A Survey of Current Works on English and American Lexicography in This Country

The lexicographic school in this country whose acknowledged founder is Academician L. V. Sčerba (1880-1944) proceeds from the assumption that lexicography is a science but not an art or technique of making dictionaries, as many foreign linguists think it to be.

Lexicography has two aspects: scientific (theoretical) and practical (applied). General theoretical problems are inseparable from compiling dictionaries of different types, because it is impossible to bury oneself in empiric work being completely ignorant of lexicography as a science. In 1939 L. V. Sčerba wrote: “… I consider this contemptuous attitude of our skilled linguists towards lexicography to be absolutely wrong …, our linguists have overlooked the fact that this kind of work should be essentially scientific.”

The foundation stone of the general theory of lexicography belongs to L.V. Sčerba (1940). He tries to discuss the main types of dictionaries the nature of a word, the structure of the vocabulary entry, the semantic, grammatical and stylistic characteristics of words in a dictionary, etc..

It should be noted that the most debatable problems of English and American lexicography have been reviewed for a long time in this country; one of the first books in this field belongs to V.D. Arakin (1936). In 1954 O.A. Melnik analysed the principles of compilation of twenty English and American dictionaries of synonyms, including their historical development.

L.P. Stupin in his candidate dissertation (1961) described one of the most outstanding dictionaries – Webster’s Third Dictionary (the choice of words and lexicographic characteristics of main entry words).

A.V. Kunin in his doctoral thesis (1964) alongside with many disputable questions of phraseology discusses the principles of presenting set-phrases.

Z.V. Malakhovsky (1954) gives a detailed analysis of the English Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles.

N.N. Amosova (1968) investigates different types of phraseological dictionaries, principles of selection of idioms and their presentation.

Yu.D. Apresyan in his paper on synonyms briefly reviews principles of compilation of the “Dictionary of Synonyms” and gives some valuable remarks concerning general questions of synonymy in lexicography.

Frequency dictionaries, British and American, are being treated in books and papers by P.M. Alekseyev.

L.P. Stupin in his doctoral thesis and numerous books treats the problem of norm in the history of English lexicography (XV-XX c.c.). The author draws the conclusion of inevitable evolution of a big explanatory dictionary from a prescriptive to a registrating type.

Following the principles of Russian School of lexicographers (D.N. Ushakov, L. V. Sčerba, V.V. Vinogradov) A.I. Smirnitsky gave much time and attention to the elaboration of scientific methods in lexicography, particularly bilingual Russian-English lexicography.

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