Historical Dictionaries and Historical Dictionary Research: Papers from the International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology, at the University of Leicester, 2002 [Reprint 2012 ed.] 9783110912609, 9783484391239

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Series Maior

LEXICOGRAPHICA Series Maior Supplementary Volumes to the International Annual for Lexicography Suppléments à la Revue Internationale de Lexicographie Supplementbände zum Internationalen Jahrbuch für Lexikographie

Edited by Sture Allén, Pierre Corbin, Reinhard R. K. Hartmann, Franz Josef Hausmann, Ulrich Heid, Oskar Reichmann, Ladislav Zgusta 123

Published in cooperation with the Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA) and the European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX)

Historical Dictionaries and Historical Dictionary Research Papers from the International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology, at the University of Leicester, 2002 Edited by Julie Coleman and Anne McDermott

Max Niemeyer Verlag Tübingen 2004

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.ddb.de abrufbar. ISBN 3-484-39123-5

ISSN 0175-9264

© Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH, Tübingen 2004 http://www. niemeyer. de Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Obersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Printed in Germany. Gedruckt auf alterungsbeständigem Papier. Druck: Laupp & Göbel GmbH, Nehren Einband: Verlags- und Industriebuchbinderei Nädele, Nehren

Table of Contents Introduction

iii

Dictionary History John Considine Du Cange: Lexicography and the Medieval Heritage

1

Reiki? Takeda Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS 0.5.4: A 15th Century Pedagogical Dictionary?

11

Ian Lancashire Lexicography in the Early Modern Period: the Manuscript Record

19

Olga Karpova Author's Lexicography with Special Reference to Shakespeare Dictionaries

31

Natascia Leonardi An Analysis of a Seventeenth Century Conceptual Dictionary with an Alphabetical List of Entries and a Network Definition Structure: John Wilkins' and William Lloyd's Alphabetical Dictionary (1668)

39

Rowena Fowler Text and Meaning in Richardson's Dictionary

53

Joan Beai An Autodidact's Lexicon: Thomas Spence's Grand Repository of the English Language (1775)

63

Julie Coleman The Third Edition of Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: Bookseller's Hackwork or Posthumous Masterpiece?

71

Werner Hüllen Roget's Thesaurus, deconstructed

83

Thora van Male From Incipit to Iconophor

95

Maria Pilar-Perea The History of a Multi-dialectal Catalan Dictionary: the Diccionari Català- Valencià-Balear

109

Gregory James Culture and the Dictionary: Evidence from the First European Lexicographical Work in China

119

ii Historical Dictionaries Antonette diPaolo Healey Polysemy and the Dictionary of Old English

137

Robert E. Lewis Aspects of Polysemy in the Middle English Dictionary

149

Eric Stanley Polysemy and Synonymy and how these Concepts were Understood from the Eighteenth Century onwards in Treatises, and Applied in Dictionaries of English

157

Tania Styles Culinary Exchanges: an Investigation of the Etymologies of some Loanwords in the Third Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary

185

Marijke Mooijaart Citations in the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal

201

Norman Blake Ordering a Historical Dictionary: the Example of Shakespeare's Informal English

213

Index

223

Introduction The papers collected in this volume were originally presented at the First International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology (ICHLL), held at the University of Leicester in July 2002, and organised by Julie Coleman, filling the gap created by the International Round Table Conferences in Florence in 1971 and Leiden in 1977 (Accademia della Crusca, 1973; Pijnenburg & F. De Tollenaere 1980).1 The purpose of the conference was to bring together scholars and academics from around the world working in the field of historical lexicography, whether as historical dictionary-researchers or as practising lexicographers. The papers are, accordingly, arranged in two sections, reflecting the distinction between those individuals working on the historical development of dictionaries and those considering the lexicological problems and challenges facing the lexicographer in attempting to represent as fully and justly as possible historical forms of the English language.

Dictionary History The historical dictionary studies span the period from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century and range across Europe and into China, but with a particular focus on English dictionaries. The papers in this section challenge and supplement the traditional view of the development of the English dictionary by addressing unpublished manuscripts, individual works and aspects of lexicography that have not previously received detailed scholarly attention. These papers collectively challenge our traditional lineal understanding of the development of English dictionaries, first, by taking a wider viewpoint than the narrowly linguistic, encompassing political, cultural, textual and practical considerations and, second, by widening the scope to include not just English monolingual dictionaries. John Considine shows how Du Cange's lexicographic work was a patriotic Francocentric enterprise, aimed at the recovery of French cultural heritage; that he was concerned to demonstrate that the French language derived mainly from Latin rather than from Greek or Hebrew; and that his two great dictionaries, Glossarium latinitatis (1678) and Glossarium graecitatis (1688) are still in use by scholars today. The following two essays deal with the importance of manuscripts, as opposed to the printed book tradition of lexicography. Reiko Takeda presents a detailed examination of Trinity MS 0.5.4, probably written in the 1430s, which contains a Latin monolingual lexicon, modelled on works such as the Catholicon, the Medulla grammatice and the Promptorium parvulorum, and places it in the context of English lexicography. Ian Lancashire takes a broader view and considers the neglected manuscript record in general in the Early Modern period, finding a staggeringly large number of previously unconsidered manuscript lexicons. He argues for the importance of manuscripts as documentary evidence for individuals' understanding of their own tongue and their sensitivity to changes in it. Lancashire charts the political, economic and religious pressures on the production of lexicons in this period and makes a persuasive case for The European Association for Lexicography (EURALEX) and Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA) conferences include historical dictionary research and historical lexicography among their wider remits, as do many general linguistics conferences.

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the inclusion of manuscripts as an additional documentary record in the history of lexicography. Olga Karpova and Natascia Leonardi focus on a wider context than the narrowly linguistic. Karpova considers 'author lexicography', that is, any type of reference work concerning the language of English writers: glossaries, concordances, lexicons, encyclopaedias, terminological and pronouncing dictionaries, and dictionaries of characters and place names. She concentrates on Shakespeare for her study, and charts the development of concordances from the eighteenth century through to the work done by Spevack and others in Munster in the 1970s to create a computer concordance to Shakespeare. Leonardi provides an analysis of John Wilkins' and William Lloyd's An Alphabetical Dictionary (1668), based on the principles of philosophical language, a dictionary that is also considered by Eric Stanley in his essay. Leonardi focuses on the interrelation between the Alphabetical Dictionary and the Tables of the Universal Philosophy, which are the second of the four parts of Wilkins' Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language (1668). By focusing on the concept 'science' and the related word 'knowledge', she demonstrates that the words in the Alphabetical Dictionary are defined by reference to the concepts contained in the Tables of the Universal Philosophy and thereby placed within the hierarchical structure of the classificatory system of the Essay. Rowena Fowler, Joan Beai and Julie Coleman focus on individual dictionaries published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Rowena Fowler considers Charles Richardson's New Dictionary of the English Language (1836-37) in the context of its illustrative quotations, examining the way in which this dictionary and others draw upon literary texts, sometimes serving as a kind of glossary to literary authors and sometimes serving as a compendium of their writings. She shows that Richardson often left the quotations to do the work of defining for him, so that they not only had to illustrate but also to establish meanings. Joan Beai examines Thomas Spence's Grand Repository of the English Language (1775), a pronouncing dictionary in which words are respelled in a phonetic script of Spence's own invention. Unlike Walker's pronouncing dictionary of 1791, Beai argues that Spence did not aim to teach 'correct' pronunciation but to devise a phonemic script for the purpose of spelling reform. Beai also argues that rather than simply taking over Johnson's words and definitions wholesale, Spence introduced his own definitions, particularly where his radicalism or his free-thinking beliefs could be brought to bear, and that he introduced some dialect words from his Tyneside home. Julie Coleman gives a detailed scholarly analysis of editions of Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785). She argues that the interleaved and annotated copy of the first edition, held in the British Library, is the source for Grose's second edition and so can be regarded as Grose's own working copy, demonstrating her case by an examination of several entries. However, Coleman argues that Partridge is mistaken in his contention that the third edition is also Grose's own work, compiled using the same method as the second, arguing instead that it was a booksellers' venture, designed to keep ahead of the competition. The two essays which follow, by Werner Hüllen and Thora van Male, consider aspects of lexicography that have not received a great deal of scholarly attention. Werner Hüllen considers the onomasiological (topical) tradition of lexicography, pointing out that this type of dictionary virtually disappeared after John Wilkins and reappeared in a modified form with Roget's Thesaurus (1852). Hüllen argues that Roget's innovation was to marry together the concept of an endless web of synonymy with the notion of a comprehensive ordering of the universe by ideas, and that, in effect, Roget's Thesaurus is an application of Lockean linguistic theory. Van Male considers ornamental dictionary illustration through a series of examples

Introduction

ν

from French dictionaries from the twelfth to the nineteenth century. She focuses particularly on iconophors (images whose distinctive feature consists of the letter which begins the name of its referent) in dictionaries printed in France in the nineteenth century and suggests that semantic analysis of iconophors, both synchronically and diachronically, would provide paratextual lexicographic information of a kind that has been largely neglected. The two final essays in this section move beyond English to other languages. Maria PilarPerea provides a history of the Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear (DCVB). Begun by Alcover, a Majorcan priest, in 1900, the DCVB recorded not only the Majorcan variety but also all the Catalan varieties of dialect in oral and written forms and was finally finished, thirty years after Alcover's death, in 1962, by Moll. Perea charts the development of the project, describes the distinctive features of the DCVB, and brings it up to date with a description of the electronic edition, which was completed in April 2003. Gregory James writes about early lexicographic work in China in the sixteenth century. Matteo Ricci, who arrived in China in 1582, and with Michele Ruggieri established the first Christian mission in China, compiled a glossary of Portuguese/Chinese words. James explores the history of Europeans' attempts to render the Chinese language in romanisations of its characters and representations of tones and breathings. James argues that the primary source for the headwords in the Ruggieri/Ricci glossary is the Dictionarium Latinolusitanicum, a Portuguese-Latin dictionary published in 1563 by Jéromino Cardoso.

Historical Dictionaries Essays in the second section are written by those engaged in the practice of historical lexicography or concerned with lexicological analysis. These papers discuss ongoing work on major period dictionaries and the methodological issues that these raise. They ask fundamental questions about the construction of historical dictionaries: How should they be ordered if not alphabetically? What are the citations for? Where does the border lie between polysemy and synonymy? In each case, the solution reached is considered in terms of its effect on our reading of the period or author discussed and involves a revision of current interpretations. The lexicological papers explore the enriching influence of languages on each other, further broadening and enhancing our understanding of lexical development. Their variety and specificity is testament to the complexity of linguistic borrowing and adaptation, using a wide variety of evidence from different areas of discourse. Antonette diPaolo Healey, Robert Lewis and Eric Stanley all consider the problem of polysemy to the practising lexicographer. Antonette diPaolo Healey describes the challenge at the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) project of identifying fine subdivisions of senses, the conflicting pull of wanting to generalize and so reduce polysemy on the one hand and of wanting to make distinctions and so increase polysemy on the other, and the worry of whether the personal and intuitive is being privileged as standard and common practice. An additional problem at the DOE is the uncertain date of most of its material, making historical sense development difficult. Robert Lewis considers the problem of polysemy in the Middle English Dictionary (MED) and distinguishes between a logical ordering of senses (from abstract or general to more specialized or technical) and a chronological ordering, though he points out that lack of data is always a problem for historical dictionaries adopting a chronological ordering. In the MED, he points out, senses are generally presented in logical rather than

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chronological sequence and he contrasts this with the OED. The OED, he argues, employs a developmental logic which assumes that the historical record and the natural or logical order would agree. The MED, by contrast, uses an order in arrangement of senses that suggests logical development, whether or not it is chronological. Eric Stanley considers the problem of where the border lies between polysemy and synonymy. He discusses the historical development of English synonymy through Wilkins, Piozzi and Crabb; the European tradition of ordering senses such that the concrete precedes any abstract, figurative or transferred senses; eighteenth and nineteenth century theories about the origin of language, including the biblical Adamic theory and Herder's theory that Hebrew is the most 'original' language. He finishes by arguing, somewhat polemically, that a headword in a dictionary is an etymological entity. Etymology is given primacy by the fact that, though a highly polysemous word may have widely divergent senses, a single etymology will bind them all together in a single entry. The next two essays consider different aspects of a dictionary entry: etymology and citations. Tania Styles gives an updated history of progress so far on OED3, concentrating particularly on the etymology of loanwords from French, and specifically the mouth-watering vocabulary of food and drink. For example, she traces the history of the word mangosteen through Portuguese and Dutch contact with the Malay peninsula and the word's subsequent entry into English through translations of late sixteenth century Dutch and French travel literature. Marijke Mooijaart focuses on the citations in the Woordenboek der Νederlandische Taal, giving a brief history of the publication of this dictionary up to its publication as a CDROM in 1995. She considers the citation corpus in terms of the quality of the citations themselves; the accessibility and usability of the electronic citations; and issues of representitativeness and diversity in the citation corpus. The final essay, by Norman Blake, considers methodological issues about the ordering of dictionaries and questions whether alphabetical sequence is the best way of ordering words in a historical dictionary where specific aspects of the development of English militate against such a method of ordering. He takes his example from Shakespeare's use of informal English and considers alternative ways of ordering words which would illuminate Shakespeare's meanings better than strict alphabetical sequence. He considers the advantages of placing words with the same morphological ending together, for example adjectives ending in or nouns deriving from adjectives ending in . Alternatively, he considers the case of phrasal verbs and puts forward a case for ordering these by their adverbial particle rather than, as is usually the case, by their verbal element. These papers reflect a high point in historical lexicography. A great deal of scholarly talent and energy has been expended on old dictionaries in recent years, generated by the realisation that old dictionaries contain information, not all linguistic, that cannot be found in other sources. The DOE and MED projects have also had an immense impact on our knowledge and understanding of the early history of the language. Jürgen Schäfer's (1989) legacy was to rewrite the history of English lexicography, and through that the history of the English language; the contributors to this volume are in the process of continuing this rewriting of both. As Norman Blake's essay demonstrates, the fruits of this research go far beyond the fields of lexicography and lexicology - modern editors of Shakespeare, for example, will need to take account of a vast array of new information about the language, largely as a result of the research carried out by the contributors to this volume. Following the first ICHLL, the International Society for Historical Lexicography and Lexicology (ISHLL) was set up (http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/jmc21/ishll.html). The society has an e-mailing list with over 120 subscribers worldwide, and a discussion group with over 70. At

