INTRODUCTION
The dictionaries are very important tools that assist people to perceive the meaning of the words
their origin as well as their use. As matter of fact dictionaries are meant to aid people to find out
the meaning band usage of the words, in the same process there is the linguistic subject
semantics which also deal with the meaning of the words but not necessarily as a tool which
provides frame works of the words but scrutinizes the meaning of the words.
The dictionary are widely defined by scholar as follow dictionaries are references of Work with
a list of words from one or more languages, normally ordered alphabetically, explaining each
words′, meaning, and sometimes containing information on its etymology, pronunciation, usage,
translation and other data.
According to Longman dictionary the tool in this case the dictionary is regarded as a book that
gives a list of words in alphabetical order and explaining their meanings in the same language or
other languages.
Semantics is linguistic subject that deals with the meaning of the words, this subject and the
dictionary are related in a sense that semantics rely on dictionary to perceive the meaning of
other words so dictionaries play an important role in breaking down the meaning of the words.
in relation to semantics the dictionaries are inevitably crucial in the sense that apart from the
cultural aspects that interfere in the understanding of the words, utterances there are words, terms
that overall mean the same, as it is well known semantics and pragmatics are to subjects are
linguistics branches that deal with the meaning of the words some in a context and others a
general meaning.
According to Christoph Schrank, (2015), Semantics is the branch of linguistics that deals with the study
of meaning, changes in meaning, and the principles that govern the relationship between sentences or
words and their meanings as well. Cotation
It uses the relations of linguistic forms to non-linguistic concepts and mental representations to explain
how sentences are understood by native speakers.
Dictionary view
A traditional view in semantic theory states "that meaning can be divided into a dictionary component and
an encyclopaedic component. However, only the dictionary component contributes to the study of lexical
semantics while the encyclopaedic knowledge refers to external linguistic knowledge (in other words, it is
'world knowledge). The dictionary knowledge implies what words mean and is stored in an individual's
so-called 'mental-lexicon'. This nomenclature with its metaphorical reference to a lexicon already alludes
to our brains' capacity to store and remember words like dictionary-like manner.
To illustrate this theory, the words bachelor, man, girl and woman can be defined as in the following
example.
bachelor +male +adult +married, man +male +adult, girl -male –adult, woman -male +adult.
In the dictionary view, the core meaning of a word is its definition ( bachelor à unmarried, male, adult).
On the other hand, encyclopaedic knowledge is considered non-linguistic knowledge and therefore the
core meaning, the sense of a linguistic sign as stored in the mental lexicon, stands in an arbitrary, non-
causal relation to what words refer to. In contrast, the dictionary view distinguishes between pragmatics
(i.e., how contextual factors influence linguistic meaning) and semantics (knowledge of word meaning).
To sum up, the knowledge of word meaning is influenced by "cultural knowledge, social knowledge and
physical knowledge. The dictionary knowledge concerns sense, relates to the discipline semantics and is
stored in the mental lexicon, while the encyclopaedic (non-linguistic) knowledge concerns reference,
relates to the discipline pragmatics and is governed by principles of language use.
Problems of the Dictionary View
It is important to be aware of the problems of the dictionary view before one can start to think about how
to solve them, which makes it necessary to start by focusing on the difficulties of a dictionary view.
According to Croft and Cruise in their 2004 study, "the dictionary view assumes that word meaning's
have a semantic 'core', the 'essential' aspect of a word's meaning." (ibd.: 210) This core is differentiated
from non-essential aspects of the meaning (or distinguished from associations) therefore, there is a
distinction between a word's denotation and its connotation. To come back to the example bachelor, its
denotation would be a set of all unmarried male adults but its connotation is related to cultural stereotypes
concerning domestic and sexual habits. However, the pope, Tarzan or adult male living with his girlfriend
would all fit this definition, even though they are not bachelors. The problem with this is not, that the
definition is wrong or not enough detailed, but that "the concept bachelor is profiled against a frame that
does not accommodate the variety of actual social statuses found in the real world
Evans and Green give an example, when they explain that bucket and pail are synonyms and therefore
have the same denotation, which is the set of all cylindric vessel with handles which can be used to carry
water. However, there is a significant difference in the connotation: A pail is metal or wooden but not
plastic and is also associated with a certain size. It also shows a different linguistic distribution, as it is for
instance common to speak of bucket and spade, other than of pail and spade.
