Studii si Cercetari Filologice: Seria Limbi Straine Aplicate (Nov 2012)
A LEXICOGRAPHER’S REMARKS ON SOME OF THE VOCABULARY DIFFICULTIES AND CHALLENGES THAT LEARNERS OF ENGLISH HAVE TO COPE WITH – AND A FEW SUGGESTIONS CONCERNING A SERIES OF COMPLEX DICTIONARIES
Abstract
The present paper aims at stressing the need for applied linguistics in dealing with didactic and lexicographical instruments, not only in the traditional manner, but also – or mainly – in the novel modalities suggested and allowed by the new information and communication technologies, concepts and devices. Proceeding from the contrastive and didactic view of the lexicon and the lexicographer’s task, and also taking advantage of the various models that good learner’s dictionaries in use have already set, the author presents the main aspects involved by compiling a complex, grammaticized Romanian-English dictionary – in fact, one of a larger series projected. In such a complex / grammaticized Romanian-English dictionary, meant as a polyfunctional, flexible, ready-to-use tool of learning, based on an interconnective approach blending the semantic description proper and the grammatical regimen, every relevant item is explained in terms of grammatical usage, and relevant diverging data about morphological markers and irregularities, collocation and syntactic rules, pronunciation, spelling are provided, as well as a number of frequent Romanian proper names with their English equivalents. To do that, an accessible code-system was used. The material that was used as illustrations in the present approach was provided by the author’s experience as a lexicographer and teacher. Similarly, the development is proposed of interactive, software implements usable by advanced students, and also by translators and teachers of ESL; such devices can be a valuable help, a kind of learn-while-working instruments, combining the classical dictionary and the grammar manual, plus the efficiency and rapidity of modern ICT. After mentioning and illustrating the main problems related to the lexicon within the field of TEFL (viz. contrastive semantics, collocation, anomalous grammatical forms, divergent spelling and pronunciation, divergent phraseological and syntactic structures, idiom, proper nouns, lexical and semantic fields, synonymy and related terms), the author goes on to present the main priorities implied by the complex dictionary mentioned above (which is ready for print), and then a synopsis of the experience represented by the compilation of a pair of pocket-size bilingual dictionaries, and the main aspects of the activity in the field of applied linguistics that is involved by the lexicographer’s efforts. To this were added similar illustrations, the fruits of the author’s personal experience and reflective writing, meant to provide part of the database usable for furthering this didactic endeavour.