Introduction

Vil

present, membership is free. The second ICHLL took place in Gargnano, Italy, in June 2004, attended by scholars familiar from the Leicester conference, as well as many new faces. It is hoped that this meeting will become a regular feature of the conference calendar, allowing scholars from many disciplines to learn from one another in their shared research interests. Julie Coleman & Anne McDermott 21/10/2004

References Accademia della Crusca (1973): Tavola rotonda sui grandi lessici storici, (Firenze, 3-5 maggio 1971). Firenze: Accademia della Crusca Pijnenburg W. & F. De Tollenaere (eds.) (1980): Proceedings of the Second International Round Table Conference on Historical Lexicography. - Dordrecht, Holland/Cinnaminson, NJ: Foris Publications Schäfer, J. (1989): Early modern English lexicography. - Oxford/New York: Clarendon/Oxford University Press

John Considine,

University of Alberta

DU CANGE: LEXICOGRAPHY AND THE MEDIEVAL HERITAGE'

The Professor was sitting at the end of his vegetable garden .... His head was buzzing with schemes. The first scheme was to work his passage to London as a bus conductor, where, perhaps they might be likely to have a set of Du Cange in the British Museum Reading Room (White 1946: 156).

The Professor is one of the central characters of T. H. White's novel Mistress Masham's Repose. He is too poor to afford a journey to London, and he has mislaid his own set of the Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis (henceforth the Glossarium latinitatis) published in 1678 by Charles Du Fresne, sieur Du Cange. Since he is anxious to determine the meaning of a post-classical Latin word, tripharium, he needs access to a good dictionary of that language variety; hence his interest in finding his way to a set of Du Cange, even if it means working his way to London as a bus conductor - or, as occurs to him a little later, asking the cook at the decaying great house in whose grounds he lives whether she happens to own a set (she does not). Eccentric as the Professor's schemes are, his instincts are quite right.2 When the Glossarium latinitatis was published in 1678, it was the most compendious single guide to the Latin vocabulary of medieval Europe, and in a revised version, it still is - or, at the most grudging assessment, it is still a dictionary which persons interested in medieval culture neglect at their peril.3 Moreover, Du Cange's lexicography went beyond Latin: his Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae graecitatis (henceforth the Glossarium graecitatis), published in 1688, is also still current. The carefully selected open-shelf collection in the successor to the British Museum Reading Room which the Professor hoped to visit, the St Paneras Reading Rooms of the British Library, includes Du Cange's Latin dictionary in its revised edition, and his Greek dictionary in a facsimile of the first edition, not as objects of study but as essential primary research tools. This paper will discuss an aspect of Du Cange's dictionary-making, but since the life of the lexicographer and the publication histories of his dictionaries are not subjects with which all lexicographers and metalexicographers are familiar, they should be rehearsed first.4 Charles Du

'

2

3 4

This paper was written with the assistance of a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, for which I am most grateful. It would not have been begun without the kindness of Robert Ireland, formerly of University College London, who generously took the time to introduce me to Du Cange many years ago, when I was a schoolboy developing an interest in Byzantine history, and of Paddy Considine, formerly of the same university, who discussed Du Cange's Latinity with me. Having said that, tripharium is not in Du Cange or, apparently, any other Latin dictionary. The word occurs as a hapax, almost certainly the product of scribal error, in Cambridge University Library MS Ii. 4. 26, a copy of an English adaptation of the bestiary called Physiologus, which White had begun to translate when he wrote Mistress Masham 's Repose·, he discusses its possible meanings in an appendix to his translation (White 1954: 269-70). For its place in the contemporary lexicography of post-classical Latin, see Sharpe (1996). The most recent separately published biography is still Feugère (1852/1971), but Esposito (1920-53) is more sharply analytical, and Favre (1887), with Hardouin (1887), gives a clearer bio-bibliographical account.

2

John Considine

Fresne was baptized on 18 December, 1610.5 He was the fifth son of Louis Du Fresne, sieur de Frédeval and du Cange, who had inherited a legal position in a town near Amiens. His mother, Hélène de Rely, who was also a member of an aristocratic family, died when Charles was three years old, apparently of puerperal fever. Charles was educated at the Jesuit college in Amiens, where he showed academic promise, and then studied law at Orléans, being admitted to the bar before the Parlement of Paris in 1631. In 1638, Louis Du Fresne died, and Charles inherited a house in Amiens and other property from him, together with his title of sieur Du Cange (idominus Du Cange in Latin, hence the supposition of one twentieth-century scholar that the Glossarium latinitatis was the work of one Dominique du Cange (Findlen 1990: 292 note 1). In the same year, he married a well-born woman ten years younger than himself, Catherine Du Bos, who brought him a dowry of 12 000 livres, and seven years later he purchased the lucrative post of Trésorier de France from his father-in-law, and thereby acquired the title of conseiller du Roi. Du Cange at thirty-five, then, might have been mistaken for a typical member of the noblesse de la robe, comfortably wealthy, suitably married, well connected. One anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, which suggests that there was more to him than that appears in an eighteenth-century source: "On a dit que, le jour de son mariage, du Cange étudia six ou sept heures." (Feugère 1852/1971: 8; cf. Pastoreau 1981: 508). Such stories grow in the telling: the nineteenth-century French medievalist Léon Gautier is said to have encouraged his students with the words "Remember, gentlemen, that the great Du Cange worked for fourteen hours on his wedding day" (Thompson 1942: 243). However Du Cange passed the hours on that particular day, he had certainly been doing antiquarian work for some years previously: he had researched, written, and emblazoned a genealogy of his mother's family when he was twenty, and during the 1630s he had written on heraldry and on Gaulish history, already showing wide erudition and keen critical ability in his studies (Bloch 1981: 513; 516-17). Only in 1657, however, did he publish a printed book, an edition of Geoffroy de Villehardouin's Old French history of the empire of Constantinople under the rule of the French crusaders, with supplementary material, including an extensive glossary. It was followed by an impressive series of printed books: a comparatively lightweight Briefre Histoire de l'Institution des Ordres Religieux in 1658; a Traité historique du chef de S. Jean-Baptiste, discussing the authenticity of a famous relic preserved at Amiens, in 1665; a big edition of Jean de Joinville's Histoire de S. Louys IX du nom roy de France in 1668; an edition of the twelfth-century Byzantine historian John Kinnamos and of the sixth-century Byzantine poet Paul Silentiarios in 1670; the Glossarium latinitatis in 1678; a folio on Byzantine history, the Historia Byzantina duplici commentario illustrata, in 1680; a contribution to a current controversy as to the antiquity of the Carmelite order in 1682; an edition of another twelfth-century Byzantine historian, John Zonaras, in 1686; the Glossarium graecitatis in 1688; and a posthumous edition of a seventh-century Byzantine chronicle, the so-called Chronicon Paschale, in the same year. Like other seventeenth-century polymaths such as Peiresc, Du Cange left a huge body of unpublished work, and some of this was sufficiently finished to be published over the next two hundred years. The Glossarium latinitatis is read today in revised editions. For a big dictionary, it has in fact been republished and revised quite frequently, which is further evidence of its continued currency (Leclerq 1920-53: cols. 1434-44; Bloch 1981: 532-33). Almost as soon as the first 5

This is usually given as the date of his birth, and perhaps he was born and baptized on the same day; it was certainly the date of his baptism (Bloch 1981: 514).

Du Cange: Lexicography and the Medieval

Heritage

3

Paris edition had been published in 1678, it was followed by a Frankfurt edition in 1679-81, and then another in 1710, neither of which, however, added greatly to it. A substantially revised and expanded new edition, almost twice the length of the original, was published by a group of Benedictines of the famously learned congregation of St Maur between 1733 and 1736 (and reprinted in Basle in 1762), with a four-volume supplement in 1766. A new edition by G. A. L. Henschel, based on that of the Maurists, appeared from the house of Didot between 1840 and 1850, and a final edition, by Léopold Favre, between 1883 and 1887. It is fair to say that these publications, even the last, were revised editions of the Glossarium latinitatis, not rewritten dictionaries founded upon it. Du Cange was not one of those lexicographers like Webster whose names remain on the title-pages of dictionaries which are no longer their own work. It is to Du Cange himself that the Glossarium latinitatis owes its remarkably extensive wordlist and its rich editorial material. This is usually supported by citation evidence, and this evidence is taken from varied and often very obscure sources; his breadth of reading in medieval Latin, both in manuscripts and printed books, was quite incredible. Du Cange had and acknowledged - forerunners such as the Englishman Sir Henry Spelman in the study of medieval Latin, and the Dutchman Joannes Meursius in the study of Byzantine Greek, but his dictionaries surpass theirs by a very wide margin. In fact, the greatness of his contributions to the lexicography both of medieval Latin and of Byzantine Greek makes it hard to resist the conclusion that Du Cange was one of the greatest of all lexicographers in the Western tradition, a figure of similar stature to Robert and Henri Estienne, Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Sir James Murray, and Sir William Craigie. The statement that Du Cange was a great lexicographer of Latin and Greek has been made before; the point to be discussed in the rest of this paper is rather different. It arises from a remark which Du Cange's great-nephew Jean-Charles Du Fresne D'Aubigni made as a summary of his scholarly achievement: "in the vastness of his reading and of his literary undertakings, he nevertheless obeyed the unities of subject and indeed of place: in other words, from his earliest years his studies were always directed towards the history of France." 6 Now, the claim that his work was essentially a patriotic, Francocentric enterprise is on the face of it a remarkable one to have made about a Latinist and Byzantinist. Similar statements are certainly made about the lexicographers of vernacular languages. "I have devoted this book, the labour of years, to the honour of my country," as Johnson put it in the preface of his dictionary, a theme taken up by David Garrick in the often-reprinted verses which include the boast that "Johnson, well-arm'd, like a hero of yore | Has beat forty French, and will beat forty more!" (Boswell 1791/1980: 215; for the reprints, see Knapp 1955: item 220). A century later, the foreword to the first volume of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche taal refers to the dictionary as a "work of the fatherland," and to the patriotic labours of the lexicographer, the "difficulties with which we had to struggle to fulfil our great task ... the task which we perhaps rather boldly, yet in cheerful trust - accepted in service of the fatherland." 7 Forty years 6

7

"Dans l'immensité de ses lectures et de ses travaux littéraires n'avoit cependant qu'une unité de sujet, et même une unité de lieu, c'est-à dire, que dès son plus bas âge il a toujours eu pour objet l'Histoire de France dans toutes ses parties et dans tous ses tems" (Mémoire 1752: 7). de Vries (1882) i-ii, promising to describe the making of "dit vaderlandsche werk ... eene aangelegenheid van nationaal belang" and to explain "met welke zwarigheden wij te worstelen hebben in het volbrengen onzer groote taak ... der taak, die wij - misschien al te stout, maar in blijmoedig vertrouwen - in dienst van het vaderland hebben aanvaard." I am indebted to Peter Midgley, of the University of Alberta, for the translation.