In cognitive linguistics there is an argument about whether information is important (core) or not
important (non-core) for the definition. This conflict is problematic because it relates to background
knowledge. The dictionary view in contrast relies on the assumption that synonyms can be defined
without context and it restricts linguistic meaning to a word's sense and reference. It is also problematic to
divide linguistic meaning into semantics (context-independent) and pragmatics (context-dependent).
However, linguistic knowledge cannot be separated from pragmatic knowledge, which means that not
only words bring meaning to sentences but also the grammatical properties of the sentence and contribute
to its meaning.
Encyclopedic view
In cognitive semantics, the dictionary view is rejected in favor of an encyclopedic view. This approach
represents a model of the system of conceptual knowledge that underlies meaning and takes into account
a much wider range than only linguistic phenomena.
Firstly, there is no clear "distinction between semantics and pragmatics. The encyclopedic view states that
there is no mental lexicon which contains semantic knowledge separately from other kinds of knowledge
and that there is no distinguishing between dictionary and encyclopedic knowledge, because as a matter
of fact, there is only encyclopedic knowledge. Furthermore, the meaning of a word is based on its
language use and therefore it is pragmatic, as language in use is always situated and therefore has a
context by definition.
Moreover, encyclopedic knowledge is structured in conventional knowledge (widely known), generic
knowledge (general rather than specific), intrinsic knowledge (form of entity, knowledge that comes with
experience) and characteristic knowledge (relatively unique). However, it is important to differentiate
between contextual and encyclopedic knowledge, as there are no fully specified pre-assembled word
meanings, but they are "selected and formed from encyclopedic knowledge. In addition, lexical items are
points of access to encyclopedic knowledge which means they are not containers which contain
preexisting information but they offer an entrance to encyclopedic knowledge.
Examples of Semantics:
Formal Semantics: formal semantics uses techniques from math, philosophy, and logic to
analyze the broader relationship between language and reality, truth and possibility. Has your
teacher ever asked you to use an “if… then” question? It breaks apart lines of information to
detect the underlying meaning or consequence of events.
Lexical Semantics: lexical semantics deconstruct words and phrases within a line of text to
understand the meaning in terms of context. This can include a study of individual nouns, verbs,
adjectives, prefixes, root words, suffixes, or longer phrases or idioms.
Conceptual Semantics: Conceptual semantics deals with the most basic concept and form of a
word before our thoughts and feelings added context to it.
For example, at its most basic we know a cougar to be a large wild cat. But, the word cougar has
also come to indicate an older woman who’s dating a younger man. This is where context is
important.
Conceptual semantics opens the door to a conversation on connotation and denotation. Denotation is the
standard definition of a word. Meanwhile, connotation deals with the emotion evoked from a word.
Connotation will be derived from the manner in which you interpret a word or sentence’s meaning. As
such, semantics and connotation are deeply entwined. For a deeper dive, read these examples and
exercises on connotative words.
What's the relationship between semantics and pragmatics?
Semantics and pragmatics are both related to the way meaning is derived from language. Semantics
studies the meaning that words and certain combinations of words hold for both the speaker and listener.
Pragmatics deals with how the context in which words are used can dictate their true meaning at that
particular time.
The main difference between semantics and pragmatics is that the semantics studies the meaning of words
and their meaning within sentences whereas the pragmatics studies the same words and meanings but
with emphasis on their context as well.
Both semantics and pragmatics are two main branches of study in linguistics. They both study the
meaning and the significance of words in a language. But there is a distinct difference between semantics
and pragmatics.
Dictionaries contain seas of lexical entries. They contain the necessary information of these
lexical items, from phonological to syntactic, from stylistic to semantic, and also the way in
which these lexical items are fit into the language system.
First and foremost, it comes to the question of the authority of ‘the’ dictionary. The attitude that
a dictionary must be recognized like any living social institution or legislative organ, to which
one turns for a standard of ‘good’ as opposed to ‘bad’ usage, is indeed encouraged by the phrase
‘the dictionary’, with its misleading similarity to ‘the Bible. I hereof will not further debate on
the authority of ‘a dictionary’ or ‘the dictionary’ and I will neither defend a dictionary’s
authority nor will I explicate on the argument that dictionaries are not that reliable often times
(and to remain neutrality of this ongoing debate, the following essay will make use of the word
‘dictionaries’ instead of ‘a dictionary’ or ‘the dictionary). However, by the end of this essay, we
will take heed of the fact that dictionaries are indeed somehow malfunctioning and faulty such
that we cannot always be fully dependent on dictionaries (yet this should in no way lead to the
defiance of dictionary definitions as they have already done their best in conveying the
meaning).
