You rarely see a person who, at least once in his life, has not looked into the dictionary. With their help, we not only learn the meaning of certain words, select synonyms or antonyms, but also learn a lot of new things.
Let's talk about what dictionaries are, what is their classification, and recall the main "linguistic reference books" of the Russian language.
Dictionary Science
Lexicography is one of the sections of linguistics that deals with the problems of studying and compiling dictionaries. It is she who is engaged in the classification, puts forward requirements for the design of articles and their content.
The scholars who make up the dictionaries call themselves lexicographers. It is important to note that dictionaries have no authors, only compilers. This is due to the fact that they are compiled with the help of special cards on which the meanings of words and their forms are recorded. At the same time, the compiler can use both the cards he personally collected and the cards collected by a whole staff of linguists.
Further we will consider what dictionaries of the Russian language are, we will find out who compiled them.
Classification of modern dictionaries
All dictionaries are divided into encyclopedic and philological, or linguistic.
Encyclopedic dictionaries provide information about various events. A striking example of such a dictionary is BES - the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary. Dictionaries of terms are also encyclopedic .
What are linguistic dictionaries? This group of dictionaries deals directly with words and their interpretation. They are also divided into bilingual and monolingual.
Bilingual dictionaries contain the words of the Russian language and their equivalent in a foreign language.
Monolingual dictionaries are divided into groups depending on their purpose.
The most used types of dictionaries
What type of dictionaries are there? Among monolingual dictionaries, the following should be distinguished:
- Explanatory, in which an interpretation of a given word is given, its meaning is described.
- Dictionary of neologisms - contains a list of words that have recently come into use and their interpretation.
- Foreign words - captures not only the meaning of the word, but also notes from which language it came to us.
- Synonyms - helps to find synonyms. It indicates a list of words that are similar in meaning to the main one, the most used in this synonymous series.
- Antonimov - contains antonymic word pairs.
- Homonym - describes the main homonymic pairs, while pointing to the meaning of a word, the features of its use in speech.
- Phraseological dictionary - contains a list of all known phraseological units and gives them an interpretation.
- Grammar dictionaries - indicate the grammatical meaning of a word - to which part of speech it refers, what are its main features.
- Spelling - helps to avoid the most common mistakes when writing a particular word.
- Orthoepic - fix the correct stress in words.
- Word-building - show what basis was used in the formation of the word, what parts it consists of (prefixes, suffixes, roots).
- Dictionary of epithets - helps to choose the most successful epithets for a particular noun.
- Etymological dictionary - tells the story of the word.
Famous Russian dictionaries
Let us now discuss what dictionaries of the Russian language are.
- The most famous is the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, compiled by the famous scientist V. I. Dahl. This reference book contains about 200 thousand words. Despite the fact that he is already more than a century old, he is read as one of the most complete and used in our time.
- The second no less important “Explanatory Dictionary” compiled by another famous linguist S. I. Ozhegov.
- The Orthoepic Dictionary was published by two different linguists - R. I. Avanesov and I. L. Reznichenko. Both dictionaries have an impressive list of words and are useful not only to schoolchildren and students.
- We also note the “Dictionary of Synonyms” by Z. E. Alexandrova and the “Dictionary of Antonyms” edited by L. A. Vvedenskaya.
What dictionaries are there yet? You can learn the history of many words that are familiar to us by referring to the work of N. M. Shansky “A Brief Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language”, and the phraseological Dictionary of the Russian Language by A. I. Molotkov will help you to get acquainted with phraseological units and their meaning.
It is also worth noting the "Dictionary of the difficulties of the Russian language" edited by the famous Russian philologist, author of many monographs and a collection of Russian language rules D. E. Rosenthal and M. A. Telenkova.
The books we have listed have been around for decades, but they are also ready to come to our aid and share their knowledge. Now you know what dictionaries are. The list presented by us is very short, but even these books are enough to always remain a competent and educated person.
The structure of the dictionary entry
In conclusion, I would like to add a few words about the structure of the dictionary entry.
Any dictionary entry begins with a heading word, which is often spelled out in capital letters and in bold.
We note right away that the words used in dictionaries are always spelled correctly, therefore, if you doubt the spelling of a particular word, it is not necessary to refer to the spelling dictionary. Just open any available at your fingertips.
Most dictionaries also indicate proper stress. Almost all Russian dictionaries will contain this information. What other notes are there?
After the heading word comes information about which part of the speech it belongs to. Then its meaning is described or there is a list of synonyms, antonyms - it all depends on the type of dictionary. The dictionary article concludes with examples of use - quotes from books, magazines. If this word has features in use, this information is also indicated at the end of the article.
conclusions
We have examined what lexicography is, what dictionaries are and their meaning, listed the main types, and also provided a list of the most useful for any educated person.
Remember, if you have difficulty writing or pronouncing a word, you cannot choose the best one, you just need to open one of the books we have listed.