Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
general
restricteddictionaries
(terminological,
phraseological, dialectal
word-books, dictionaries of
new words, etc.)
As to the information they provide:
explanatory
special dictionaries (only some characteristics)
sphere of human activity (technical
dictionaries)
type of units (of idioms)
relationships b/w units (of synonyms)
Associative dictionaries (the lexical entry is a
stimulus word with a list of response words
either in an alphabetical order or according to
their frequency).
According to the medium used:
paper d.
computerized d.
computerized versions of paper d.
proper el. d.: for human use, machine d. for text processing (synt.,
sem., (pseudo-)morph., diphone, etc.)
Explanatory dictionaries provide info on all aspects of the
lexical units entered: graphical, phonetic, grammatical,
semantic, stylistic, etymological, etc.
diachronic
synchronic
Types of dictionaries
Translation (parallel) dictionaries - a list of vocabulary items in one language and their equivalents in (an)other
language(s).
Phraseological dictionaries - idiomatic or colloquial phrases, proverbs and other, usually with illustrations.
Dictionariesof neologisms (neologism - <20 years). The new items are collected from the reading of newspaper,
magazines and - rarely - books.
Dictionaries of slang (substandard speech such as vulgarisms, jargonisms, taboo words, curse-words, colloquialisms).
Usage dictionaries (usage problems of all kind - for native speakers: the difference in meaning of synonyms, the
proper pronunciation, etc.)
Dictionaries of word frequency (frequency of occurrence of lexical units in speech for teaching purposes, the basic
vocabulary, for the machine translation systems to choose a better - more frequent - variant of a word).
Reverse dictionaries (the entry words are arranged in an alphabetical order starting with the final letter - e.g. for
rhyming purpose).
Pronouncing dictionaries (contemporary variation of pronunciation).
Etymological dictionaries.
Ideographic dictionaries.
Problems of dictionary compiling
Stages:
collection of material
selection of entries and their arrangement
setting of each entry
selection of lexical units for inclusion
arrangement of entries (alphabetical, clusters, frequency)
setting of the entry (structure and content)
selection and arrangement of meanings (historical, empirical / actual
/ frequency, logical order)
definition of meanings (encyclopaedic, descriptive, synonymous,
cross-referential)
illustrative examples (quotes, corpus e.g.'s)