Before looking into the definitions and meanings of different lexical entries given by
dictionaries, I would first like to stress that dictionaries found by and large on paradigmatic sense
relations, namely hyponymy, metonymy, and synonymy, in suggesting their definitions. The
following examples are extracted and adapted from ‘dictionary.reference.com, a widely
consulted online dictionary. For the lexical entry red tea, the online dictionary suggests that it is a
type of caffeine-free tea made from the leaves of the South African Rooibos plant. As we shall
see, this definition is premised on the hyponymy sense relation. Another cited example is
‘lockset’, of which is defined as parts of the complete locking system and its definition is
premised on the metonymy sense relation. The last example to be cited is ‘jail’, of which is
defined as a prison and its definition is premised on the synonymy sense relation.
From the above cited examples, one shall see the basic semantic structure and sense relations
dictionary definitions are premised on by and large the paradigmatic sense relations. However at
the same time, it is obvious that there is a tendency for dictionaries to paraphrase in a way of
circumlocution in that no meaning is really conveyed. For instance, the word ‘red tea’ is defined
as is a type of caffeine-free tea made from the leaves of the South African Rooibos plant and the
word ‘tea’ is actually not defined as seen from the definition, i.e. the word ‘tea’ being employed
to define ‘red tea’. Another similar problem arises when relatively easy lexical items are to be
defined and the employment of harder words will thus become inevitable. These two issues of
dictionary definitions will create the most principal problem of all which is that elementary
learners of the (English) language are not therefore able to understand the meaning to be
conveyed. These problems may thus seemingly, to a certain extent, render dictionaries useless.
However, many linguists observed that we cannot express the meaning of a word except by using
other words and the problem of using much more difficult words to define relative easier words
and the problem of circumlocution cannot be completely solved, i.e. the meaning of a word
cannot be reducible to a single definition and it shall be seen as a network of domains indeed
(Lakoff and Johnson: Ch.19), yet in the meantime some linguists attempt to minimize these
problems through different avenues. Litkowski, for instance, is also aware of the fact that
‘definitions are expressed by words which are also defined, there is no semantic meta-language’,
yet Litkowski affirmed that ‘dictionaries should have a unified semantic structure, with
underlying primitive units of meaning from which all concepts in dictionaries can be derived and
it is necessary to subject definitions to syntactic and semantic parsing in order to identify
characteristics that should be attached to each definition… if the semantic content of each
definition can be captured and the model of dictionaries being permitted to transform each
definition into its primitive components’, the problem that ‘a definitional chain with redundancy
and vicious circles which adds nothing to our understanding of the meanings’ can be solved.
On the other hand, dictionaries very often receive criticisms they are defining the lexical entries
either too lax or too strict, more often the latter case. Suppose the word ‘chair’ is to be defined, if
it is defined as ‘an item of furniture’, the definition will be too lax since there are plenty of things
that are items of furniture that are not chairs- tables, desks, footstools, and so on However if the
lexical entries are defined in such a way that it is too strict and narrow, there will be a tendency
for dictionaries to go beyond the explanation of the mere sense of an item and provide too much
unrelated encyclopedic information. This will possibly lead to awkwardness and oddity when
substituting everyday linguistic communication meaning with technical and scientific definition.
After all, as John Lyons points out that ‘meaning’ of a (n English) word is the ordinary, everyday
vocabulary of English (instead of encyclopedic information dictionaries have left with us)
Litkowski is also aware of the fact that ‘the lexicon contains a great deal of knowledge about the
world and not just information which will enable us to understand such knowledge. It is often of
great difficulty for dictionary editors to strike a balance between these two extremes and it is
therefore understandable that dictionaries sometimes tend to be too lax or too strict.