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Considine

on from that, the Spectator observed of what is now the Oxford English Dictionary that "all who are able should order Dr. Murray's magnificent Dictionary," adding that "it is a patriotic act to order it," and a periodical called The Nation proclaimed that the same dictionary "is a work upon which every member of the English nation can rely with confidence, and of which he can speak with just pride." 8 The ways in which dictionaries are perceived as national monuments or national treasures, and the more general relationship between the making of dictionaries and the making of heritage, make an interesting field of inquiry. But it is one thing, albeit already more than a little problematic, to call a dictionary of Dutch a work which serves the Dutch fatherland, or to call a dictionary of English a credit to the English nation. Du Cange's dictionaries are not dictionaries of French. How can they be "directed towards the history of France"? Can Du Cange, like the makers of the nineteenth-century national dictionaries, be seen as engaged in the recovery or the making of cultural heritage? One place at which to begin the argument that he can be seen doing exactly this is the fine engraved frontispiece of the Glossarium latinitatis. In the background of this composition, ancient Rome, adorned with obelisks and fine buildings, is burning. The Pantheon is surrounded by flames. In the middle distance is the figure of a man who has climbed a ladder to deface an inscription. Near the foot of the ladder, heavily cloaked figures, clutching large books, are in flight. One of them has been stopped by a soldier with a drawn sword, and turns towards him with an expression of anger and fear. More books lie on the ground near his feet. In front of him, two other figures are carrying books, but not to save them: the books are piled on the sort of stretcher used for carrying building materials, and the men are approaching a great fire attended by soldiers, who are throwing books into the flames, and poking them further into the fire with their spears. All this is backdrop; in the foreground, a female figure sits by the recent ruins of what was evidently a splendid building, her face partly covered, weeping. Her name is written at her feet: LATINITAS. Above her is a broken column, whose base is inscribed GLOSSARIUM adscriptores MED LE & INFIMA LATINITATIS. The scene in this frontispiece must be the sack of Rome by the Goths. Nothing will ever be the same again after this: the literature of the ancient world will hereafter always be fragmentary, and the fabric of ancient Rome will hereafter always be broken. But the picture, despite the weeping of the personified Latinitas, is not one which the seventeenth-century reader need take as unrelievedly tragic. The Pantheon is surrounded by flames in the picture, but it is untouched by them; it survived the sack of Rome, and has survived since. The obelisks which adorned ancient Rome had, spectacularly, been re-erected a century before Du Cange's work. And the broken column stands on the same base as an apparently whole one. The fabric of Latinity has, this frontispiece states, been damaged, but not altogether destroyed. The Glossarium latinitatis is being presented as by no means a dictionary of a dead language. This point is made again and again in the text. For one thing, the dictionary uses Latin, good classicizing Latin, as its defining language. It has a long preface written in Latin, an essay of great power and beauty; one eighteenth-century critic remarked of Du Cange that "the learned prefaces of his dictionaries are proof of a génie philosophique, and are in their genre the best

8

Both are quoted in an Oxford University Press announcement of the completion of volumes for the range Α - K (March 1902) preserved in Falconer Madan's collection of OED papers now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, shelfmark 30254 c. 2.

Du Cange: Lexicography and the Medieval Heritage

5

one can read for their profundity and their style." 9 This preface is not only an original composition in Latin, but also a catena of borrowings from other Latin authors, classical, patristic, and modern: Du Cange quotes Quintilian and St Augustine and St Jerome, Arnobius and Sir Thomas Smith, building their words into the structure of his own argument neatly and congruently, making it clear that he belongs to the same tradition as these authors, and writes their language, and so represents the continued survival of that language. With hindsight, Du Cange's age may appear to have been one in which the Latin tradition was dying at last, but in that respect hindsight is at odds with many contemporary perceptions. As late as the 1770s, Samuel Johnson would comment critically on an epitaph in English that "the inscription should have been in Latin, as every thing intended to be universal and permanent, should be" (Boswell 1785/1924:258). Furthermore, in its account of medieval Latin, the Glossarium latinitatis describes the language of many of the living institutions of Europe. Du Cange lived in a society whose laws and political arrangements had been shaped in Latin. As he remarked in his preface, "in our own country, France, it continued to be the case that both public and private records and most judgements of the highest courts were nearly always written down in the Latin language; this ended rather recently, in the reign of François I."10 The lived experience recorded by the vocabulary of medieval Latin landholding and administration underlay his own lived experience as landowner and administrator. And, thirdly, the French language was derived from Latin. That was not quite as obvious a point in the seventeenth century as it is now; in his preface, Du Cange needed explicitly to state that "I shall not dwell upon those who argue that the greater number of the vernacular languages owe their origins to Greek," and to add that "those who derive nearly all the vernaculars from Hebrew have no more right to a hearing."" The stories with which Du Cange was understandably unwilling to engage were persistent: a century later, in the preface to his great Swedish etymologicon, Johann Ihre was still obliged to go over the same ground, observing sadly that "it has indeed been a characteristic of many great men that, if they are unusually well-versed in a language, they desire eagerly to derive all others from it. As whatever Midas touched became gold, so whatever came under the hand of [Paul] Pezron thereby became Celtic ..." and so on.12 But Du Cange was clear that the French language was descended from the Latin language. So, the study of post-classical Latin not only illuminated the history of French institutions, but of the origins of the French language itself: "from those words which we call barbaric, there often comes material from which much of scholarly interest can be gathered, bearing both on the institutions and manners of our ancestors and also

9

10

11

12

"Les doctes Préfaces de ses Glossaires sont encore preuve d'un génie philosophique, et sont en leur genre, ce qu'on peut lire de plus beau pour le fond et pour le style" (Mémoire 1752: 1). "In Gallia nostra sic obtinuit, ut et acta publica ac privata plerique et suprema Curiarum iudicia, Latino fere idiomate semper describerentur, quod serius desitum Francisco I. regnante" (Du Cange 1678: xxxii). "lis porro non immoror, qui plerasque ex vulgaribus Linguis Graecae ortus suos debere contendimi... Ñeque potion iure audiendi illi qui omnes fere vulgares Linguas ab Hebraica accersunt" (Du Cange 1678: xvi). "Ea vero multorum magnorumque Virorum indoles fuit, ut si qua in Lingua egregie versati fuerant, eo omnia pertrahere lubenter voluerint. Ut quicquid MIDAS attigit, aurum fiebat, ita quicquid sub manus PEZRONLL venit, Celticum illico erat..." (Ihre 1769: ii).

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on the uncovering of the origins of common words.'" 3 Du Cange's words here sum up the understanding of the importance of post-classical Latin for the history of French which was being developed by several of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries, for instance Gilles Ménage (cf. Droixhe 1994). Writing Latin which conformed to the standards of classical Latin, Du Cange represented and enacted a learned tradition of continuity with the past; and, speaking French, he represented and enacted a popular, organic continuity with the same past. However, this continuity should not be overstated. There was a real tension in his work and thought between two possible narratives of the history of the Latin language. On the one hand, since the high literary Latin of the late Republic and the early Empire had so much prestige, it was possible to see a decline from its purity to the language of the early Middle Ages. On the other, it was possible to see the same change as a creative transformation of classical Latin through vulgar Latin to the Romance vernaculars. This tension between narratives of decline and of progress keeps Du Cange's long, brilliant preface moving to and fro for page after page of folio. So, for instance, he exclaims "No wonder if in the Carolingian age, or a little before, the Latin language should have been so befouled successively in France, Italy, and Spain, since it had been so many times polluted by the flood of the barbarians.'" 4 The texts written in early medieval Latin, he continues, would take an Oedipus to sort out their obscurities. But then the discussion moves from the language of Carolingian France to what Du Cange calls the lingua limosina, in other words Old Occitan. Having touched on the question of its origins, he continues by remarking that "that elegant language was considered so richly expressive, cultivated, and refined that hardly any area survived into which it was not introduced, given above all that in the courts of princes the Provençal poets were held in high regard, and their poems, being endowed with singular genius, were r e a d j u s t about everywhere.'" 5 By this point, Du Cange's account of the language varieties which succeeded classical Latin has taken him to what we understand as the immediate origins of the Renaissance. Is his narrative, then, to be summed up as one of deterioration or rebirth? Du Cange really did not know for certain. His preface is, among other things, a vivid self-portrait of a lexicographer trying to understand, on the basis of the magnificently extensive reading distilled in his dictionary, whether or not he has a right to be proud of his cultural heritage. The care and intelligence and uncertainty here are surely very recognizable, and moving. In the end, his sense of growth triumphs over his sense of decline. Neologisms such as those which make some medieval authors so difficult, he reflects, are necessary in theology and philosophy; but also in medicine; and in sciences such as architecture, where the vocabulary available in Vitruvius is limited and sometimes obscure; and, for instance, in occupations such as falconry, for which there are no ancient texts. The linguistic changes of the early middle ages are fundamentally signs that the Latin language, barbarians or no barbarians, was alive, signs of growth, of accommodation to lived experience. This narrative of growth, moreover, 13

14

15

"Ex ipsis, quae barbara appellamus, vocabulis occurreret persaepe nescio quid unde plurimum perciperetur eruditionis, tum ad instituta moresque majorum nostrorum, tum ad vulgarias vocum origines retegendas" (Du Cange 1678: lv). "Non mirum igitur si Carolinis saeculis, vel paulo ante, in Gallia, Italia, et Hispania, sic deturpata deinceps fuerit Latina Lingua, quae barbarorum illuvie toties foedata fuit" (Du Cange 1678: xxvi). "Ea quippe Lingua nitida adeo, florida, culta ac polita habita est, ut nulla fere extiterit regio, in quam non immissa fuerit, cum maxime in Principium aulis magno in pretio haberentur Poetae Provinciales, eorumque poemata, ut genio quasi dotata singulari, ubique fere legerentur" (Du Cange 1678: xxix).

Du Cange: Lexicography and the Medieval Heritage extends to the present day. To his account of the Latin origin of French, Du Cange adds an account of its medieval diffusion. French was, he reflects, spoken in the Byzantine empire during the period of Frankish rule there, and he notes particularly that the Courtenay emperors who reigned in Constantinople from 1205 to 1261 were of French descent. In another work, he traces the pedigrees of a number of the families, Greek, French, Albanian, and Turkish, who have played a part in Byzantine history (Du Cange 1680). Here we start to see the relevance of Byzantine Greek to a project of the glorification of the French cultural heritage (cf. Spieser 2000). It will be remembered that Du Cange's first printed book, completed some years before the great dictionary projects, was an edition of Villehardouin's Histoire de l'empire de Constantinople sous les empéreurs François, which came out of the imprimerie royale in 1657 as a grand folio, dedicated to the king, with the rather splendid opening "Sire, I do not present foreign lands or new worlds to Your Majesty when I offer him The empire of Constantinople."16 Indeed, other French scholars had been offering bits of the Byzantine empire to the king's great servants from 1648 onwards, as monumental editions of previously unpublished Byzantine texts rolled off the royal press in the series called the "Byzantine du Louvre," making these texts part of French royal prestige, part of French cultural heritage, just as had been done with the classical texts printed at the imprimerie royale with the fine Greek types called the grecs du roi in the previous century. Another of Du Cange's early printed works, the Traité historique du chef de S. lean Baptiste of 1665, may be cited here: it argues that a relic preserved at the cathedral of Amiens is genuinely the head of St John the Baptist, removed from Constantinople during the period of Frankish rule by a crusader whose family lived near Amiens. This brings Du Cange's interest in Byzantine antiquities right home: the head displayed in his native town is an object inherited from the French empire in Constantinople, and its former Byzantine owners are therefore a link between contemporary France and sacred history, between Amiens and the man who baptized Jesus. The head came to France because French crusaders went to Constantinople. France was, then, not only a beneficiary of the Greek heritage but a suitable reinvigorator of that heritage, by crusade as well as by scholarship. As early as the edition of Villehardouin in 1657, Du Cange was urging Louis XIV to reconquer Constantinople, and the same point is made by the frontispiece to the Glossarium graecitatis three decades later. There, Athene sits in the foreground, helmeted, and holding a shield on which the title of the dictionary is inscribed. Three books lie closed at her feet, identified on their tail-edges as the works of Aristides, Isocrates, and Demosthenes. The reason why these names are chosen is surely that they can be associated with the independence of Greece: an Aristides (not in fact the writer of that name) commanded against the Persians at Plataea, Isocrates' Philippus calls for war on the Persian empire, Demosthenes' Philippics oppose the Macedonian hegemony. Behind Athene, a battle is going on; cannon are firing (so this is a modern battle), and some of the figures are wearing turbans. The point need not be laboured. Du Cange's work on Byzantine Greek, which culminated in the Glossarium graecitatis, was part of a whole web of historical scholarship and polemic whose tendency, and even design, was to bring the Byzantine heritage to France. Indeed, Du Cange's dictionaries bring home the whole of the medieval French world to seventeenth century France, including the empire of Constantinople, the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Cyprus, and the kingdom of England. This last Francophone outpost is given 16

"Sire, le ne presente pas à Vostre Maiesté des terres étrangères, et de nouueaux mondes, quand ie luy offre l'Empire de Constantinople" (Du Cange 1657: sig. à3r).

