Many dictionaries indicate the different stylistic levels to which the words belong: colloquial, technical, poetical, rhetorical, archaic, familiar, vulgar or slang, and their expressive colouring: emphatic, ironical, diminutive, facetious. This is important, because a mere definition does not show these data. There is always a difference in style between the dictionary word and its definition. The word digs is a slang word but its definition «lodgings» is not. Giving these data modern dictionary-makers strive to indicate the nature of the context in which the word may occur. The problem is also relevant for bilingual dictionaries and is carefully presented in the «New English-Russian Dictionary» edited by I.R. Galperin.

    A third group of lexicographic problems is the problem of definitions in a unilingual dictionary. The explanation of meaning may be achieved by a group of synonyms which together give a fairly general idea; but one synonym is never sufficient for the purpose, because no absolute synonyms exist. Besides, if synonyms are the only type of explanation used, the reader will be placed in a vicious circle of synonymic references, with not a single word actually explained. Definitions serve the purpose much better. These are of two main types. If they are only concerned with words as speech material, the definition is called linguistic. If they are concerned with things for which the words are names, they are termed encyclopedic. American dictionaries are for the most part traditionally encyclopedic, which accounts for so much attention paid to graphic illustration. They furnish their readers with far more information about facts and things than their British counterparts, which are more linguistic and more fundamentally occupied with purely lexical data (as contrasted to r e a 1 i a), with the grammatical properties of words, their components, their stylistic features, etc. Opinions differ upon the optimum proportion of linguistic and encyclopedic material. Very interesting considerations on this subject are due to Alf Sommerfeldt. He thinks that definitions must be based on the fact that the meanings of words render complex notions which may be analyzed     (cf. componential analysis) into several elements rendered by other words. He emphasizes, for instance, that the word pedestrian is more aptly defined as «a person who goes or travels on foot» than as «one who goes or travels on foot». The remark appears valuable, because a definition of this type shows the lexico-grammatical type to which the word belongs and consequently its distribution. It also helps to reveal the system of the vocabulary. Much too often, however, one sees in dictionaries no attention paid to the difference in distribution between the defined and the defining word.

    The meaning of the word may be also explained by examples, i.e. contextually. The term and its definition are here fused. For example, diagonal is explained by the following context where only this term can occur: A square has two diagonals, and each of them divides the square into two right-angled isosceles triangles. Very often this type can be changed into a standard form, i.e. A diagonal is one of the two lines..., etc.

    One more problem is the problem of whether all entries should be defined or whether it is possible to have the so-called «run-ons» for derivative words in which the root-form is readily recognized (such as absolutely or resolutely). In fact, whereas resolutely may be conveniently given as a -ly run-on after resolute, there is a meaning problem for absolutely. One must take into consideration that in colloquial speech absolutely means «quite so», «yes» which cannot be deduced from the meaning of the corresponding adjective [16, 57].

    1.8 Prescription and description of dictionaries

 

    Lexicographers apply two basic philosophies to the defining of words: prescriptive or descriptive. Noah Webster, intent on forging a distinct identity for the American language, altered spellings and accentuated differences in meaning and pronunciation of some words. This is why American English now uses the spelling color while the rest of the English-speaking world prefers colour. Large 20^th century dictionaries such as the OED and Webster's Third are descriptive, and attempt to describe the actual use of words.

    While descriptivists argue that prescriptivism is an unnatural attempt to dictate usage or curtail change, prescriptivists argue that to indiscriminately document «improper» or «inferior» usages sanctions those usages by default and causes language to deteriorate. Although the debate can become very heated, only a small number of controversial words are usually affected. But the softening of usage notations, from the previous edition, for two words, ain't and irregardless, out of over 450,000 in Webster's Third in 1961, was enough to provoke outrage among many with prescriptivist leanings, who branded the dictionary as «permissive».

    The prescriptive/descriptive issue has been given much consideration in modern times. Most dictionaries of English now apply the descriptive method to a word's definition, and then, outside of the definition itself, add information alerting readers to attitudes which may influence their choices on words often considered vulgar, offensive, erroneous, or easily confused. Merriam-Webster is subtle, only adding italicized notations such as, sometimes offensive or nonstand (nonstandard). American Heritage goes further, discussing issues separately in numerous «usage notes». Encarta provides similar notes, but is more prescriptive, offering warnings and admonitions against the use of certain words considered by many to be offensive or illiterate, such as, «an offensive term for...» or «a taboo term meaning...».

    Because of the widespread use of dictionaries, and their acceptance by many as language authorities, their treatment of the language does affect usage to some degree, even the most descriptive dictionaries providing conservative continuity. In the long run, however, the meanings of words in English are primarily determined by usage, and the language is being changed and created every day. As Jorge Luis Borges says in the prologue to «El otro, el mismo»: «It is often forgotten that (dictionaries) are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define. The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature» [17, 45].  

