The First Century of English Monolingual Lexicography

Product Description


This book deals with monolingual English dictionaries from 1604 to 1702. The major scholarly reference works which individually treat early English dictionaries are De Witt Starnes and Gertrude Noyess English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson: 16041755 (1946) and The Oxford History of English Lexicography (2009) edited by A. P. Cowie. However, when we proceed with reading the dictionaries with primary attention to their provision of lexical information, an array of deficiencies in Starnes and Noyess account stands out. There are two main reasons for these deficiencies; one is the fact that Starnes and Noyess analyses of the dictionaries are mainly made in accordance with the contents of their title pages and introductory materials, and the other is that the two authorities are excessively conscious of the external history of the dictionaries they discuss. The method of investigation of the dictionaries in this book differs greatly from these previous studies. Through it, various facts, which have been unnoticed for centuries, come to be revealed, including not only an array of historically significant methods for the lexical treatment of words and phrases, but also the highly creative use of other dictionaries in one specific dictionary, as well as the previously unrecognized direct and indirect influence of one dictionary on others.


About the Author


Kusujiro Miyoshi is Full Professor at Soka Womens College in Tokyo, Japan, having received a PhD from the University of Exeter, UK, in 2005. He has been researching English dictionaries from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries since 1980, and has presented his findings at several international conferences, including those held by the European Association for Lexicography, the International Society for Historical Lexicography and Lexicology, the African Association for Lexicography, and the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas, among others. He is also the author of the volume Johnsons and Websters Verbal Examples (2007).