Another problem about dictionary meanings is that often times they express merely the
conceptual meaning of a lexical item but not the associative meanings including the connotative
meaning as well as the stylistic meaning. John Locke, in ‘An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding (1690) wrote, ‘words, in their primary or immediate signification, stand for
nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them’ Language, in general, for Noam
Chomsky, is basically a psychological phenomenon. Lakoff takes note of the fact that
“Understanding takes place in terms of entire domains of experience and not in terms of isolated
concepts Litkowski also stresses that ‘specification of the context that must be present if the
definition is intended. For instance, when we refer to a young infant as baby pointing a baby
saying, “Look! The baby!” We do not refer to the dictionary meaning (i.e. the conceptual
meaning) “Look! They newborn animal” or “Look! The human fetus!” We normally refer to the
connotative meaning, the sets of features and distinctive characteristics, of a baby such as being
fragile or adorable. Dictionaries nowadays tend to include more details concerning the
connotative meaning. For instance, the Oxford English Dictionary mentions about the
connotative meaning of a baby. However, it is rather difficult to include all the connotative
meanings of all the lexical items in dictionaries, let alone the stylistic meaning of the lexical
items which is ever-changing across time and culture. There is a school of thought proposing
‘Referential Theory’ suggesting meanings of words simply are things in the world while another
school of thought proposes ‘Internalist Theory’ suggesting word meanings are most fruitfully
thought of as ideas or concepts in our heads (Elbourne: Ch.2). None of these theories, however,
fully realize the practical understanding of ‘meaning’ itself since these theories focus primarily
on the conceptual meanings of lexical items, without equally realizing the importance of the
associative meanings words offer.
From the above we see, ‘defining the meaning of a word is an enterprise of mind-boggling and
almost inconceivable complexity’ (Elbourne: Ch.1). We do not really know the meanings of
words when we say we understand their dictionary definitions. A distinguished metallurgist
Robert Pond once noted, “We know that metal is an element that has metallic properties. So we
start to enumerate all these properties: electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, ductility,
malleability, strength, high density. Then you say, how many of these properties does an element
have to have classify as a metal?” Noam Chomsky offers us another example, “if tea leaves have
been deposited in your local reservoir by the proper authorities as a new kind of water purifier,
what comes out of your tap will still be called water, even if (on one way of looking at it) it is an
extremely mild tea; but if someone likes their tea very mild and dips a tea bag for just a split
second into a cup of pure H2O, the resulting liquid is tea and not water, even if it is chemically
identical to the stuff that comes out of the tap.
As many linguists have acknowledged that we cannot give good and precise definitions for most
of the words except for domains like mathematics and there are hardly any criterial attributes that
unambiguously define lexical entries while excluding all other possibilities. Even if we have
perfect definition of a word, that does not necessarily entail semantically or presuppose
pragmatically the fact that it is ‘the’ meaning of that word. “A definition is indeed just a string of
words. It is unsatisfying, therefore, to say that the meaning of a word is a definition, because that
would be to say that the meaning of a word is just more words. However, as Litkowski noted that
“No dictionary is likely to satisfy this assumption which is only a theoretically desirable
characteristic”. The fact that it is astonishingly difficult to give definitions and attribute meanings
to lexical items should not therefore in any way deter the dictionary editors from endeavoring to
attain the highest possible standard of precision of each and every lexical item by striking a
balance between giving too lax or too strict definitions and avoiding the problem of
circumlocution. This essay serves not to defy the hard work of any of the dictionaries editor, but
indeed, vice versa, address the fact that there are indeed some problems that dictionaries
inevitably have such as using more difficult words to explain much easier words and failing to
include all the connotative and stylistic meanings of all lexical entries on top of their conceptual
meanings.
CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
Elbourne, Paul "Oxford Linguistics: Meaning" Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 Lakoff, George
and Mark Johnson. "Metaphors we live by" Chicago: University of Chicago
Press , 2003 Leech, Geoffrey "Semantics: The Study of Meaning (2nd edition)" Penguin Books, 1974
(205-229)
Litkowski, K.C. "Models of the Semantic Structure of Dictionaries" American Journal of Computational
Linguistics (1978): 25-74Locke, John "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding".
Penguin Books Limited, 1997 Lyons, John "Semantics: Vol.1" Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996.
Introduction
The dictionaries are very important tools that assist people to perceive the meaning of the words
their origin as well as their use. As matter of fact dictionaries are meant to aid people to find out
the meaning band usage of the words, in the same process there is the linguistic subject
semantics which also deal with the meaning of the words but not necessarily as a tool which
provides frame works of the words but scrutinizes the meaning of the words.
the dictionary are widely defined by scholar as follow dictionaries are references of Work with a
list of words from one or more languages, normally ordered alphabetically, explaining each
words′, meaning, and sometimes containing information on its etymology, pronunciation, usage,
translation and other data.
According to Longman dictionary the tool in this case the dictionary is regarded as a book that
gives a list of words in alphabetical order and explaining their meanings in the same language or
other languages.