    1.9 Comparison between monolingual and multilingual dictionaries

    Dictionaries are an essential part of learning and education and are a centuries old teaching tool used all over the world in a multitude of different languages. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as «A book dealing with the individual words of a language (or certain specified classes of them), so as to set forth their orthography, synonyms, derivation, and history…». Dictionaries initially began life as topic specific dictionaries and also as bilingual dictionaries (Roman-Latin and also Chinese dictionaries) as early as the 16^th century. So the use of bilingual dictionaries is not a new concept. Over the years, dictionaries also broadened their scope becoming more field-specific, for example, music, medical and scientific dictionaries. Soon, translations from several different languages to another language emerged, resulting in the creation of multilingual or interlingual dictionaries. Indeed, multilingual dictionaries provide a powerful tool for students to enhance their learning of another language.

    Despite the range of dictionary functionalities, the structure of the print dictionary has always been constant, closely following the definition of a dictionary. Being able to search through one dictionary would enable readers to search through all dictionaries in the same way. English dictionaries are all laid out from A-Z (or in some cases A-K and L-Z). To find a word in these dictionaries simply requires the user to search alphabetically to find the entry. Asian language dictionaries, indexed by ideographic characters, may have a slightly different format in that they may order the dictionary via stroke or radical order. In any case, the reader has to manually sift through pages in a set pattern to find their definition or translation. There was no other known way to search for information within a dictionary.

    As computers have grown more powerful and widespread, the opportunity for automated processes and digital storage drew closer. Programmers, developers and lexicographers are now no longer constrained by the conventional format of the dictionary. Students and teachers are also no longer constrained in dictionary searching techniques. All applications that required paper or tape storage could now be located on digital storage medium only a fraction of the size required before. Of course, dictionaries, requiring relatively large amounts of physical storage area and mass, could be stored efficiently digitally. Ideas previously thought unfeasible, such as an electronic dictionary was suddenly a possibility. However, this opened up a whole new set of questions to be answered in terms of storage and information. Problems such as dictionary data storage, multimedia and pictures are all fields that need research in the context dictionary file construction. Different file structures have been used create electronic dictionary files. As new storage formats are used, they open up a whole host of different, new and sometimes unknown methods of information retrieval and representation. Today, there are many incarnations of electronic dictionaries, from portable handheld devices to stand-alone PC-based programs and even World-Wide-Web on-line dictionary systems [18, 11].  
 

   1.10 Modern trends in English lexicography 

    Lexicography is an interdisciplinary, integrated strong subject. Modern lexicography learning from other subjects, especially in modern linguistics on the basis of research results to develop a number of marginal subjects, not only extends the theoretical study the contents of the dictionary for the dictionary compilation practice provides new ideas and methods, but also for lexicographers. The literacy and dictionary compilation techniques put forward higher requirements [19, 124].

    An extension of modern linguistics and the marginalization of linguistics and cross-arts and sciences, no one social science or the natural sciences are inseparable from language of this tool. The same time, research in other disciplines also contributed to the breadth and depth of linguistic research, enrich the academic branch of general linguistics, thus hastened the development of a number of interdisciplinary linguistics. For example, linguistics and cultural anthropology, ethnology, folklore combination has anthropological linguistics, sociology, linguistics and combination has social linguistics, the relationship between language and culture studies produced a combination of culture and linguistics, language studies and human brain study produced a combination of neural linguistics, mathematical ideas and methods used in the linguistic phenomenon to generate a statistical and algebraic linguistics, and so on.

    Modern trends in English lexicography are connected with the appearance and rapid development of such branches of linguistics as corpus (or corpus-based) and computational linguistics [20, 360].

   1.10.1 Corpus-based linguistics in modern lexicography

 

    Corpus linguistics is a methodology in linguistics that involves computer-based empirical analyses (both quantitative and qualitative) of actual patterns of language use by employing electronically available, large collections of naturally occurring spoken and written texts, so-called corpora. Corpus-based and other types of empirical linguistic research have shown that speakers' intuitions oftentimes provide only limited access to the open-ended nature of language, which can cause problems when examining unexpected or infrequent linguistic structures, e.g. as regards lexical co-occurrence patterns, patterns of variation between grammatical constructions, word meaning, or idioms and metaphorical language

    The factors that condition the choice between competing grammatical variants is one topic that features prominently in research and students' projects at Mainz University. While grammar books make us believe that e.g. yet is a trigger of present perfect, we can observe U.S. election campaigns featuring the sentence «Did you vote yet?». While standard reference works used by school teachers advise pupils to use the synthetic comparative -er with monosyllabic adjectives, we observe native speakers to use more apt, more proud rather than prouder, apter in the majority of cases. While the 's-genitive is described as being used with persons while the of-genitive is allegedly to be used with things, linguists who do research on actual language use find a marked discrepancy between what is taught and what is done. Thus, the topic's relevance cannot be stigmatized as an exception or even be marked as incorrect. The issue of variation poses an intriguing challenge for English teachers and researchers. While to some the task of bringing schoolbook knowledge up to scratch with actual language use seems insurmountable, English Linguistics at Mainz University tries to offer ways out of the dilemma.

