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Linguistic Potpourri

How to Use Dictionaries

Despite the fact that we all speak some language more or less perfectly, a lot of information is associated with words and often we find ourselves unsure of some of it. The first question, then, is: what sort of information does a word contain? A word is basically an association of (1) linguistic sound and (2) meaning. Either we hear someone pronounce a sound that we associate with a meaning in our head or we have a meaning we wish to express and do so by creating linguistic sounds with our mouth. An important fundamental characteristic of language is that when we speak, we only exchange linguistic sounds. We do not exchange meanings: meaning is all in our heads.

Fewer than 1,000 of the Earth's 6,800 languages and dialects-English among them-have writing systems. In these languages, a third component of information is associated in a word: (3) spelling, for spelling does not always easily correlate with the sound of a word. Look at the way we spell pair, pare, and pear, all of which are pronounced the same. On the other hand, lead has two different pronunciations: /led/ and /leed/. Gerald Trenite's poem "The Chaos" depicts the spelling inconsistencies in English in gruesome detail. Dictionaries help us both with the spelling and pronunciation of such words.

Finally, we need to know the grammatical categories of words, the part of speech they belong to and more. For example, lead could be either one of two different words. One is a noun (the soft heavy metal); the other is a verb (the activity of showing someone the way). We need this information to know which word is in question. But we often need more grammatical information. We need to know the category of the verb. Some English verbs (the 'weak' verbs) are regular and use the suffix -ed to form the past tense: zing : zing-ed. Other verbs (the 'strong' verbs) are irregular: sing : sang. It is important for speakers of English and other languages to know which verbal category a verb belongs to in order to correctly use it. In order to provide the basic information we need to correctly use words, all dictionaries provide entries with these four basic components:

  • spelling
  • pronunciation
  • part of speech (grammatical category)
  • meaning

We can go to a dictionary for any of these pieces of information that may be temporarily or permanently missing from our own personal, mental lexicons, whether we are a speaker of a foreign language learning English or an English-language speaker unsure of one of these aspects of a vocabulary item. There are problems with traditional dictionaries, though. Let's take a look at them and see what we can do to get around them.

Spelling

There are still problems facing dictionary compilers. For example, words are listed in a dictionary in alphabetical order. But if a person does not know how to spell a word, how can they look it up? This is an intractable problem for traditional dictionaries but on-line dictionaries have a solution. Many on-line dictionaries allow you to write in just the letters you know and it will return all the words with those letters in the positions you specify. You may then select the word you need. For example, let's suppose you don't know the order of the "i" and the "e" in the word receive. Go to the dictionary search box on the top right of this page, type in "rec??ve" and see what happens.

You can also use this technique for writing poetry. Let's say you want a word that rhymes with bottle. Type in ?ottle and see what you get. Of course, this method isn't perfect because sound and spelling do not perfectly correlate, but it may get you the word you want.

Pronunciation

The problem facing traditional dictionaries in conveying the correct pronunciation of a word is that they lack the basic requisite: sound. To get around this shortcoming, dictionary compilers invent a standard alphabet that, unlike the real alphabet, is consistent. That is, in the consistent alphabet, "i" is always pronounced like the "i" in bit, fit, quit but not in kite or vaccine. Try Newbury House's dictionary by typing in bicycle and see if you can read the pronunciation symbols between slashes (/ . . ./).

Linguists have created such an alphabet called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It is a consistent symbols system, where one sound is represented by one symbol and vice versa that applies to all the world's languages. However, dictionary makers do not want to inconvenience dictionary users with learning a new alphabet, so most of them invent their own, trying to stick as close to the unworkable English pairing system as possible. The result is as many different pronunciation systems as there are dictionaries. Compare WWWebster's rendition of the pronunciation of bicycle /'bI-si-k&l/ with that of Wordsmyth: /bai sih kEl/. Only the Newbury House and Cambridge dictionaries take advantage of the accuracy of the IPA.

Another problem with pronunciation is that there are often several different pronunciations of words. This is a particular problem in English, where great differences in pronunciation exist between US (with its Brooklyn, Southern, and other dialects), British, Australian, and other variants. How do you pronounce aunt or either. Even in the US, educated people pronounce these words differently. Ask someone to pronounce interrupt for you (show it to them written). Do you hear the first "t". The word is pronounced correctly with and without the first "t" and the final one is often dropped before certain consonants (e.g. interrupt the teacher). Capturing all these variations in one book is difficult; deciding which ones to omit is even more difficult.

