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
philosophers have found it difficult to distinguish the terms formally. Despite these reservations, the concept provides a useful basis for examining the development of the conventions of monolingual dictionaries. Piotrowski (1989, pp. 73-74) suggests two other ways of considering the meaning of lexical items: 'entity: concept, notion, prototype, stereotype, or fact of culture' and 'activity: skill, knowledge of how to use a word'. These terms seem to parallel the 'use-mention' distinction, and are also useful in exploring changes in the nature of dictionaries. Earlier monolingual English dictionaries generally 'mention' the word which is being defined rather than 'using' it, and so give information about its meaning primarily as an 'entity' rather than an 'activity'. Any separate examples of usage that they give actually 'use' the word (in the technical philosophical sense), and so give information about its meaning as an 'activity'. As we will see, this distinction is linked with the conflict between descriptive and prescriptive approaches to lexicography. 2 The Origins of Dictionaries Béjoint (1994, p. 92), considering the earliest origins of dictionaries, suggests that they 'are probably much older than is generally said.' He argues convincingly that all societies with writing systems, and at least some of those without, have produced dictionaries of some kind, though not necessarily all for the same reasons. These do not always convey meanings in the same way as a conventional modern dictionary. As an example within English culture it may be worth considering the contents of some of the 'listing' nursery rhymes such as 'The House that Jack Built', or 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. It is at least possible that the relationships between the items on the list constitute devices for acquiring linguistic information. At the very least these songs give catalogues of lexically related groups of words. In the case of 'The House that Jack Built' the song also includes primitive defining strategies, best illustrated in the last verse: This is the farmer sowing his corn, That kept the cock that crowed in the mora, That waked the priest all shaven and shorn, 8
