The papers in this volume show the range and direction of current work in historical semantics and word-studies. There is a strong focus throughout on semantic change and lexical innovation, interpreted within a sociolinguistic, cultural or textual context. Many of the papers draw on the remarkable range of electronic resources now available to historical linguists, notably corpora, dictionaries, bibliographies and thesauruses, and show the effects that these have had in stimulating new lines of research or the re-interpretation of previous conclusions. Cognitive semantics, and especially prototype theory, emerges as a challenging theoretical framework for much current research. The volume contains a selection from papers presented at the 10th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (10ICEHL). They include work on historical lexicography and an account of the workshop on electronic dictionary resources, such as the Revised Oxford English Dictionary, which formed the centrepiece of the Fourth G. L. Brook Symposium.

Including a selection of papers originally presented at the 10th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, the contributions to this volume aim to show the breadth and depth of late-1990s studies in lexicology, semantics and lexicography.

While lexicology, lexical semantics, and lexicography all share an interest in lexical items, they often tend to be regarded as three separate albeit interrelated fields. Indeed, the extent to which the interrelationship is recognized and taken into account in lexicographic practice is the moot point. The conference which produced the papers offered in this volume was designed to bring their practioners together and thus gives an impetus to closer cooperation among them, It is the editors' conviction that the practical activity of lexicography should learn more from its sister fields. People working in lexicography, lexical semantics, etc. may find some of the insights arrived at in the more practically oriented descriptions pertinent and useful.

Theories of Lexical Semantics offers a comprehensive overview of the major traditions of word meaning research in linguistics. In spite of the growing importance of the lexicon in linguistic theory, no overview of the main theoretical trends in lexical semantics is currently available. This book fills that gap by charting the evolution of the discipline from the mid nineteenth century to the present day. It presents the main ideas, the landmark publications, and thedominant figures of five traditions: historical-philological semantics, structuralist semantics, generativist semantics, neostructuralist semantics, and cognitive semantics. The theoretical and methodological relationship between the approaches is a major point of attention throughout the text: going well beyond amere chronological enumeration, the book does not only describe the theoretical currents of lexical semantics, but also the undercurrents that have shaped its evolution.

English lexicography and linguistics have always shared close ties, yet the potential of cognitive linguistics for lexicography has only been hesitantly acknowledged in the literature. This is what cognitive lexicography attempts to change by using insights gained in cognitive semantic research for the development of new dictionary features. After a short survey of the history and practice of English monolingual learner lexicography, as well as an outline of the relationship between linguistics and lexicography, three new dictionary features are developed. They cover three different cognitive semantic theories as well as three different parts of the monolingual dictionary entry, each time for a new set of lexemes. Frame semantics, conceptual metaphor theory, as well as cognitive conceptions of polysemy, are used to create a new example section for agentive nouns, a new defining structure for emotion terms and a new microstructural arrangement for particle entries. Dictionary analyses on all, as well as user studies on two of the features, complement these suggestions. The monograph thus presents a new approach to lexicography that incorporates into its description of lexical items how humans perceive and conceptualise language.

This volume is a compilation of nine articles, translated from German. They deal with those lexicographic texts or text excerpts which have been formulated in order to convey the meaning of a lexical unit to a potential dictionary user who is not familiar with that meaning. The articles not only critically analyze lexicographic practice, in particular the so-called lexicographic definitions and the items giving the synonyms in correlation with the examples, in the light of different semantic approaches. They also present ways towards a common understanding in the context of lexicographically imparting knowledge of meaning, i.e. on the basis of an actional-semantics approach which takes into account results obtained from analyses of everyday dialogs about word meanings. Moreover, they discuss how meaning-conveying texts can serve their purposes in dictionary look-up situations, and they lay out all those aspects which are particularly to be taken into consideration in the formulation of lexicographic texts aimed at conveying meaning, in dictionaries belonging to different types.

This volume provides concise, authoritative accounts of the approaches and methodologies of modern lexicography and of the aims and qualities of its end products. Leading scholars and professional lexicographers, from all over the world and representing all the main traditions andperspectives, assess the state of the art in every aspect of research and practice. The book is divided into four parts, reflecting the main types of lexicography. Part I looks at synchronic dictionaries - those for the general public, monolingual dictionaries for second-language learners, andbilingual dictionaries. Part II and III are devoted to the distinctive methodologies and concerns of the historical dictionaries and specialist dictionaries respectively, while chapters in Part IV examine specific topics such as description and prescription; the representation of pronunciation; andthe practicalities of dictionary production. The book ends with a chronology of the major events in the history of lexicography. It will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and practitioners in the field.