The solution to the problem is audio files reproducing the actual pronunciation, now available to electronic dictionaries. The first dictionary to produce an audio solution to the pronunciation problem is the Encarta Dictionary, the newest entry in the dictionary race. The 4th edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, yourDictionary's choice for its Quick Lookup, now has this feature, available only on electronic dictionaries. All dictionaries still provide a symbol system for pronunciation: ours * Newbury House (IPA) * Cambridge

Part of Speech

All words belong to a part of speech (a lexical category). Traditionally, 8 parts of speech have been recognized: noun (house, dream, air), pronoun (she, this, my), verb (think, sleep, remain), adjective (pretty, rural, afloat), adverb (often, friendly, now), preposition (of, for, after), conjunction (and, since, so), interjection (Oh!, Eh?, And how!). In addition to a word's part of speech, we often need to know more about the grammatical categories of words. In French, for example, it is important to know the gender of nouns. Some nouns are feminine (une (la) livre 'a (the) pound'), others are masculine (un (le) livre 'a (the) book'). Notice that the articles meaning 'a' and 'the' vary, depending on the gender; so, it is crucially important to know the gender of a noun.

It is also important to know the category or "conjugation" of French verbs. Verbs in French are conjugated. This means that a different ending is used in agreement with the various pronouns (je 'I', tu 'you', and il 'he'). Moreover, at least three different sets of endings are used with different categories of verbs, so that the endings used with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person pronouns on the verb penser 'to think' are different from those added to lire 'to read'. So, to know which set of endings is attached to a verb when you use it with a given pronoun, you have to know which conjugation it belongs to: I, II, or III. Here are some examples of Conjugation I and Conjugation II verbs showing the difference in the endings they require.

pens-er "to think" Conjugation I li-re "to read" Conjugation II je pense I think je lis I read tu penses you think tu lis you read il pense he thinks il lit he reads

Notice that not only do the infinitive endings of Conjugation I and Conjugation II verbs differ, penser vs. lire, but after you remove the infinitive ending, you have to know which conjugation the verb belongs to in order to attach the correct set of endings. In a French dictionary, this information is just as crucial as which part of speech an entry belongs to.

Most dictionary entries contain at least the inflected forms of irregular words, such as irregular past tense forms of verbs and irregular plurals of nouns. This is essentially the same as inflected forms in other languages.

Definition

People most often look up words in dictionaries of their own language to get an accurate definition or the spelling of the word. Speakers of foreign languages need definitions in order to use the word properly. The meanings of some words are very close to the meanings of others. Native speakers often need to refer to a word's definition to distinguish it from the similar meaning of another word. For example, contain and comprise have very similar but not identical meanings. So, when should you use either word? The dictionary will tell you that contain simply means "to hold" while comprise means "to be made up of", i.e. to contain as constituent parts. Words also often have more than one meaning. Run, for example, generally means "to move fast on foot". However, that is not what we mean when we say "the water is running." Run can also mean "to flow (said of liquids)". Neither of these meanings apply to the use of run in "John runs a small bookstore." Here run means "to manage". Dictionaries usually list all the unrelated meanings, giving each a separate number. (You can confirm this by looking up run in any of the on-line dictionaries listed at the bottom of this page.)

Curiosities

When we actually think of a word (and usually we just use them without thinking about them), other questions often arise. For example, people often wonder why we use a given word to refer to something. For example, why do we sometime refer to dogs as as dog, other times as a canine? To get at the answer to this question we have to study the history of English and other languages. Over time languages change. Over significant periods of time, languages become different languages they change so much. If we go back a 1,000 years, in the ancestor of Modern English, Old English, holy day, the ancestor of holiday, referred only to religious holidays. Holiday can now refer to any kind of day of celebration. Meat meant any kind of food (hence mincemeat) and board meant "table" (hence room and board). In Old English dog meant "greyhound" and the ancestor of hound (hund) meant "dog". This sort of information is not necessary for conversation, but it is nice to know all the same.

Borrowing

The word canine, on the other hand, was borrowed from French. French inherited it from Latin, where can-is meant "dog". After the conquest of England by William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, English borrowed a lot of words from French, including all the adjectives referring to animals. They also preferred the French word for the animal when they ate it. Here are some animal names and their borrowed French correlates in English.

Animal Adjective Meat dog canine cow bovine beef (boeuf) horse equine cat feline pig porcine pork (porc) sheep ovine mutton (mouton)

French is one of the languages that developed historically from Latin. (Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish are among the others.) The Latin word for "dog" was can-is, for "cow" was bov-is, for "horse" was equ-us, for "pig" was porc-us, and the world for "sheep" was ov-us. The words in the table above show French suffixes replacing the Latin ones.