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particular attention in the preface to the Glossarium latinitatis, ending with particular praise to the English antiquaries who have worked on the histories of institutions and of language: Of those indeed who have undertaken to illustrate obsolete varieties of their own languages, worthy in the first place of particular praise are the English, who have expended so much sweat in the explication of the Saxon language, which was for a long time prevalent in nearly all of Great Britain, that without their sleepless nights we would hardly comprehend the laws of the AngloSaxon Kings, even those which were subsequently translated by ancient writers into Latin, since they, and even the laws of the Norman Kings, are everywhere sprinkled with Anglo-Saxon words and formulae. Those who have exercised themselves with the greatest success in this field are the most learned men Henry Spelman, Meric Casaubon, son of the great Isaac, and John [Du Cange meant William] Somner, and others, on whose commentaries we frankly acknowledge that we have extensively drawn, both in interpreting the English writers and in revealing the origins of words of our own.17

Here is a grand and generous picture of the recovery, certainly of a French cultural heritage, but also of a greater European heritage in which French and English have their part to play, in which the spider's web of philology, always expanding to make new connections, has for part of its mesh all the languages within Du Cange's grasp, the Latin and Greek of his great dictionaries, the Old English on which William Somner worked, the Old French of Villehardouin's chronicle, the Old Occitan which became such a noble vehicle for so much poetry in the courts of high medieval Europe. By this stage in the argument of this paper, it does seem clear that Jean-Charles du Fresne d'Aubigni was justified in his claims for the tendency of his great-uncle's work, the dictionaries and all, to illuminate the history of France. Indeed, the case of Du Cange provides support for a larger argument, that historical lexicography may often - may always - be in the business of reconstructing a heritage, rebuilding a cultural homeland for the lexicographer, a Heimat, a land of lost content in which he or she may never walk, but whose blue remembered hills can be mapped in a dictionary. Sometimes the loss may be immediate and personal, like that which the Canadian Mennonite scholar and storyteller Jack Thiessen evokes in the preface to his Mennonitisches Wörterbuch, compiled at a time when Canadian Mennonites were turning away from their distinctive variety of Low German, away, that is, from Plautdietsch, towards English: "This modest effort has one goal: the goal of promoting a unique sense of Gemeinschaft which was guided by a peculiar dialect star and which star accompanied a world which I experienced and of which one could say: it still had a semblance of happy order" (Thiessen 1977: 8). Sometimes a personal loss may evoke much more distant losses, losses which took place long before the lexicographer was born, as in the case of one of the English scholars praised by Du Cange, William Somner, who laments at the beginning of his dictionary of Old English the iconoclastic despoilment in very recent years of Canterbury Cathedral, the Anglo-Saxon foundation which he loved so dearly, but goes on, not to document the ruined 17

"Ex iis vero qui Linguas suas obsoletas illustrare conati sunt, praecipuam imprimis laudem merentur Angli, qui in Saxonica, quae in tota fere majori Britannia diu obtinuit, enucleanda, ita insudarunt, ut absque eorum vigiliis, Anglo-Saxonum Regum Leges, etiam quae Latio subinde donatae sunt a veteris Scriptoribus, haud perciperemus, cum eiusce Linguae vocabulis, ut formalibus, ubique aspersae sint, quemadmodum etiam Regum Normannicorum: in qua quidem palaestra maxima cum laude versati sunt viri eruditissimi Henricus Spelmannus, Emericus Casaubonus Magni Isaaci filius, Joannes Somnerus, aliique, ex quorum Commentariis hausisse nos multa ingenue agnoscimus, tum ad Anglos Scriptores illustrandos, tum etiam ad vocabulorum nostrorum origines retegendas" (Du Cange 1678: xx).

Du Cange: Lexicography and the Medieval

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images, but the language of the first generations of worshippers at Canterbury, Old English (Somner 1659: sig. a4r and passim). Sometimes the echoes are more distant still, but I think they are still there: somewhere in the imagination of the historical lexicographer, encouraging her or him to do good work, there is always that sense of heritage to be reconstructed, and therefore of heritage lost. A character in Dickens's novel Hard Times, the rather colourless Mrs Gradgrind, says one unforgettable thing as she lies dying and is asked whether she is in pain: "I think there's a pain somewhere in the room ... but I couldn't positively say that I have got it." The historical lexicographer, I would like to propose, characteristically works with the sense that there is a loss in the room, even when she or he is working on a subject as apparently remote as Du Cange's were from him. This paper began with a user of dictionaries searching for help from the historical lexicographer, so it is perhaps appropriate that it should end with the historical lexicographer searching, conscious of a loss.

References

(a) Cited Dictionaries Du Cange, C. (1678): Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediae et Inflmae Latinitatis. - Paris: typis Gabrielis Martini, prostat apud Ludovicum Billaine. (1688): Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediae et Inflmae Graecitatis. - Paris: apud Anissonios, Joan. Posuel., & Claud. Rigaud. Ihre, J. (1769): Glossarium Suiogothicum. - Uppsala: typis Edmannianis. Somner, W. (1659): Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum. - Oxford: excudebat Guliel. Hall, pro Authore. Thiessen, J. (1977): Mennonite Low-German Dictionary /Mennonitisches Wörterbuch. - Marburg: N. G. Elwert.

(b) Other Literature Bloch, D. (1981): 'Charles Du Cange (1610-1688): Exposition Organisée a l'Occasion du Tricentenaire du Glossarium Mediae et Inflmae Latinitatis par la Bibliothèque Nationale.' - In: Y. Lefevre (ed.): La Lexicographie du Latin Médiéval et ses Rapports avec les Recherches Actuelles sur la Civilisation du Moyen-Age, Paris 18-21 Octobre 1978 (Colloques internationales du CNRS 589), 509-47. Paris: CNRS. Boswell, J. (1785/1924): Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Ed. R. W. Chapman. - London: Oxford University Press. (1791/1980): Life of Johnson. Ed. R. W. Chapman. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Vries, M. (1982): 'Inleiding.' - In: M. de Vries (ed.): Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal. Deel 1, i-xcvi. Gravenhage and Leiden etc.: M. Nijhoff et al. Droixhe, D. (1994): 'Ménage et le Latin Vulgaire ou Tardif.' - In: R. Baum et al. (eds.): Lingua et Traditio: Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und der neueren Philologien: Festschrift für Hans Helmut Christmann zum 65. Geburtstag, 143-64. Tübingen: Narr. Du Cange, C. (1657): dedicatory epistle. - In: G. de Villehardouin, Histoire de l'empire de Constantinople sous les Empereurs François. Ed. C. Du Cange. Paris: de l'imprimerie royale. (1680): Historia Byzantina duplici commentario illustrata. - Paris: apud Ludovicum Billaine.

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Esposito, M. (1920-53): 'Du Cange (Charles du Fresne, sieur).' - In: F. Cabrol & H. Leclerq (eds.): Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie. Vol. 4, cols. 1654-1660. Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané. Favre, L. (1887): 'Notice sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de Charles Dufresne du Cange.' - In: C. Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis. Ed. L. Favre. Vol. 9, i-xi. Niort: L. Favre. Feugère, L. (1852/1971): Étude sur la Vie et les Ouvrages de du Cange. - Geneva: Slatkine Reprints. Findlen, P. (1990): 'Jokes of Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: the Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern Europe.' - Renaissance Quarterly Ah, 292-331 Hardouin, M. H. (1887): 'Liste des Ouvrages de du Cange.' - In: C. Du Cange, Glossarium Latinitatis. Ed. L. Favre. Vol. 9, xi-xviii. Niort: L. Favre. Knapp, M. E. (1955): A Checklist of Verse by David Garrick. - Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press for the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. Leclerq, H. (1920-53): 'Latin.' - In: F. Cabrol & H. Leclerq (eds.): Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie. Vol. 8, cols. 1422-1528. Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané. Mémoire (1752): Mémoire sur les Manuscrits de M. Du Cange. - N. p. Pastoreau, M. (1981): 'Du Cange Héraldiste [and ensuing discussion].' - In: Y. Lefevre (ed.): La Lexicographie du Latin Medieval et ses Rapports avec les Recherches Actuelles sur la Civilisation du Moyen-Age, Paris 18-21 Octobre 1978 (Colloques internationales du CNRS 589), 501-08. Paris: CNRS. Sharpe, R. (1996): 'Vocabulary, word formation, and lexicography.' - In: F. A. C. Mantello & A. G. Rigg (eds.): Medieval Latin: an Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, 93-105. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Spieser, J.-M. (2000): 'Du Cange and Byzantium.' - In: R. Cormack & E. Jeffreys (eds.): Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium through British Eyes, 199-210. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Thompson, J. W. (1942): 'The Age of Mabillon and Montfaucon.' - American Historical Review 47, 225-44. White, T. H. (1946): Mistress Masham's Repose. - New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (1954): The Book of Beasts. - London: Jonathan Cape.

Reiko Takeda, Institute of English Studies, University of London CAMBRIDGE, TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY MS 0.5.4: A FIFTEENTHCENTURY PEDAGOGICAL DICTIONARY?

Introduction The present paper considers the fifteenth-century dictionary in the Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS 0.5.4 (henceforth it will be referred to as the Trinity MS).1 In the context of English lexicography, it is not one of the known Latin and English bilingual compilations such as Medulla Grammatice, Ortus Vocabulorum, Promptorium Parvulorum or Catholicon Anglicum.2 Hunt (1991: 76) refers to it as "an enormous alphabetical wordbook, 'Alma', with frequent English entries". It had been wrongly described as the "Catholicon of Jacobus Januensis" by Skeat (1877: 3). Although this had been put right by M. R. James in his Descriptive Catalogue (1902, vol. 3, no. 1285), the fact that the dictionary could not be categorized as the Balbus' Catholicon or the other Latin and English compilations resulted in its omission from the studies of medieval English dictionaries hitherto. Perhaps the fact that it is a Latin-Latin dictionary makes it less interesting for many. Despite its many remarkable features, the fifteenth-century Latin dictionary in the Trinity MS (fols 96-275) is lexicographically basic and for this reason also it has been excluded from discussions of late medieval dictionaries. The purpose of this paper is not to scrutinize its lexicographical features, but rather to emphasize the dictionary's import in the history of English lexicography and in the context of fifteenth-century learning in England.

Background to the Manuscript It is thought that the Trinity MS belonged to the College of St Mary Magdalen in Battlefield, located near Shrewsbury.3 It was a royal foundation, endowed in 1410 by Henry IV to pray for the souls of those slain at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 (Thomson 1979: 15, 166-7). The College was dissolved in 1548 and by the seventeenth century the manuscript was in the hands of Thomas Philipps of Dariaston, as his name appears in the manuscript with dates 1662, 1667 and 1674 (Thomson 1979: 166, 168). Before the manuscript was given to Trinity College Library, Cambridge in 1738, it formed a part of the Gale collection.

1

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3

I am grateful to the editor, Dr Julie Coleman and to the anonymous reviewer for the comments on the earlier version of this paper. All errors and omissions remain with the author. For a survey of some fifteenth-century English dictionaries, see Stein (1981; 1985). See also McCarren (1993) for revised scholarship concerning the Bristol fragment. There are printed editions of Promptorium Parvulorum (Way 1865; Mayhew 1908) and Catholicon Anglicum (Heritage 1881). There is a facsimile edition of the printed version of Ortus Vocabulorum (1500) by Alston (1968). The suggestion that the manuscript belonged to Battlefield College was made by M. R. James on the basis that documents pertaining to Battlefield College are copied on fol. 294v in a later hand. See Gaydon (1973) for a history of the Battlefield College.

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It is further suggested by Thomson that the manuscript was probably a royal gift, a "presentation or dedication volume" (1979: 167-8) because of the quality of the manuscript.4 It is evident that the manuscript was professionally produced, for it employs a trained hand and quality illumination, which is unusual for a late medieval teaching book. Thus Thomson concludes that "the manuscript itself is a large scale production worthily reflecting the royal endowment" (1979: 15).

Important Features The manuscript stands out when compared to other English grammar books from the fifteenth century, for it is unusually large for a medieval teaching book measuring about 42 χ 27 centimetres containing 295 folios. ! As pointed out above, when compared to typical muchhandled textbooks of the period,6 the Trinity MS is highly ornate and remains in a good condition. While this is true, if the manuscript is considered in the context of some earlier wellknown Latin compilations such as Balbus' Catholicon and Hugutio's Derivationes, then its size is quite unremarkable. Moreover, medieval manuscripts of the Catholicon are quite ornate, and in this tradition, the decorative features of the Trinity MS would not be considered exceptional. 7 Although excluded from various studies of early English dictionaries, other features of the Trinity MS dictionary have attracted comment. For example, concerning the content, Miner (1990: 136) states: This manuscript is the most comprehensive, containing examples of virtually every aspect of Latin grammar as well as material on arithmetic and solid geometry. Two items are of special interest: the complete text, minus the introduction, of the ubiquitous grammar text in verse, the Doctrinale, written around the end of the twelfth century by Alexander Villa Dei of Normandy, and a collection of some forty-six model letters inspired by a severely condensed form of the Practica Dictaminis of Lawrence of Aquileia, who is thought to have been teaching at Paris around 1300. As noted above, comprehensiveness is its key feature. In addition, the inclusion of the Doctrinale and Lawrence of Aquileia's treatise on dictamen with the model letters is 4

5 6

7

The aspect of the manuscript as the foundation volume is not confirmed, however. Dr Ian Doyle suggests that there were two scribes for Trinity MS 0.5.4; "the first scribe doing most of the work and its w (simplified) suggesting the 1430s" (personal communication). The idea of a royally commissioned dedication volume seems less likely if the manuscript was produced in the 1430s. Also, according to Dr Kathleen Scott, the illuminated borders can be dated to c. 1430-1440 (personal communication). A recent exciting discovery made by Dr Scott is that some borderwork by the limner of the Trinity MS 0.5.4 is found in British Library, MS Royal 17 D VI, a copy of Thomas Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes. The border sprays by the same limner are attached to a miniature of Hoccleve (?) presenting his book to the future King Henry V. I am most grateful to Dr Doyle and Dr Scott for their comments and valuable information regarding the manuscript. See Thomson (1979) for the details of the manuscript. Typical examples include London, British Library Additional MS 37075; Cambridge, University Library Additional MS 2830 and Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 88. Decorated manuscripts of the Catholicon include: London, British Library Additional MS 25722 and Cambridge, University Library MS Dd. I. 31 (not listed in Marigo 1936). The manuscript of the complete text of Practica Dictaminis of Lawrence of Aquileia (London, British Library, MS Harley 3593) is also illuminated and is highly ornate. For a list of Catholicon manuscripts, see Marigo (1936).