Semantics is linguistic subject that deals with the meaning of the words, this subject and the
dictionary are related in a sense that semantics rely on dictionary to perceive the meaning of
other words so dictionaries play an important role in breaking down the meaning of the words.
in relation to semantics the dictionaries are inevitably crucial in the sense that apart from the
cultural aspects that interfere in the understanding of the words, utterances there are words,
terms that overall mean the same, as it is well known semantics and pragmatics are to subjects
are linguistics branches that deal with the meaning of the words some in a context and others a
general meaning.
The role of dictionaries in providing the semantics and pragmatics of words terms as well
as phrases.
Tackling the matter of words meaning and usages, there are semantics and pragmatics to
scrutinize. Once there is a word phrase that uncertainty of its meaning domain the research of its
meaning is conducted so as to find how and when to make its use,
including
Semantics and dictionaries
Dictionaries contain seas of lexical entries. They contain the necessary information of these lexical items,
from phonological to syntactic, from stylistic to semantic, and also the way in which these lexical items
are fit into the language system (Leech: Ch.11).
Semantics - is defined as the study of meaning of which most linguists will cast no doubts on and
therefore in this work, the word ‘definition’ and ‘meaning’ as well as the phrase ‘lexical entry’ and
‘lexical item’ will be used interchangeably which refers back to the semantic aspect of words that will be
of the primary focus and it will be discussed in relation to how lexical items are defined by the dictionary.
A dictionary is a central part of the description of any language. A good ordinary household dictionary
typically gives (at least) three kinds of information about words: phonological information about how the
word is pronounced, grammatical (syntactical and morphological) information about its part of speech
(e.g. noun, verb) and inflections (e.g. for plural number or past tense), and semantic information about the
word’s meaning.`
Here are some (slightly edited) entries extracted from the Random House Dictionary of the English
Language (College edition 1968). In each case we have the phonological information, bracket [thus] the
grammatical information, and leave the semantic information unmarked.
(1) green (gre-n), adj. - of the color of growing foliage
(2) must (must), auxiliary verb - to be compelled to, as by instinct or natural law
(3) oak (o-k), noun - any fagaceous tree or shrub of the genus Quercus, bearing the acorn as fruit.
(4) squirt (skwûrt), intransitive verb - to eject liquid in a jet, as from a narrow orifice.
An Encyclopedia is a set of books which contains short stories articles about many topics; animals,
presidents, countries, people, plants and so much more. The articles are summaries with basic facts and
information. The volumes are arranged in alphabetical order. If you need to find information about
porcupines you would look in the P volume. Then you would use the guide words at the top of the pages
to find porcupines.
Key words help you know which volume contains the article you want to read.
A Dictionary describes the senses of predicates.
An Encyclopedia contains factual information of a variety of types, but generally no
information specifically on the meanings of words.
A dictionary tells you what words mean.
The semanticist dictionary-writer and the ordinary dictionary-writer have quite similar goals, but they
differ markedly in their style of approach and the emphasis which they place on their various goals. In
order to illustrate the kind of dictionary that a semanticist tries to devise, we will first take a look at some
properties of a good ordinary household dictionary.
Types of dictionary
Linguistic semanticist’s dictionary
Linguistic semanticist is interested in the meanings of words and not in non-linguistic facts about the
world. He has often made the assumption that non-linguistic facts are not particularly relevant to the study
of linguistic meaning (that is, the meanings conveyed by the sense relations of the words within the
language itself as opposed to meaning conveyed by information from the context or situation in which the
language is used).
Ordinary dictionary
Is concerned with describing meaning, and not with prescribing meaning (that
is, we are not concerned with making value judgments about any aspects of meaning). Academic
semanticists tend to be well-educated people, and most speak a language in which, for example, both bird
and mammal are hyponyms of animal.
Ordinary dictionaries occasionally stray into the domain of encyclopedias, giving information not strictly
relevant to the bare senses (as opposed to stereotypes) of words.
Technical (theoretical) predicates
Semanticists aim to describe the sense relations between predicates, as they understand them, in their own
everyday language.
There is one notable area in which descriptive semanticists are prepared to abandon ordinary language
and to allow a few terms which do not actually occur in the language to be regarded as predicates entering
into sense.
Example
Sibling is not a word in the everyday English vocabulary, but is a technical term used to refer to someone
who is either a brother or a sister. Sibling is to brother and sister what parent is to father and mother. The
meaning of sibling contains no concept of sex. Clearly, the two predicates brother and sister form a
natural class (that is, they share some component of meaning with each other); it is useful in our
description of the relationships between predicates to have a term corresponding to such a natural class
and so semanticists adopt one. In our descriptions, we will mark such ‘theoretical’ or ‘technical’
predicates with an asterisk, e.g. sibling. Relations with other, actually occurring, predicate.