English has borrowed words from many languages: algebra and orange from Arabic, thug from Hindi, woodchuck, coyote, Susquehanna, Mississippi and chili from Native American languages, sky, girl, ski from Scandinavian, vodka and troika from Russian. Some dictionaries provide information about this kind of borrowing.

Etymology (Historical Development)

As we just learned, languages change into different languages over time. In fact, the various dialects of a single language may change into different languages. Over the past 2,000 years, Latin has turned into French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. English has developed from the same original language as German, Dutch, Danish, and Swedish. They all originated from a language for which no written record has survived, a language called "Proto-Indo-European" (PIE), spoken 5,000-6,000 yeas ago. We don't know exactly what kind of language it was, but we can reconstruct it with considerable accuracy from the various languages we know evolved from it.

For example, we know from English bear ("carry"), and Latin fero "carry", and Greek pherein "bear, carry", and Russian brat' "take", that PIE contained some word *bher- that meant "bear" or "carry". English brother derived from the same PIE stem and Latin frater. The change of "b" to "f" in Latin is a regular change that occurred in many PIE words as they developed from PIE to Latin, e.g. Latin fornio "oven" (from which we get furnace) but not as PIE developed into Germanic languages. The same stem that turns up in Latin as forn-, appears in German as bren-nen English burn, both meaning the same thing. This is the way historical linguists trace the history of language change, by plotting the rules of sound and meaning change from one era to the next.

Some dictionaries carry etymological information about words. This information is not necessary for using the word but many people find it interesting. For example, did you know that ink came from words that originally meant "to burn"? Click "ink" and see how. Where does the word dinosaur come from? Check the etymology in the dictionary.

Synonyms and Antonyms

Sometimes we can't remember the word we are looking for but we can remember a word that has a similar meaning, a synonym of the target word. Let's suppose you can't remember the word "admonish" but do remember that it means something like "reprove." You can look up reprove in the dictionary and, usually the entry will contain synonyms and, sometimes, antonyms (in case you can remember a word with the opposite meaning). Notice in the synonym section also contains a discussion of the differences in the meanings of the synonyms to help you use them correctly. Check the synonyms of "reprove" and you will see "admonish."

Other Vocabulary Aids

There is other information we need about words that is not usually found in traditional dictionaries but is published in separate volumes. Even more types of these resources are turning up in newer electronic versions.

Thesaurus

We saw above that synonyms and antonyms are very useful ways of recalling words you have forgotten. They also represent a rich resource for expanding our vocabulary and teaching us to use it more precisely. For this reason, special books and databases with nothing but synonyms and antonyms in them. These are called thesauruses. The most famous English thesaurus is Roget's thesaurus. Click its name to get to the on-line version. When you do, type in "help" or "aid" and see all the different ways you can express this concept.

Acronym Dictionary

Dictionaries usually don't list acronyms (abbreviations), yet we are constantly in need of knowing what words the letters of acronyms stand for. It is difficult to publish acronym dictionaries by traditional means because they come and go so rapidly. On-line acronym dictionaries, however, are a different matter. Try getting the full form of NASA in this acronym dictionary. Surprised at what you found? Thought you knew what NASA stood for, didn't you?

Miscellaneous

There are various other types of dictionaries out there with specialized purposes. Here are the main types.

Rhyming dictionaries help you find just the right word when you are writing poetry or songs. However, occasionally you can remember a word that rhymes with the word you are trying to remember; in these instances, a rhyming dictionary could help. Crossword puzzle dictionaries are designed to find a word containing a specific number of letters only some of which you know. Usually you fill in the spaces of the letters you don't know with question marks: "?". This type of lookup is useful if you are uncertain about a few letters, e.g. whether the "i" precedes the "e" in the word "receive". You could enter "rec??ve" in a crossword puzzle dictionary and find out easily enough. (Many regular dictionaries also have this feature, by the way.) Finally, specialty dictionaries provide specialized vocabulary often not found in general dictionaries. You can explore the kinds of specialty dictionaries and glossaries by clicking the "Specialty dictionaries and glossaries" entry in the table above.

Conclusion

So these are the basics of dictionaries and dictionary use. Dictionaries and vocabulary aids do far more than help you with spelling and the meaning of words. As you use these important resources more, you will discover even more capacities they have for explaining our conceptual space. As the internet revolution proceeds, additional functions will be added to dictionaries: sound pronunciation is just around the corner as are dictionaries that can understand you when you speak to them. Just remember: whatever your dictionary or language need, you will always be able to find what you want at yourDictionary.com.