms as explained simply by their Latin counterparts. Ahmad Abdel Khaliq's paper is entitled "The lexicon ofArabic personality-relevant terms" and presents an explanation of a set of psychological terms as used in Arabic dictionaries. Mamdouh Khusara's "Arabized and foreign words in specialized dictionaries" outlines principles for creating modern Arab terminology. Abd al-Latif Abid contributes "Scientific linguistic heritage and modern Arabic specialized dictionaries ," which discusses the importance of Arabization of terminology, particularly by reviving old Arabic terms. Ibrahim Bin Murad writes about "Definition problems in modern general dictionaries"; here the definitions offered by the Petit Robert and by COBUILD are compared with diose one finds in alMu 'jam al-Wasit's Dictionary ofthe Language Academy. It is a pity that more complete bibliographical information is not given about this work; as it is, I tried in vain to locate the book. Saad Masluh's "Arabic prepositional verbs from a lexicographical perspective" deals with the analysis of such items as they modify meaning. Wafaa Kamel's article, "Some aspects of change in the morphological forms of contemporary Arabic," considers some problems of contemporary usage. Mahmoud Sulaiman Yakut's "Arabic linguistic treatises in the light of semantic field theory," explains how the theory of linguistic fields can be useful in compiling a thematic, specialized dictionary. The rest of the book contains the Arabic versions of the papers summarized . No symposium can be completely...