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considered to be special.8 The latter feature was remarked on by Richardson (1939: 436), and Thomson also notes its significance: Dictamen as such is hardly represented in the manuscripts. The treatises at Trinity (25-7) deal with this subject, but the manuscript is something of a special case. It provides what appears to be a deliberate selection of works to cover the whole field of elementary education and is more a reference book than a working copy which would reflect what was actually taught. It is however one of the few manuscripts we are considering to contain more advanced texts and to show some sophistication in its handling of grammar, and it may be that dictamen was studied by the older pupils in some schools (1979: 29).

Its role as a reference book is noted above and I will return to this point later. I would argue that its exhaustive intent is also signalled by the inclusion of a full-size dictionary. The manuscript contains other works such as Ars Minor of Donatus, Disticha Catonis, Synonyma and Equivoca attributed to John of Garland and treatises on rhetoric, dictamen and orthography. 9 As a reference work, it does not seem to have been handled heavily as some of the teaching books compiled by the grammar masters although it contains annotations indicating its use.

Significance of the Trinity M S Dictionary Its interest from the perspective of English lexicography is that although it is a Latin monolingual dictionary modelled on works such as the Catholicon, it contains numerous English definitions. It closely resembles the Catholicon, for the dictionary in the Trinity MS opens with Alma, exactly as does Balbus' work. At the end of the dictionary, there is a long list of more than 60 classical and medieval sources that the compiler claims to have used.10 The list seems long when compared with other works, for example, in the preface to the Elementarium, Papias gives a list less than half the length of the Trinity MS (Daly and Daly 1964: 233). Therefore, the dictionary in the Trinity MS is not the Catholicon, and it contains some entries not found in the Catholicon. Also, some descriptions in the Catholicon are shortened in the Trinity MS. For example, in the entry for Ab in the Trinity MS, the Latin 'preposicio' is followed by English (an ce fro), continued by an abbreviated version of the comments (regarding the rules for using ab) found in the Catholicon. The extent of detail given in the English definitions of the Trinity MS is very similar to that of the Medulla Grammatice, consisting of just a few words of English. The amount of the grammatical information given regarding the headword varies from word to word. The entries with the English definitions tend to contain little or no grammatical information as with the Medulla whereas the Latin definitions sometimes contain more grammatical information. The lemmata are mostly in ABC order. Only about a tenth of the entries have some English

8

9 10

There are printed editions of the Doctrinale by Reichling (1893) and the treatise on dictamen by Capdevilla (1930). See also Jensen (1973) for a list of manuscripts containing the works of Lawrence of Aquileia. See Thomson (1979) for the full list of contents of Trinity MS 0.5.4. It lists lexicographical works and authors of grammatical texts such as Brito, John of Garland, Hugutio, Catholicon, Doctrinale, Isidore, Kilwardby, Papias, Priscian and Varrò as well as authors on medical and herbal texts. See the James' Catalogue for a full list.

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14

definitions," and this leads to the question, why only some entries contain English. The answer probably lies in the source of the lemmata and their English definitions. Based on my comparisons using the Medulla Grammatice, it is found that there is a striking correlation between some of the lemmata followed by the English word(s) in the Trinity MS and those found in the Medulla Grammatice, although not all of the Medulla definitions appear in the Trinity MS. It is therefore likely that they originate in some Latin-English word-list, which was then used by the compiler of the Medulla Grammatice and the Trinity MS dictionary. Apart from some variation in scribal spelling, some of the Latin lemmata and the corresponding English sections are almost identical in both dictionaries. Some examples include: Adagonista: a man of lawe Ama: he that muche loueth Amabo: a louely worde Amasius: a leman Amfora: a tankard

Some English definitions appear alongside the Latin but some entries contain English word(s) only, indicating a departure from the practice of glossing Latin texts. The inclusion of English definitions continues throughout the full dictionary and is systematic, for these are not glosses of English words added later to expound on the Latin, but the English descriptions appear as a part of the original definition in the same hand. In some cases, the English is found in the same hand alongside a definition from the Catholicon as shown below. Catholicon: Abestis intestina hostiarum aspiciens Trinity MS: Abestis intestina hostiarum aspiciens / et ance a gyller of bestys.

The Trinity MS contains some lemmata containing only the English meaning, as in: Abecula le ancc the bake of a knyf 2

Although Medulla Grammatice is well known as a Latin-English dictionary, it is a hybrid of Latin-Latin dictionary and Latin-English vocabulary, for not all dictionary entries have English definitions. The scope of the Trinity MS is more extensive compared to the Medulla as it contains about 25,000 entries, compared to the Medulla's 17,000-20,000. This is one reason for which the use of English is less prominent in the Trinity MS compared to the Medulla - for if one added 8,000 odd further Latin entries to the Medulla, this would result in a lexicographical work which is similar to the size of the dictionary in the Trinity MS.

11

12

Gneuss also estimates that "of the c. 25,000 entries contained in it, at least a tenth are provided with explanations in English" (1996: 19). Abecula is not of classical origin and does not appear in the Medulla. Martin includes it in his 'Glossary of Latin words found in records and other English manuscripts, but not occurring in classical authors' (1910).

Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS 0.5.4: A Fifteenth-Century

Pedagogical

Dictionary?

15

Its Place in Fifteenth-Century Teaching and Learning The Trinity MS is a comprehensive manual, compiled and produced specifically for the purpose of Latin teaching and learning. The contents of the manuscript seem to have been carefully chosen to include all the major teaching material in use at the time, containing materials which are introductory - opening with the Ars Minor - and it continues with more advanced grammar texts and didactic reading materials in Latin. For example, one of the early reading materials includes the text which begins "Stans puer ad mensam", which was a popular work instructing young children in manners and the rules of politeness. In this context, the inclusion of a full Latin dictionary in the manuscript provides a firm evidence for the use of a reference work in teaching and learning, since the individual who commissioned the Trinity manuscript includes the full dictionary despite the considerable expense that this would have entailed. The importance of the full-size dictionary within the manuscript is indicated in another curious way. It is interesting to note that only two folios are fully decorated and honoured with illuminated borders as well as a large decorative initial. The two folios decorated in this manner are the opening folio of the manuscript containing the Donatus and the folio in which the full length dictionary begins (fol. 96). Wright and Wülcker had selected only the entries with English definitions and printed them as Ά Latin and English Vocabulary of the Fifteenth Century' (1884). The printed edition of this vocabulary has indeed highlighted its importance in the history of English lexicography. Unfortunately, however, viewing the contents of the dictionary in the Trinity MS as a bilingual word-list is quite misleading, and this does not present a true picture of the innovative value of the dictionary and the manuscript as a whole. It leads one to classify it as one of the many Latin-English word-lists often used for Latin language learning during the period. From their inclusion in many Latin learning texts and pupils' exercise books, evidence suggests that these medieval word-lists, known as nominales or verbales, were an effective and a useful learning tool which relied much on memorisation. Yet, the compiler of this teaching manual did not include nominales or verbales - the individual opted to include a full dictionary, which takes up at least two-thirds of the leaves of the manuscript. The inclusion of a full dictionary indicates a deliberate choice, and testifies to its importance as a language learning tool.13 This is a new development in the history of linguistic thought in England and an innovation in the history of language learning. In the present-day context, a bilingual dictionary used as a reference tool in language learning is taken for granted but in the medieval period, as was mentioned, much depended on one's ability to memorise. Hüllen describes the method: According to what we know of about the intellectual climate of the classical and early medieval eras, learning meant learning by heart and, thus, learning a language meant learning lists of words, of probably considerable length (1999: 52).

During the fifteenth century, we still see the use of works such as the Synonyma and Equivoca, which depended on the memorisation of words and these texts are included in the Trinity MS.

13

Some Latin teaching books also contain dictionaries. Examples include: Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 88 (Medulla Grammatice and grammatical texts in Latin and English) and Cambridge, St John's College Library MS 26 (Promptorium Parvulorum with grammatical texts in Latin and English).

Reiko Takeda

16

This practice was beginning to change in the fifteenth-century. Merrilees points out that the late medieval period was "the era where the memory could no longer cope with all that there was to be known and recalled, where the tools for information retrieval [...] were needed" (1989: 285). It seems to me that the compiler of the Trinity MS was well aware of such needs. Another innovation of this period is the use of vernacular in the instruction of Latin. This is ascribed to John of Cornwall, a grammar master of Oxford, and John of Trevisa makes his well-known comment stating that, in the grammar schools of England in the late fourteenthcentury, "children construe and lerne on Englishe" (Thomson 1984: xi). In addition, there were new practices such as the use of vulgaria in which the English sentences were given by the teachers for the pupils to translate into Latin and there was the use of latinitates, which involved the translation of Latin sentences into English (Orme 1985: 47). The link between such exercises and the dictionary is described by Voigts and Shailor in their study of a fifteenth-century schoolmaster's book. The book they describe is ascribed to the second quarter of the fifteenth-century and contains vulgaria and nominales among other pedagogic texts. Voigts and Shailor comment regarding the nominale (1985: 18): The

Latin-English

correlations

correspond

closely

to the

fifteenth-century

English-Latin

dictionaries, the Promptorium Parvulorum and the Catholicon Anglicum, and to a recently published nominale [Ross and Brooks 1984].

It is the use of nominales and the bilingual dictionaries which are discussed here; yet in this context, Trinity MS also provides valuable evidence, for the use of English language in teaching Latin is well illustrated. On folios 2v-3r, all the principal parts of amo are indicated in both Latin and English. There is also the grammar text in English (folios 4r-7v), 14 teaching Latin using English, as follows: In how many maners schalt thou bygynne to make Latyn?

The use of English in teaching and the latinitates, which the pupils used for translation exercises demonstrate a shift in the status of the English language. The standard practice had been to gloss Latin words but now the vernacular, English is employed to produce the acrolect, Latin. In this setting, the fifteenth century witnessed the emergence of bilingual comprehensive lexicographical works, such as the Catholicon Anglicum, which places the vernacular alongside the acrolect. Clearly, the dictionary in the Trinity MS which also places English with the Latin, has an important place in the history of English lexicography, and shows a definite progress towards the production of bilingual dictionaries.

Conclusion It has been said that "the Middle Ages did not start with a clear example of what a dictionary could be" (Weijers 1989: 139-40). Especially since the twelfth century, the trend had been to gather, organise and categorise acquired human knowledge, in order to make it accessible and searchable. In achieving this, the Medieval Latin lexicographers of the day played a major part by organising the material in alphabetical order. In the fifteenth century, the anonymous English lexicographers were also creating something new. For the first time using the 14

Published in Thomson ( 1984).

Cambridge, Trinity College Library MS 0.5.4: A Fifteenth-Century

Pedagogical

Dictionary?

17

vernacular, they produced dictionaries which were comprehensive reference works. The dictionary in MS. 0.5.4 demonstrates the importance of such works and shows the progress towards the making of bilingual dictionaries which have become so indispensable.

References

(a) Cited Manuscripts Cambridge, St John's College Library, MS 26 (Promptorium Parvulorum with grammatical texts in Latin and English). Trinity College Library, MS 0.5.4. University Library, MS Dd. I. 31 (Catholicon). University Library, MS Kk. IV. 1 (Papias' Elementarium secundum ordinem alphabeticae orthographiae). University Library, Additional MS 2830 (Grammatical texts in Latin and English, some latinitates). Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 88 (Medulla Grammatice and grammatical texts in Latin and English). London, British Library, Additional MS 15562 (Catholicon Anglicum). Additional MS 18380 (Hugutio's Derivationes). Additional MS 24640 (Medulla Grammatice). Additional MS 25722 (Catholicon). Additional MS 33534 (Medulla Grammatice). Additional MS 37075 (Nominale and other pedagogic texts). Additional MS 37789 (Medulla Grammatice and Promptorium Parvulorum bound together). MS Harley MS 221 (Promptorium Parvulorum).

(b) Other Literature Alston, R. C. (ed.) (1968): Ortus Vocabulorum. - M e n s t o n : Scolar Press. Capdevilla, S. (1930): 'La "Practica dictaminis" de Llorens de Aquileia en un codex de Tarragona.' Analecta sacra Tarraconensia 6, 207-29. Daly, L. W., & B. A. Daly (1964): 'Some Techniques in Medieval Latin Lexicography.' - Speculum 39, 229-39. Gaydon, A. T. (ed.) (1973): Victoria History of the Counties of England. A History of Shropshire. Vol. 2. - London: Oxford University Press for the University of London Institute of Historical Research. Gneuss, H. (1996): English Language Scholarship: A Survey and Bibliography from the Beginnings to the End of the Nineteenth-Century. - Binghamton: Medieval & Renaissance Text and Studies. Herrtage, S. (ed.) (1881): Catholicon Anglicum. - London: The Early English Text Society. Hüllen, W. (1999): English Dictionaries 800-1700: The Topical Tradition. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hunt, T. (1991): Teaching and Learning Latin in 13th-Century England. Vol. 1. Texts. - Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. James, M. R. (1902): The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. A Descriptive Catalogue. Vol. 3. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarren, V. P. (1993): 'Bristol University MS DM1. A Fragment of the Medulla Grammatice: An Edition.' - Traditio 48, 173-233. Marigo, A. (1936): I Codici Manoscritti delle "Derivationes" di Uguccione Pisano: Saggio d'Inventario Bibliografico con Appendice sui Codici del "Catholicon " di Giovanni da Genova. - Rome: Instituto di Studi Romani.

