Lexicography Basic Principles

Lexicographer - a compiler or writer of a dictionary; a student of the lexical component of language, concerned with what words are, what they mean, how the vocabulary of a language is structured, how speakers of the language use and understand the words, how the words evolved, and what relationships exist between words. This is the information a lexicographer compiles when creating a dictionary. So, a lexicographer is a linguist whose specific expertise is in writing dictionaries.A high lexicographic information cost, on the other hand, means that the users of a dictionary find it difficult to access and comprehend the information they were looking for. Specialized lexicographers compile, organize, and edit dictionaries specific to a wide variety of purposes and professions.


Typology - classification according to general type; Computer models are used in biology, chemistry, and physics, as well as economics and psychology. The typology of computer models categorizes them based on a set of four variables. Are they stochastic or deterministic? steady-state or dynamic? continuous or discrete? local or distributed? Computer simulations in the form of 3D models are used in health care, the sciences, architecture, and most popularly, in motion pictures, computer games, and video games. For this reason, both David and Judith were considered antecedents of Christ in the kind of Biblical analysis called typology, where Old Testament events bear some relation to the New Testament’s narrative of salvation.


Grammatical - of or pertaining to grammar,the grammatic structure of a sentence, grammatical rules, grammatical gender. Languages of the Caucasian family often have four genders - feminine, masculine, animate, and inanimate. Again, non-native speakers often find these grammatical distinctions unexpected; heavenly bodies and plants may be considered "animate" in some languages. The speaker may be referring to himself or herself, directly to another person, or about another person. The grammatical person normally affects the form of verb used in a sentence. Many people can better understand what a grammatical person is by referring to the similar concept introduced in literature, which is known as a point of view.


Morpheme - minimal meaningful language unit; it cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units. For example, the letter “s” in the word “dogs” is a bound morpheme because it does not have any semantic meaning without the free morpheme “dog.” In the English language, morphemes may also be classified into the following types: root, stem, or affix. Logograms are sometimes pictograms, visually related to the word or morpheme they represent, and sometimes ideograms, representing more abstract ideas.


Linguist - a specialist in linguistics. Some linguists choose to work in the world of computer and software design, devising speech recognition programs or applying the precepts of linguistics to search engine efficiency. Governments frequently offer linguist jobs either in the diplomatic realms or intelligence services. As of 2009, particularly in the United States, there were many government career possibilities for those fluent in Middle Eastern languages and dialects. There is often some distinction made between linguists themselves, but in the ordinary sense of explanation a linguist is any person who is highly educated in both the practical and theoretical elements of one or more given language. There are both associations and professional organizations where a linguist may affiliate with other specialists who share their interests. One such organization is the Chartered Institute of Linguists, which publishes their own magazine titled The Linguist.


Semantic Change - Due to the fact that it is more language-based than procedural memory, declarative memory is also more easily forgotten unless it is consistently used. There are two basic subtypes of declarative memory: semantic and episodic. Semantic memory is related to the understanding of meanings or concepts, and is generally not personally relevant. Semantic dementia was first described by Arnold Pick in 1904, but is not caused by Pick's disease as often as the other two forms of frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Semantic dementia is characterized by an inability of the patient to remember the meanings of words and visual cues.


Inflection - a change in the form of a word (usually by adding a suffix) to indicate a change in its grammatical function. One theory concerning foreign accent syndrome is that the sufferer is not actually speaking in a foreign accent at all, but the listener assigns one based on inflections and emphasis. Several Americans diagnosed with foreign accent syndrome are said to speak in a British accent, even though they have never visited the United Kingdom and have been raised in areas with strong native accents, such as New York. As well, each individual who reports or writes the news has to work hard to guard against his or her own opinions. These opinions can become media bias simply through word choice or inflections and tone of voice when delivering news. One form of media bias is failure to include varied points of view on a story.


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Applied Linguistics: Lexicography

Perhaps the simplest explanation of lexicography is that it is a scholarly discipline that involves compiling, writing, or editing dictionaries. Lexicography is widely considered an independent scholarly discipline, though it is a subfield within linguistics.


Many consider lexicography to be divided into two related areas. The act of writing, or editing dictionaries is known as Practical Lexicography. The analysis or description of the vocabulary of a particular language, and the meaning that links certain words to others in a dictionary, is known as Theoretical Lexicography. Theoretical Lexicography is particularly concerned with developing theories regarding the structural and semantic relationships among words in the dictionary. Since it involves theoretical analysis of the lexicon, Theoretical Lexicography is also known as Metalexicography.


In order to better understand lexicography, it may help to know what a lexicon is. Lexicon is a term used in linguistics to indicate the archive of lexemes. Lexemes are abstract, minimal units in a language that link related forms of a word together. For example, the words fly, flight, flew, flying, and so on, are all morphologic variations of the lexeme fly. Fly is the lexeme because it is the base from which these word variations arise.

Applied Linguistics: Lexis

Lexis – this linguistic category falls under word construction and meaning and generally defined as the total word stock and usage that depends on choice and appropriateness. The presence of multi-word lexical items in the lexis is what differentiates it from vocabulary - the collection of only single words.

Example:

traffic light, take care of, by the way and don't count your chickens before they hatch. 

Lexis means the vocabulary of a language as opposed to other aspects such as the grammar of the text. Lexis is clearly an important aspect of creating a suitable style or register (i.e. when choosing language and language features to suit a particular genre, context, audience and purpose).

Lexis and semantics are very close and often used interchangeably.

Lexical cohesion occurs when words have an affinity for each other as in collocations.Many words are habitually put together - or collocated. A collocation is any habitually linked group of words - a kind of lexical partnership, e.g. 'fish and chips', 'salt and pepper', 'don't mention it', 'it's nothing...', 'Oh well!', 'bangers and mash'... and so on.


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