International Journal of Lexicography - current issue

Australian Aboriginal Words in Dictionaries: A History

Dixon, R. M. W. — 2008-05-26

Over 400 words have been borrowed from the Aboriginal languages of Australia into Australian English, some into other varieties of English and thence into other languages. A chronological account is provided of how English dictionaries have dealt with the commonest loans — kangaroo, boomerang, koala, dingo, wombat and a few more. There is comparison with the way in which loans from American and African languages were treated. Although there were ca 250 distinct indigenous languages in Australia, words taken from them were marked just as ‘Aboriginal’ or ‘native Australian’ until the publication of the second edition of the unabridged Random House Dictionary in 1987, of The Australian National Dictionary in 1988 and of Australian Words in English, their Origin and Meaning in 1990. The paper concludes with a survey of the ways in which other dictionaries have dealt with the newly-made-available etymologies.

Usage Labels in The Royal Dictionary (1699) by Abel Boyer

Cormier, M. C. — 2008-05-26

When Abel Boyer published his Royal Dictionary. In Two Parts. First, French and English. Secondly, English and French in 1699, labelling practices in dictionaries were not yet widespread and, when labels were used, they were not standardized. A review of 17th-century bilingual French-English dictionaries reveals an embryonic practice. Abel Boyer, however, introduced a set of usage labels in his dictionary that appear to be new and relatively well-organized for the time. In his dictionary, Boyer used four types of labels: typographical symbols, abbreviations, a combination of an abbreviation and a typographical symbol, and explicit textual annotations. The typographical symbols and abbreviations used are the same for both the French-English part and the English-French part. Only the textual annotations vary depending on the language. Boyer's labelling system included subject-field labels, stylistic labels, temporal labels, sociolinguistic labels and connotative labels. Was Boyer's labelling system truly innovative? How did Boyer structure his system? What method did he employ in his dictionary to show how readers should use words? For what parts of speech did he provide usage labels? Did he treat both parts of his dictionary in the same way? These are the questions that this paper attempts to answer.

On Contronymy

Karaman, B. I. — 2008-05-26

Contronymy, a phenomenon which has received much attention in recent years, has often been described as sense opposition at the micro-level. By extending current theories on the different types of paradigmatic sense relations of exclusion and opposition (i.e. horizontal relations) which concentrate on issues of contrastive relations, five different types of contronyms can be distinguished, namely contronymy of incompatibility, contronymy of antonymy, contronymy of complementarity, contronymy of conversivity and contronymy of reversivity. This article provides an investigation of this unusual phenomenon by demonstrating each type together with relevant examples. Its lexicographic applications will also be discussed.

Thierry Fontenelle (ed.). Practical Lexicography: A Reader (Oxford Linguistics).

Hartmann, R. — 2008-05-26

Piotr Muldner-Nieckowski. Frazeologia poszerzona: Studium leksykograficzne.

Lew, R. — 2008-05-26

Frantisek Cermak. Frazeologie a idiomatika ceska a obecna. Czech and General Phraseology.

Bozdechova, I. — 2008-05-26

Drude, Sebastian (2004). Worterbuchinterpretation: Integrative Lexikographie am Beispiel des Guarani.

ten Hacken, P. — 2008-05-26

Phillip Louw, Lorna Hiles (eds.) et al. Oxford Afrikaans-Engels/English-Afrikaans Skoolwoordeboek/School Dictionary.

Kotze, E. — 2008-05-26

Publications Received

2008-05-26

EURALEX Newsletter

Bogaards, P. — 2008-05-26