    Most (advanced) English linguistics classes in Mainz involve at some point students' own collection, processing and analysis of empirical data, often by making use of electronic corpora. In advanced classes in particular, students will be asked to carry out corpus-based projects, sometimes involving replications and extensions of earlier case studies. The Department of English and Linguistics hence offers its students a wide range of computerized corpora comprising British and American English. MACOCO, the Mainz Corpus Collection, is a progressively enhanced source for student research on the correctness, use, historical development, etc. of certain language structures [21, 24].

   

   1.10.2 Computational linguistics in modern lexicography 

    Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and/or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. This modeling is not limited to any particular field of linguistics. Traditionally, computational linguistics was usually performed by computer scientists who had specialized in the application of computers to the processing of a natural language. Computational linguists often work as members of interdisciplinary teams, including linguists (specifically trained in linguistics), language experts (persons with some level of ability in the languages relevant to a given project), and computer scientists.

    In general, computational linguistics draws upon the involvement of linguists, computer scientists, experts in artificial intelligence, mathematicians, logicians, philosophers, cognitive scientists, cognitive psychologists, psycholinguists, anthropologists and neuroscientists, among others [22, 157].  
 

   1.10.3 The potential of an electronic dictionary 

    An electronic dictionary is an electronic reference resource that contains a library of words and their meanings, spellings, and etymologies. Sometimes electronic dictionaries serve a similar function to regular dictionaries; they are searchable and they allow one to find specific bits of information about words. In other cases, they work in the background of other programs, such as word processors, and exist only to ensure proper spelling. When a word typed into a word processor program does not match any of the words stored in the electronic dictionary, the word is marked, so the writer knows to check the word. Some electronic dictionaries can also serve as thesauruses or translation tools.

    One can find an electronic dictionary on many different devices and in many places on the Internet. Some portable, battery-operated devices are made exclusively to serve as electronic dictionaries. Many phones and personal digital assistants, or PDAs, also contain integrated electronic dictionaries that can be used for checking spelling or for reference purposes. A portable electronic dictionary tends to be more convenient than a paper dictionary, as it contains many more words in a much smaller space. Also, it tends to be much faster to search an electronic dictionary than to search a paper dictionary; one only needs to type in the desired word to see it and all of the information associated with it.

    There are also many electronic dictionaries on the Internet that can be accessed by anyone around the world who has Internet access. Generally, dictionaries of the same editions made by the same publishers can also be found in print form [23, 252].

   

   2 Development of lexicography 

   2.1 Investigation of dictionary usage 

    A good dictionary is an essential tool for anyone learning a foreign language.

1. Invest in a good English dictionary . It's one of the best things that I can do to improve my English.

2. Learn the phonetic alphabet. At the beginning of most good English dictionaries, I'll find the phonetic table, which tells me how to pronounce the phonetic symbols given with each word. If I learn these symbols, I'll find it much easier to pronounce new words.

3. Learn how to use the stress marks. Most English dictionaries show where the stress of a word is by using the mark '. This means that the following syllable is stressed:

'pho-to-graph 
pho-'to-gra-pher 
pho-to-'gra-phic

    The best way to improve my pronunciation is with correct word stress, as making mistakes with stress causes more misunderstandings than mispronouncing the word.

4. Knowing the grammar of the new word. If it is a verb, does it need a preposition, such as «in» or «of'»? Does the verb have an irregular ending?

5. Look at the definition of the new word. If I don't understand it, I will try a simpler dictionary. Good dictionaries give definitions that are simpler than the word they describe. I look at the example sentence given. It should show the new word in a way that explains its meaning.

6. Many English words have more than one meaning. Some dictionaries put the most common meaning first in the list of definitions.

7. Pictures of words, or word groups, can help me to remember more easily.

Questions about dictionaries:

1. Should I use a normal English dictionary, or a bilingual one?

It's generally better to use a normal English (monolingual) dictionary. There are three main advantages of these dictionaries.

They give me practice in understanding English.

As the definitions and examples are in English, I can see immediately how a word is used.

Because many English words won't translate directly into language, I have to be careful with bilingual dictionaries when I write down the meaning of the word.