18

Reiko Takeda

Martin, C. T. (1892; 21910): The Record Interpreter. - Dorking: Kohler & Coombes. Mayhew, A. L. (ed.) (1908): The Promptorium Parvulorum. - London: The Early English Text Society. Merrilees, B. (1989): 'Prolegomena to a History of French Lexicography: The Development of the Dictionary in Medieval France. ' - Romance Languages Annual 1, 285-91. Miner, J. N. (1990): The Grammar Schools of Medieval England: A. F. Leach in Historiographical Perspective. - Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. Orme, Ν. (1985): 'Latin and English Sentences in Fifteenth-Century Schoolbooks.' - The Yale University Library Gazette 60, 47-57. Reichling, D. (ed.) (1893): Das Doctrinale des Alexander de Villa-Dei. - Berlin: A. Hofmann. Richardson, H. G. (1939): 'An Oxford Teacher of the Fifteenth Century.' - Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 23, 436-57. Ross, T. W., & E. Brooks Jr. (1984): English Glosses from British Library Additional Manuscript 37075. - Norman, Oklahoma: Pilgrim Books. Skeat, W. W., & J. H. Nodal (1877): A Bibliographical List of the Works That Have Been Published, or Are Known to Exist in MS. Illustrative of the Various Dialects of English. - London: Trübner & Co. Stein, G. (1981): 'The English Dictionary in the Fifteenth Century.' - In: H. Geckeler et al. (eds.): Logos Semantikos: Studia Linguistica in Honorem Eugenio Coseriu 1921-1981. Vol. 1: 313-22. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. (1985): The English Dictionary Before Cawdrey. - Tübingen: Niemeyer (= Lexicographica Series Maior 9). Thomson, D. (1979): A Descriptive Catalogue of Middle English Grammatical Texts. - London: Garland. (1984): An Edition of the Middle English Grammatical Texts. - London: Garland. Voigts, L., & B. A. Shailor (1985): 'The Recovery of a Fifteenth-Century School Master's Book: Beinecke MS 3, No. 34'. - The Yale University Library Gazette 60, 11-31. Way, A. (ed.) (1865) Promptorium Parvulorum sive Clecorum. 3 vols. - London: Camden Text Society. Weijers, O. (1989): 'Lexicography in the Middle Ages.' - Viator 20, 139-53. Wright, T., & R. P. Wülcker (1884): Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, Vol. 1. - London: Trübner.

Ian Lancashire,

University of Toronto

LEXICOGRAPHY IN THE EARLY MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD: THE MANUSCRIPT RECORD

James A. H. Murray, the General Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, a century ago said that "no one appears before the end of the sixteenth century to have felt that Englishmen could want a dictionary to help them to the knowledge and correct use of their own language" (26). He added that, by 1700, the "notion that an English Dictionary ought to contain all English words had apparently as yet occurred to no one; at least no one had proposed to carry the idea into practice" (34). Yet the early Tudor period produced the first monolingual English lexicon as well as two great dictionaries, both regarded as reference books for English. The printer and dramatist John Rastell brought out Exposiciones terminorum legum anglorum .... The exposicions of ye termys of ye law of england in 1523 (ETLA), a pioneering encyclopedic lexicon of about 170 entries in parallel columns, French and English. John Palsgrave, tutor to Henry VIII's sister Mary and his son the duke of Richmond, published a much larger EnglishFrench lexicon in 1530. It had English headwords and served to document English words as much as French. By 1550, rhetorician Richard Sherry said that the English did indeed have a fine dictionary of their own tongue: he commended Sir Thomas Elyot's Latin-English Dictionary of 1538, completed at Henry VIII's instance, for "searchinge oute the copye of oure language in all kynde of wordes and phrases" (TST, A3r; my italics). From the 1540s, the Crown had also legally required grammar schools to teach the Latinate Introduction to Grammar by William Lily and John Colet. Dictionaries and correct Early Modern English (EME) usage were respectable intellectual goals in the early Tudor period, partly enforced by statute. Henry VIII gave his patronage to men who documented contemporary English as a language second to none. We know the printed lexicons of the period fairly well, but so little is said about the manuscript record that we might be pardoned for doubting one exists. In December 1962 R. C. Alston prepared a typed handlist of 173 manuscripts "relevant to the history of the English language 1480-1800." It can be consulted in the British Library Manuscripts Room. Yet Alston's multi-volume bibliography of language works of every conceivable type from the advent of printing to 1800 does not cover manuscripts. Were they unimportant for some reason? Jürgen Schäfer (EMEL) also surveyed only early printed glossaries in 1989. My work-in-progress, The Lexicons of Early Modern English (LEME), is a searchable Webbased corpus whose goal is 600,000 word entries from several hundred lexical texts between 1475 and 1700. It may encourage academics to undertake a period dictionary and will give researchers convenient access to what individuals living in the Early Modern English period thought of their language. Like the Early Modern English Dictionaries Database (EMEDD) on which it is based, LEME includes bilingual dictionaries, English glossaries, professional vocabularies, prose treatises and grammars, and excerpted encyclopedic works. One hundred sources are now in preparation out of over 800 known primary sources. EMEDD, a publiclyaccessible Web site, holding about 200,000 word-entries, has sixteen works: six monolingual English hard-word lexicons by Edmund Coote (1596), Robert Cawdrey (1604 and 1617), John Bullokar (1616), Henry Cockeram (1623), and Thomas Blount (1656); six bilingual dictionaries serving French, Latin, Italian, and Spanish by John Palsgrave (1530), William Thomas (1550), Thomas Thomas (1587), John Florio (1598), John Minsheu (1599), and

20

Ian Lancashire

Rändle Cotgrave (1611), respectively; Richard Mulcaster's English word-list (1582); and three glossaries of hard words in medicine (Bartholomew Traheron, 1543), botany (William Turner, 1548), and general science (John Garfield, 1657). Unlike EMEDD, LEME incorporates manuscript materials. Over 25% of LEME primary sources, some 210 items between 1475 and 1660, are manuscripts. This preliminary report into manuscript lexical texts surveys research undertaken at the British, Bodleian, Cambridge, Huntington, Newberry, and Toronto libraries over the past two years. Ten types of manuscript lexicon merit close attention: bilingual dictionaries, glossaries and topical vocabularies (especially herbáis, medical works, naval lexicons, and legal dictionaries), prose treatises and grammars, books annotated by contemporaries, reference works on proper and place names, and monolingual English glossaries. My coverage is far from exhaustive. Some of the more than thirty different bilingual lexicons in manuscript serve individual languages better than contemporary printed books do: for example, Algonquin (by William Strachey), Cornish, Irish, Old English, Slavic (by Mark Ridley and Richard James), and Turkish. Even for languages served by print dictionaries, manuscript lexicons are valuable for documenting how individuals understood, rightly or wrongly, their own tongue. They help tell us when terms became popular and how their significations altered, decade by decade. By mapping English to other languages and registers, they belong to the primary sources of Early Modern English. Little is known about many of them because, unlike printed books, they lack title, publisher, and date; and ignorance is always a powerful disincentive to use. Early in the sixteenth century, the printing press popularized early Latin-English or EnglishLatin bilingual dictionaries, but many manuscripts in monastic libraries had disappeared following their appropriation by the Crown in 1538. Medieval Latin-English lexicons must have been among them. Promptorium Parvulorum was last printed in 1528, and the Ortus Vocabulorum four years later. Henry VIII may have urged Sir Thomas Elyot to finish his lexicon to fill this anticipated gap. By 1539—40, when Miles Coverdale had Englished the Great Bible, a small bull market in lexicons that served English had developed. It was expected that English-born lexicographers would replace medieval authorities, either with new compilations (as with William Turner's polyglot lexicons of herbs) or with vernacular glossaries to newly translated texts (as with Bartholomew Traheron's hard-word glossary to Vigo in 1543). In any event, bilingual lexicons in manuscript during the Henrician period are not numerous. They might have recalled, for those in a position to publish and use them in teaching, a discredited and increasingly dangerous Roman Catholic world. Contemporaries alert to Henrician politics would have valued printed dictionaries because they had the prima facie appearance of being up-to-date and publicly approved. Later, people found more uses for manuscript lexicons. For example, Latin-English manuscript lexicons compiled in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries appear intended to serve private studies rather than to supply a public demand.1 Elizabeth (1558-1603) retained her father's nationalist language policies and at the same time stimulated a new manuscript culture for lexicons. Henry VIII had destroyed manuscripts 1

This motive may explain the early seventeenth-century Greek-Latin-English topical vocabulary in Cambridge University Library Ms Dd.XIV.25 (2). Some typical survivals are BL Harley Ms 1002 (16th-century, and 1616), BL Add. Ms 4206 (17th-century), Cambridge University Library Ms Oo.VI. 113 (1691), and National Library of Scotland Ms 2779 (17th-century).

Lexicography in the Early Modem English Period

21

on political grounds; Elizabeth's ministers and servants used them to advance learning about native English. In a backlash against what Thomas Wilson the logician and rhetorician called inkhorn terms, that is, against foreign borrowings introduced in such quantity as to overwhelm English words, Elizabeth gave her patronage to an unverbalized language policy that resisted the wholesale latinization of English. In this period, many foreign words were Englished, but compounding of native words also was practised (witness the emergence of English-only lexical preferences by such as Ralph Lever the logician and George Puttenham the rhetorician). The third mechanism for vocabulary enhancement, revival of archaic terms, however, turned the English to studying their heritage. Those who researched the languages of the British isles preserved early manuscripts and formed an academic subculture that circulated in manuscript its findings on Old English, Middle English, and Welsh. Old English scholarship, in particular, left behind a trove of manuscript materials (Giese 1991-94; Hetherington 1982). The monarchy's trusted partners in negotiating the Elizabethan compromise in religious dogma, Sir William Cecil (the queen's chief minister) and Matthew Parker (Archbishop of Canterbury) stimulated interest in word-revivals by lending their patronage to two men who founded Old English scholarship in the 1560s and 1570s. Laurence Nowell devised his bilingual Old English lexicon in a manuscript dating 1567 or earlier, Bodleian Ms Seiden supra 63, while living at Cecil's own house (Marckwardt 1952). At his death, Nowell's lexicon may have been passed by William Lambarde, Nowell's friend, to John Joscelyn, who worked with Parker's own son to produce the "Dictionarium SaxonicoLatinum," now British Library Cotton Titus Mss A.15-16. 2 Nowell and Joscelyn inspired later Old English scholars to create manuscript glossaries for their personal use. The Bodleian Library holds many of these. Their authors include Richard James (who left Bodleian Ms James 41, ca. 1620, Ms James 42, ca. 1600, and Ms Seiden supra 62), Sir Symonds D'Ewes (BL Harley Ms 6841), and Francis Junius, who transcribed Nowell in Bodleian Ms Junius 26 (ca. 1650), preparing for his "Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae" (Mss Junius 4-5), published only in the eighteenth century.3 The first to reach print, almost a century after the first of these manuscripts was written, was William Somner, whose Dictionarium Saxonico-LatinoAnglicum was published in 1659." If we trust the print record only, we will be out by decades in recognizing how Old English was understood in England. There was also curiosity about Middle English and Scots, sparked by print editions of Chaucer's poetry. This interest emerges first in print with E. K.'s glossary to Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar (1579), Paul Greaves' Chaucerian vocabulary (1594), and Speght's glossary to an edition of Chaucer's works (1602). Antiquarians then advance research in forms that did not reach print. Joseph Holland, in Cambridge University Library Ms Gg.4.27, edited Speght's glossary and added much to it. Later, about 1650, Francis Junius left behind a glossary of Old Scots and Greek in Bodleian Ms Junius 74, a glossary of words in Gavin Douglas' transcription of the Aeneid, in Ms Junius 114, and a lexicon of Chaucer's vocabulary 2

3

4

Copies of this appear in BL Harley Mss 8-9, transcribed by Simonds D'Ewes, and Hamburg Staatsund Universitäts-Bibliothek Ms Germ. 32, transcribed by Friedrich Lindenborg (now missing). See also BL Cotton Ms Cleopatra C.vii.2, item 3, and Rosier 1960. See also Bodl. Ms Eng. lang. e. 11, an Anglo-Saxon glossary ca. 1636, and Cambridge University Library Ms Oo.VI.l 12, a brief Old English-English etymological glossary. Canterbury Cathedral Archives Mss C.9-10 hold Somner's Old English-English glossary, perhaps an early draft of Mss E.20-21. Phillipps Ms 9308 is an interleaved copy of the 1659 edition with manuscript notes.