Semantic aspects of the kind of dictionary of a language that a linguist would wish to present.
It should be kept in mind as we investigate dictionaries and word meaning that, from the standpoint of
modern linguistics, the dictionary constructed by a semanticist is supposed to represent important aspects
of the mental knowledge about meaning that any typical native speaker of the language would have.
Another problem about dictionary meanings is that often times they express merely the conceptual
meaning of a lexical item but not the associative meanings including the connotative meaning as well as
the stylistic meaning. John Locke, in ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) wrote, ‘words,
in their primary or immediate signification, stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses
them’ (Locke: Book III). Language, in general, for Noam Chomsky, is basically a psychological
phenomenon (Elbourne: P.22). Lakoff takes note of the fact that “Understanding takes place in terms of
entire domains of experience and not in terms of isolated concepts (Lakoff and Johnson: Ch.19).
Litkowski also stresses that ‘specification of the context that must be present if the definition is intended’
(Litkowski: 25-74).
Dictionaries nowadays tend to include more details concerning the connotative meaning. For
instance, the Oxford English Dictionary mentions about the connotative meaning of a baby. However, it
is rather difficult to include all the connotative meanings of all the lexical items in dictionaries, let alone
the stylistic meaning of the lexical items which is ever-changing across time and culture. There is a
school of thought proposing ‘Referential Theory’ suggesting meanings of words simply are things in the
world while another school of thought proposes ‘Internalist Theory’ suggesting word meanings are most
fruitfully thought of as ideas or concepts in our heads (Elbourne: Ch.2). None of these theories, however,
fully realize the practical understanding of ‘meaning’ itself since these theories focus primarily on the
conceptual meanings of lexical items, without equally realizing the importance of the associative
meanings words offer.
From the above we see, ‘defining the meaning of a word is an enterprise of mind-boggling and
almost inconceivable complexity’ (Elbourne: Ch.1). We do not really know the meanings of words when
we say we understand their dictionary definitions. A distinguished metallurgist Robert Pond once noted,
“We know that metal is an element that has metallic properties. So we start to enumerate all these
properties: electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, ductility, malleability, strength, high density.
Then you say, how many of these properties does an element have to have classify as a metal?” Noam
Chomsky offers us another example, “if tea leaves have been deposited in your local reservoir by the
proper authorities as a new kind of water purifier, what comes out of your tap will still be called water,
even if (on one way of looking at it) it is an extremely mild tea; but if someone likes their tea very mild
and dips a tea bag for just a split second into a cup of pure H 2O, the resulting liquid is tea and not water,
even if it is chemically identical to the stuff that comes out of the tap” (Elbourne: Ch.1).
As many linguists have acknowledged that we cannot give good and precise definitions for most of
the words except for domains like mathematics and there are hardly any criterial attributes that
unambiguously define lexical entries while excluding all other possibilities. Even if we have perfect
definition of a word, that does not necessarily entail semantically or presuppose pragmatically the fact
that it is ‘the’ meaning of that word. “A definition is indeed just a string of words. It is unsatisfying,
therefore, to say that the meaning of a word is a definition, because that would be to say that the meaning
of a word is just more words” (Elbourne: Ch.1). However, as Litkowski noted that “No dictionary is
likely to satisfy this assumption which is only a theoretically desirable characteristic”. The fact that it is
astonishingly difficult to give definitions and attribute meanings to lexical items should not therefore in
any way deter the dictionary editors from endeavoring to attain the highest possible standard of precision
of each and every lexical item by striking a balance between giving too lax or too strict definitions and
avoiding the problem of circumlocution. This essay serves not to defy the hard work of any of the
dictionaries editor, but indeed, vice versa, address the fact that there are indeed some problems that
dictionaries inevitably have such as using more difficult words to explain much easier words and failing
to include all the connotative and stylistic meanings of all lexical entries on top of their conceptual
meanings.
Works Cited
Elbourne, Paul "Oxford Linguistics: Meaning" Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. "Metaphors we live by" Chicago: University of Chicago
Press , 2003
Leech, Geoffrey "Semantics: The Study of Meaning (2nd edition)" Penguin Books, 1974
205-229
Litkowski, K.C. "Models of the Semantic Structure of Dictionaries" American Journal of
Computational Linguistics (1978): 25-74
Locke, John "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" Penguin Books Limited, 1997
Lyons, John "Semantics: Vol.1" Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Chapter 1
