The Lexicographical Notes in Bilingual Dictionaries The Lexicographical Notes in Bilingual Dictionaries

Abstract

Dictionary notes play an important role in description of a title unit. A note is an abbreviated word or phrase which gives a certain characteristic to the language unit. Traditionally, different types of notes are distinguished: grammatical, stylistic, sectoral, chronological, etc. The object of this research is a lexicographic note which can be justified if it demarks the usage sphere and language peculiarities of the title unit. The material for the research is bilingual (Russian-Tatar and Russian-Chinese) dictionaries of various types of the end of the 20^th – beginning of the 21^st centuries. The paper presents the results of comparative analysis of the notes system in bilingual dictionaries. The study revealed the following: 1) when lexical units are supplied with notes, the authors and compilers of bilingual dictionaries, as a rule, use the data from thesauri of the entry language, though not always consistently; 2) stylistic notes (разг., груб., бранн., сниж., пренебр., презр., etc.) do not have distinct boundaries, thus, a user may have difficulties seeing the difference between the properties; 3) the problem of singularia tantum and pluralia tantum words should be specially highlighted, namely, if one meaning of a word is singularia tantum and another is pluralia tantum; 4) a certain group of notes is rare in the analyzed dictionaries, for example, statistical notes, the notes pointing out the dialectical character of the described unites, etc. Terminological notes should be used only for describing polysemantic words to distinguish between their meanings and homonyms; 5) when using lexicographic notes, one of the linguography principles is often violated – to describe similar things in a similar way.