22

Ian Lancashire

in Ms Junius 5. William Dugdale produced a glossary of Old Scots words from John Bellenden and Gavin Douglas in Bodleian Ashmole Ms 846. The English were curious about tongues spoken on their islands, none more than Welsh. William Salesbury's bilingual lexicon (published in 1547) existed to enable the Welsh to use English instead of their own tongue in legal proceedings. Henry VIII had required the Welsh to do so in a statute of 1535-36.5 Besides Jesus College Oxford Ms 16 (available on-line courtesy of the Early Manuscripts Imaging Project), which contains lexical materials in the hand of Henry Salesbury (1561-71637), we have anonymous Welsh lexicons in British Library Add. Ms 15048 (ca. 1575-1600) and British Library Ms Lansdowne 98 (an Elizabethan trilingual English-Welsh-Irish glossary). Members of the Society of Antiquaries, founded in 1586 to do research on English history by means of archival studies (Van Norden 1946 and 1950), had a special need for proficiency in Welsh. William Camden, the printing of whose Britannia launched this group, left a bilingual Welsh-English glossary in British Library Cotton Ms Julius F.X. The Society's secretary, Francis Tate (1560-1616), worked as an itinerant justice in south Wales about 1607 and prepared a manuscript list of English words usual in Wales.6 Richard Lhoyd's English-Welsh dictionary, prepared ca. 1593-1629, is now BL Harley Ms 1626 (Bell). The naturalist Francis Willoughby (1635-72) left an English-Welsh vocabulary, now among the Middleton Mss at Nottingham University Library (MPBS). Not much survives from this period to mark antiquarian interest in Cornish words. One manuscript to document its existence is Richard Symons' diary of the travels of the royal army in 1644, which has a brief English-Cornish vocabulary.7 Bilingual lexicons of old vernacular languages in Britain had religious and political uses, but other bilingual lexicons served English merchants who had explored widely for new economic markets and natural resources. The first men to visit new territories acquired knowledge of unfamiliar languages as a prerequisite to successful trading. Some brought home bilingual glossaries that never reached print. For example, Mark Ridley, a court physician in Moscow, devised a 6,000-entry Slavic-English lexicon about 1600 that survives in the Bodleian Library (DVRT 1996). He based it on John Rider's English-Latin Bibliotheca Scholastica (1589). Richard James, chaplain in the embassy by Sir Dudley Digges to Russia, was motivated by learning (he had studied at Corpus Christi College Oxford) and penned a lexicon, now also a Bodleian manuscript (Larin 1959). Both texts have been edited by Slavic scholars and contribute valuable information about Russian and English at this time. William Strachey had non-scholarly grounds for appending an Algonquin-English "Dictionarie of the Indian Language for the better enabling of such who shalbe thither ymployed" to his treatise of 1612, "the historie of Trauaile into virginia Britannia expressing the Cosmographie & Commodities of the Country." This treatise and dictionary survive in manuscripts at the British Library, the Bodleian, and Princeton University Library.8 Strachey dedicated the treatise to Sir Francis Bacon, Lord High Chancellor, and must have hoped for favour at court. Captain John Smith's The generali historie of Virginia, New-England, and the

5 6 7 8

Statutes, Chapter 26, Section XVII, p. 567. Cambridge University Library Ms Ff.V. 15. BL Add. Ms 17062, fol. 78. Interest in short lexicons of strange languages encountered in voyages around the world went back at least to John Florio's translation of Jacques Carrier's account of voyages to New France in 1580. It included a brief Huron ("Hochelaga") vocabulary.

Lexicography in the Early Modern English Period

23

Summer Isles, published in London the same year, quenched public thirst for knowledge of the world in the west, and Strachey's fascinating lexicon of over 900 word-entries was overshadowed by Smith's slender printed 137-word vocabulary. Strachey's lexicon, however, documents common English terminology.9 Manuscript bilingual dictionaries serving English and one of French, Italian, and Spanish turn up in archives occasionally.10 All post-date the important bilingual lexicons that reached print. Little attention has been paid to them or their sources. A few offer something out of the ordinary: a seventeenth-century Italian-English-Turkish dictionary in British Library Add. Ms 25872, or the vocabularies for European and Asian languages encountered by Royal Society member Francis Willoughby during his travels, 1663-66 (MPBS). Clearly, manuscript bilingual lexicons do not rival print lexicons in size. No Elyot, Cooper, Florio, Cotgrave, or Minsheu manuscript appears to wait for a scholarly editor's attention. As might be expected, vocabularies and topical glossaries in manuscript are diverse, and a few handle subjects not found in print: alchemical symbols, architecture, and manuscript abbreviations." By the seventeenth century, glossaries are joined by collections of logical definitions, that is, consciously "scientific" or learned explanations of what a thing is rather than what a word denotes. The notebooks of philosophical definitions by Sir James Ware (British Library Add. Ms 4821) and John Locke senior about 1623-25 (British Library Add. Ms 28273) are neglected, at least by lexicographers. Eldred Rivet's commonplace book, in Cambridge University Library Ms Dd.4.55 (ca. 1650), collects definitions from printed books and anticipates the full citations used by Johnson in his dictionary word-entries. However, four types of the topical glossary dominated the Early Modern period: herbáis, medical glossaries, naval vocabularies, and the law lexicon. In this respect, the manuscript record tallies well with the printed record. What may be descendants of Middle English herbáis appear half a dozen times in Early Modern English manuscripts dated between 1475 and 1600.12 A more ambitious herbal,

9

10

11

12

Thomas Harriot's Algonkian alphabet, devised in 1585, survives in six manuscripts (Salmon 1992). Late 17th-century Bodl. Ashmole Ms 1808 includes a Malayan-English vocabulary. English-French: Rosenbach Ms 243/8 (A-L only, by Samuel Butler). Italian-English: St. John Baptist College Oxford III (17th-centuiy); BL Sloane Ms 502 (Dr. Francis Bernard, ca. 1650-1700); BL Sloane Ms 860 (17th-century); BL Sloane Ms 2549 (17th-century); Lambeth Ms 779 (16th-century). Spanish-English: Cambridge University Library Ms Dd.11.67, fols. 110v-31r; BL Sloane Ms 1468 (17th-century); and Calendar of State Papers [James I], 11 (for 1623-25), CLXXXIX.6 (p. 519). French, Italian, and Spanish vocabularies: Bodl. Ms Wood F. 23 (ca. 1650). Architecture: BL Sloane Ms 860 (ca. 1600-1700). Alchemy: BL Ms Sloane 2046 (Sir Walter Raleigh, ca. 16097-1617). Astronomy: BL Add. Ms 4417 (a; ca. 1600-99); Welcome Ms 276. Classical allusions: Bodl. Douce Ms 290 (ca. 1500-1600). Fauna: Norwich Finch-Hatton Ms 334, 336 (Sir William Dugdale and Christopher Hatton, ca. 1656-76). General topics: BL Add. Ms 37075 (ca. 1475-1525, for which see Ross and Brooks [1984]); Bodl. Ms Eng. Poet, f.10 (1619). Manuscript abbreviations: BL Add. Mss 1059, 17062; BL Harley Ms 911, 939, 944; BL Egerton Ms 2635 (Sir Henry Spelman). Military: BL Add. Ms 4713 (ca. 1480-99); BL Stowe Ms 438 (original of Gervase Markham's The Souldiers Grammar [1626]). Ordinance and canting: BL Egerton Ms 2642 (Robert Commaundre, ca. 1590-1613). Weights: BL Sloane Ms 2788 (ca. 1647). See also Hüllen (1999). Bodleian Ms Seiden Supra 73 (Latin-English, ca. 1475-1500), Ms Add. C. 246 (ca. 1525-50), and Ms Bodl. 591 (ca. 1500-99); BL Sloane Ms 1313 (ca. 1500-1600), Lambeth Ms 306 (15th-16th centuries), Trinity College Dublin Ms 369, no. 126 (Latin-English fragment ca. 1475-1500), Wellcome Historical Medical Library Ms 406 (7; Smerthwaytt's herbal, dated Jan. 17, 1511), and

24

Ian Lancashire

rivaling the Banckes and so-called "great" herbáis in the 1520s, is British Library Royal Ms 12.B.VII, an anonymous 57-leaf work from the reign of Queen Elizabeth in the collection of John Lumley, baron Lumley (15347-1609). The British Library copy of the French edition of Rembert Dodoens' Cruydeboeck (1557) has manuscript annotations by Henry Lyte, author of A Niewe Herball or Historie of Plantes (1578). John Goodyer's English translation of Dioskorides' Greek herbal rests in Magdalen College, Oxford, a work in which classical learning exceeds a gardener's or a pharmacologist's expertise. Seventeenth-century scientists such as Robert Morison, whose "Nomenciator stirpium" can be found in Bodl. Ms Sherard 2 6 28 (MPBS), produced substantial terminologies. Latin-English manuscripts that document medical names - such as the "Nomina infirmitatum instrumentorum et medicinarum" in Wellcome Historical Medical Library Ms 408 (ca. 1475-1525) - followed herbáis into print, although the first printed medical glossary was late, published only in 1543 by Bartholomew Traheron as part of his English translation of Jean de Vigo (1460-1525), surgeon to Pope Julius II. Other manuscripts that record medical terms may have been owned and used by working physicians and surgeons. The British Library Sloane manuscripts are rich in such material.13 Medical glossaries sometimes resemble specialized herbáis, as in Wellcome Ms 340-41 (ca. 1550). An example of how economics influenced the production of manuscript lexicons under the Stuarts is Sir Henry Mainwaring's "Nomenciator Navalis," the first sea dictionary, compiled about 1620-23. It exists in no fewer than sixteen manuscripts. 14 Until Captain John Smith, a competitor, published his Sea Grammar in 1627, Mainwaring had five years in which he cornered the market in sea language. Some naval terms in manuscript copies of his work predate first entries for sea terms in the OED, which uses John Smith's later sea-grammar (Barbour 1972). Mainwaring dedicated the first copy of his "Nomenclátor Navalis" to his then patron, Edward Lord Zouch, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, in February 1623. Receiving less favour than he expected, Mainwaring then turned out other dedicated single copies for the duke of Buckingham, George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, and Algernon Percy, earl of Northumberland. A tolerated pirate and entrepreneur, Mainwaring discovered, well before John Smith, that sea terminology was valuable to members of the English nobility who, though they had never gone to sea, were transported by royal favour into positions where they would have to appear to command ships. Mainwaring dedicated manuscripts to different noble patrons in hope of currying favour. Only in 1644 did his work reach print. As the Crown formalized its laws and statutes in English, the need emerged for something novel, the English law lexicon. John Rastell's Exposition (ETLA) offered an alphabetical list of topics and laid the foundations for a reference work for legal terminology and concepts that would last several centuries. Among antecedents in medieval manuscripts may be cited three very common short texts found together in one late manuscript, British Library Lansdowne Ms 171 (nos. 173, 178, and 179): the "Expositio difficilium vocabularum secundum Britonem" (46 word-entries), "Verba obsoleta et alia" (75 word-entries), and "Verba Anglica obscura et

13

14

Society of Antiquaries of London Ms 101 (18; Latin-English; ca. 1450-1500). See also Bridson, Phillips, and Harvey (1980). BL Royal Ms 12.B.VII (ca. 1500-1600); BL Sloane Mss 1032 (ca. 1597-1617), 2773 (ca. 1600-1700, belonging to John Cony), 510 (Latin-Greek-Italian-English, ca. 1600-1700), 2788 (ca. 1647), and 1668 (a vocabulary of diseases, 1624). See McConchie (1997). A composite manuscript text appears in Manwaring and Perrin (1920).

