Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)
Geoff Barnbrook: From description to prescription and back again
which are regarded as a form of linguistic decay. The concept of a fixed, 'reaf meaning of a word, central to any prescriptive form of lexicography, means that semantic changes are seen as regrettable departures from an authoritative standard. Such an attitude ignores the whole process of language change, and especially the fact that almost all borrowings into English from other languages shift their meanings significantly as they enter the language, and continue to develop steadily thereafter. It also conveniently ignores the difficulty of establishing a definitive and fixed meaning for the actual or supposed roots of the word in the source language. In practice, even the details of semantic development within English are generally agreed to be clouded in obscurity in most cases. Despite these significant problems, during the 18th and 19th centuries etymology was seriously treated as a major source of absolute meaning, and the idea is not entirely dead even now. Perhaps its apparent certainty and relative ease of determination, both in practice likely to be spurious, are somehow seen as compensating for its lack of any necessary practical connection with the likely range of current usages. This separation from usage moves the defining method firmly towards 'mention' and away from 'use': the etymology of a word is an aspect of its status as an 'entity' rather than an 'activity'. To see how far this influence affected the nature of dictionary definitions, we need to consider the next major stage in the development of the monolingual English dictionary: Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language , first published in 1755. 4 Johnson Lexicographers before Johnson usually make definite claims for the contents of their works once they are published: Johnson is probably the first to state in advance and in detail, in The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language (Johnson, 1747), what he thought his dictionary should set out to do, and how he intended to achieve it. The Plan is addressed to the Earl of Chesterfield, and is plainly intended to obtain patronage from him. Despite this, Johnson's statement of his aims and projected methodology provides an extremely valuable insight into the attitudes to lexicography of one of its most influential practitioners. Although, as we shall see, he did not succeed in carrying out all of his objectives, his stated 21
