SC - language and lexicography (OT, OOP)

[Thomas Gloning]

Alex Clark said:
<<< (a) The main job of a lexicographer is apparently to describe
current usage (b) as he/she sees it. (c) Mistakes, nonsensical usages
and all. >>>

(a) seems to be true nowadays & and for the more common types of
dictionary;
(b) I would say: "current usage, as displayed in large corpora now used
by most dictionary projects";
(c) seems to be wrong: mistakes are not 'current usage'; most
lexicographers do not even look for "correct" usages that are
tangential; they have enough to do with the 'main stream words and
usages'. Remember, that there are _many_ words and usages in a
vocabulary! The Goethe-Wörterbuch, e.g., will have more than 90.000
entries in the year 2032 or so with several usages in most of the
entries.
True, there are _some_ developments that are 'mistakes' at the
beginning, that spread and that become 'current usage' at last; but the
lexicographer has to do with them only in the last stage.

As for the rest, it is certainly advisable to use dictionaries in a
critical spirit. (And to use several dictionaries.)

Further reading:
- -- S.I. Landau: Dictionaries. The art and crafts of lexicography.
Cambridge 1989.
- -- J.M. Sinclair (ed.): Looking up. An account of the COBUILD project in
lexical computing. London/ Glasgow 1987. (See also Sinclair's Corpus,
Concordance and Collocation; 1989.)
- -- Wörterbücher/ Dictionaries/ Dictionnaires. Ein internationales
Handbuch zur Lexikographie. Drei Bände. Hg. von F.J. Hausmann und
anderen. Berlin/ New York 1990.

Best,
Thomas

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