Lexicography in the Early Modern English Period

25

glosata" (169 word-entries). John Rastell adapts a version of the first, "Exposicio difficilium vocabularum," in his 1527 abridgement of the statutes under the heading "Exposicioun of old wordis" (located between his entries for "Exspences of knyghtes" and "Extorcion"). Jürgen Schäfer extracted this as a glossary, but not the book's nearly 400 other headwords and their entries (EMEL I: 21). Rastell copied a common medieval glossary as a single unit in an encyclopedia of legal concepts. Without a knowledge of manuscript materials, we would not recognize that he re-cycled this much older text, one found very often in legal manuscripts. Over 75 manuscript copies of the "Expositio difficilium vocabularum," most of them medieval, exist in three versions (Baker and Ringrose 1996). Some substantial Renaissance law lexicons exist in manuscript. David Chalmer produced a dictionary of Scottish law, dated July 22, 1566, and dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots, now British Library Add. Ms 27472. Francis Tate compiled a "Lexicon juris," a 600-page dictionary of obscure words in Latin, French, and English (Cambridge University Library Ms Ff.V.15). Possibly this is related to the treatises on law terms prepared by Joseph Holland and Francis Thynne for the meeting of the Society of Antiquaries (of whom Tate was secretary) on November 2, 1601. These treatises appear in Bodley Ms Smith 83 and in a John Rylands Library manuscript (Van Norden 1946: 531). Legal definitions appear in "vn Treatise concernant Le Ley", Cambridge University Library Ms Ee.2.30 (2), attributed to Edward la Zouche, baron Zouche (early seventeenth-century). S. Sims compiled another legal glossary in the reign of Charles I (Cambridge University Library Ms Dd.14.3). Walter Young devised a popular glossary of parliamentary terms, the "Elencus Parliamentorum" (dated 1646).'5 British Library Add. Ms 19762 is a small seventeenth-century quarto lexicon. An English-French lexicon in parallel columns, "Abate" to "Yard land", dating about 1600-25, appears in Cambridge University Library Ms Dd.VI.60: this copies a late version of Rastell's lexicon, Les Termes de la Ley.'6 Another large law index, from "Abbe" to "Remander," which dates about 1603-25, can be found at Cambridge in Ms Dd.VI.68.'7 The most important group of legal lexical manuscripts concerns the Cambridge scholar John Cowell's Lnterpreter: or Booke Containing the Signification of Words (published 1607). James I suppressed Cowell's book by proclamation on March 25, 1610, after parliamentary outrage at its apparent slighting of both Parliament and Monarchy. The British Library holds not only the proceedings against Cowell and the proclamation (Add. Ms 513 [6] and 12515), but the 1637 edition of The Lnterpreter, annotated by Sir Roger Twysden (Add. Mss 24281-83). Cambridge University Library Add. Ms 116 has Cowell's notes as transcribed from the author's copy, thanks to R. S. (Richard Smith, Secondary of the Poultry Compter). Surprisingly, no scholarly edition of Cowell's book exists (but see Simon 1968). Lexical treatises in manuscript are numerous. Chester Herald to-be, known better as John Hart, started a campaign for spelling reform under Edward VI that lasted seventy years. This initiative would have been eccentric in a world where everyone still wrote and published in

15 16

17

BL Add. Mss 4957 (1) and 10612, BL Harley Ms 1274. With this title, first published as Les termes de la ley: or, Certaine difficult and obscure words and termes of the common lawes of this realme (London: Adam Islip for the Company of Stationers, 1624), and re-issued often afterwards. Other legal glossaries appear in Bodl. Ms Lat. misc. e. 114 (by Randolph Cholmondeley, Lincoln College, Oxford, ca. 1578-80), BL Add. Ms 36925 (17th-century), and Bodl. Ms Ashmole 1611 (ca. 1603-47).

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manuscript form. Yet Hart's work survives only in manuscript. "The opening of the unreasonable writing of our inglish toung," in British Library Ms Royal 17.C.VII, shows that England had new uses for manuscripts in the study of language (Danielsson 1955). They served reformist debate, partly in political and religious controversy, and partly in linguistic standardization. Miscellaneous treatises among the reformist literature include Robert Robinson's "art of pronunciation" (Bodleian Ashmole Mss 826 and 1153, in 1617), Joseph Webbe's language-teaching notes (British Library Sloane Ms 1466, ca. 1623-33; Salmon 1961), Thomas Hayward's "Institutions of Children in the English Tongue" (British Library Sloane Ms 2609, after 1625), and George Dalgarno's plan for a philosophical language in 1657 (British Library Sloane Ms 4377, no. 10). They encompass, as well as Hart's "unreasonable writing," Alexander Hume's "orthographie" (British Library Royal Ms 17.A.XI, ca. 1603-25), two important works on English spelling. English grammars were penned in manuscript by Thomas Tonkis (in Latin, British Library Royal Ms 12.F.XVIII) and John Evelyn (British Library Add. Ms 15950, ca. 1650; Cook 1984). Other texts by well-known writers eventually reached print: William Camden's two essays on names (Bodleian Ms Smith 84, ca. 1600-25), and Richard Carew's "Excellencie" (British Library Cotton Ms F.XI, in 1614). Most lexical prose treatises only in manuscript have been edited, but Tonkis' English grammar and Webbe's papers still appear to lack a scholarly edition. When a contemporary lexicographer marks up another's printed dictionary, we can surmise that it was highly regarded in its time. If so, Richard Huloet's Abecedarium Anglico-Latinum (1552) must have been treasured. It is the first Early Modern bilingual Latin dictionary whose headwords are in English, after the late medieval Promptorium Parvulorum (1499). The importance of Huloet's lexicon for the vernacular matches the much larger Latin lexicon by Sir Thomas Elyot. No wonder that Laurence Nowell, the Old English antiquarian, marked up a copy, now at Illinois (Rosier 1977). A copy of John Higgins' expanded second edition of Huloet in 1572, at the Folger Shakespeare Library, also has elaborate marginal annotations. Manuscript annotations on books give additional or corrected information, not known to the original lexicographer. Early glosses of this kind contribute much to our understanding of Old English, and they can teach us something about Early Modern English too. In addition to the forementioned annotated books by Lyte and Cowell, the Bodleian Library has three annotated lexical texts: an unknown person glossed Pierce Plowman (1561), William Bullokar made notes on his own Pamphlet for grammar (1586), and John Seiden added comments to William Bedwell's Mohammedis imposturae (1615), which prints the first Arabic-English glossary. Phillipps Ms 9026, an annotated copy of Richard Percival's dictionary of 1623, shows that Spanish-English lexicons were revised in this way too. These few surviving marked-up books show that English lexicographers shared a working method: they manually annotated each other's books. This method re-purposed printed books into manuscripts. Lexicographers from Thomas Cooper (1565) to Henry Cockeram (1623) included proper and place names in their dictionaries. After all, the influential Lily-Colet Grammar explained that common nouns were names. William Patten's Calendar of Scripture (printed in 1575) first addressed foreign place names and turned them into English. Cambridge University Library Ms Dd. 11.40, dated in January 1584/85, offers "Names expoounded of certein regionz and places" as a gift to a prospective patron. A scholarly edition of Patten's work has yet to be done (O'Kill 1977-80). A meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on June 29, 1604, received four papers by William Camden, Arthur Agard, Joseph Holland, and Arnold Oldisworth, all on proper names, now in British Library Cotton Ms Faustina E.V.3 (Van Norden 1946: 531). Most of us know William Camden's and Richard Verstegan's books, both printed in 1605. They

Lexicography in the Early Modern English Period

27

document surnames, but it was the Jacobean antiquarian and judge, Sir John Dodderidge, who left behind the best lexicon of proper first names, now British Library Sloane Ms 3479 (ca. 1626-28), in contrast with which John Penkethman's Onomatophylacium: OR, The Christian Names of Men and Women, printed in 1626, has less to recommend it. The etymological cast of many of Dodderidge's 895 word-entries reveals him to be an antiquarian, a colleague of Camden, but also they hint at someone who used language to render judgment, as he does when he says, "venus, a veniendo. comynnge to all a fitt name for a good wenche / Madfolly.'"8 A two-volume "Britanniae Romanorum" by William Burton (now Huntington Library Ms 154), a proper- and place-name dictionary for Roman Britain (only A-L), may also be antiquarian in nature. Surprisingly few manuscripts survive to testify that the English were experimenting with general-purpose monolingual lexicons. The fragmentary general glossary in Bodleian Rawlinson Poet. Ms 108, which extracts several hundred word-entries from a revision of John Rider's Bibliotheca Scholas tica by Francis Holyoke, does not predate the general hard-word glossaries in Edmund Coote's The English Schoolmaster (1596) and Robert Cawdrey's Table AlphabeticalI (1604), but was compiled after 1612 (Osselton 1986; Lancashire forthcoming). Only in etymology, a line of inquiry that broached the religious origins of man, is there manuscript evidence of interest in English words as such, and it treats how languages relate to one another more than what English words are, as such." Lexical manuscripts during the Early Modern period exist for various reasons. They are late survivals of medieval glossaries once only published as manuscripts, antiquarian research papers, personal study aids, and works unpublished by reason of their unmarketability or sold for private consumption solely to patrons who could afford them. Only one manuscript copytext, as far as I know, survived typesetting.20 So expensive were dictionaries to produce, political considerations often influenced why a writer compiled one in manuscript, and why a printer turned that into a book. At face value, lexicons are valuable for what they say about specific words, but in the Renaissance they are also instruments of religious, political, and social power. Lexicons had a major impact on British life, as their longevity in use shows. They take purpose from the authority (publisher or patron) that caused them to be made, and the mercantile economy that was willing to pay for their making. A lexicographer asserts useful knowledge. Manuscript lexicons are just as useful as printed ones in knowing what the period thought about English, and what it proposed to do with that knowledge. If we had critical editions of these manuscripts, we would know more about their authors, dates, and auspices, as well as add to our understanding of specific words. Lacking scholarly editions of manuscript lexicons, we always risk misinterpreting them. After William Fletewode (15357-1594), recorder of London, in 1569/70 devised "A treatise upon the charters, liberties, lawes and customes of all forests, parkes, chases and free warrens within the realme of Englande" (now Harvard Law School Ms 15), he felt a need to explain his

18

One wonders, did the first names of those who came before his court benefit, or suffer, from his private passion for first-name interpretation? " See Richard Holdsworth's list of English words from Greek (Bodl. Ms Sancroft 104, ca. 1600-1650), English terms from Old English (Cambridge University Library Ms Oo.VI.112, after 1671), and Francis Junius' "Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae" (Bodl. Ms Junius 4-5, after 1659). 20 Bodleian MS e Musaeo 48, fols. 252-592, has M-Riota of Sir Henry Spelman's Archaeologus (courtesy of this paper's anonymous referees).

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use of English in it (Baker 1990: 97). His end-of-book glossary begins with "Alderman" and ends at "Fewda." In reviewing this manuscript thirteen years later, on March 21, 1581/82, Fletewode notes: "I did ... expounde all the said old termes in thend of this booke not mindinge to put them in print for bycause of the errors in the same." The thirteen-year period between 1569/70 and early 1582 appears to mark a shift in the contemporary perception of English. A lexicographer's explanation as to why he failed is rare in any period. Fletewode's remarks are unique in Early Modern England. They coincide with William Mulcaster's call for a dictionary of English and precede, by just four years, the founding of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries. Many of the forty-two documented members of this group - Agard, Camden, Carew, Cotton, Dodderidge, Fletwode, Holland, Lambarde, Oldisworth, Patten, Spelman, Tate, Thynne, and others - helped lay a foundation for a historical understanding of their native language. They read, and left behind, many manuscripts on English etymology. Their emergence in the mid-15 80s marks that decade as a watershed in lexical self-awareness by English speakers. English triumphed politically in the reign of Henry VIII, not in the late sixteenth century (Jones 1953), but only when its antiquarians and their manuscript culture recognized that their fellow native speakers did not truly know their own language could that victory be understood.

References

(a) Cited Dictionaries DSTE= THE DICTIONARY OF SYR THOMAS ELIOT. Ed. Sir Thomas Elyot. London: Bertheleti 1538. DVRT = A DICTIONARIE OF THE VULGAR RUSSE TONGUE. E d . G e r a l d S t o n e . K ö l n : B ö h l a u 1 9 9 6 .

ΕΑ = ETYMOLOGICUM ANGLICANUM. F. Junius. Ed. E. Lye. Oxonii: Theatro Sheldoniano 1743 EMEDD = EARLY MODERN ENGLISH DICTIONARIES DATABASE. C o m p . I a n L a n c a s h i r e . T o r o n t o :

CHASS

1 9 9 6 - 9 9 [www.chass.utoronto.ca/english/emed/emedd.html]. ETLA = EXPOSICIONES TERMINORUM LEGUM ANGLORUM . . . THE EXPOSICIONS OF THE TERMYS OF THE LAW

OF ENGLAND. Ed. John Rastell. London: John Rastell 1523. LLF = LESCLARCISSEMENT DE LA LANGUE FRANCOYSE. Ed. John Palsgrave. Menston: Scolar Press 1969 [' 1530 London: R. Pynson and J. Haukyns], o v = ORTUS VOCABULORUM. London: Wynkyn de Wörde 1500. pp = PROMPTORIUM PARVULORUM. London: Richard Pynson 1499.

(b) Other Literature Alston, R. C. (December 1962): Ά Check-list of Manuscript Material Relevant to the History of the English Language 1480-1800.' - British Library Manuscripts Reading Room Ms 427. Baker, J. D., comp. (1990): English Legal Manuscripts in the United States of America. Part II: Early Modern and Modern Periods (1558-1902). - London: Seiden Society. Baker, J. H., & J. S. Ringrose (1996): A Catalogue of English Legal Manuscripts in Cambridge University Library. - Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Barbour, P. L. (1972): 'Captain John Smith's Sea Grammar and its Debt to Sir Henry Mainwaring's "Seaman's Dictionary".' - Mariner's Mirror 58.1, 93-101.

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29

Bell, H. I. (1936): 'The Welsh MSS. in the British Museum Collections.' - The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 15-40. Bridson, G. D. R., V. C. Phillips, & A. P. Harvey (1980): Natural History Manuscript Resources in the British Isles. - London: Mansell. Cook, A. B., Ill (1984): 'John Evelyn's English Grammar.' - Leeds Studies in English 15, 117—46. Danielsson, B. (ed.) (1955): John Hart's Works on English Orthography and Pronunciation. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. Early Manuscripts Imaging Project (2001): 'Early Manuscripts at Oxford University.' - Research and Development, Automation Service, Oxford University Libraries [http://www.image.ox.ac.uk/]. EMEL = EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LEXICOGRAPHY. Ed. Jürgen Schäfer. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press

1989. Giese, L. L. (1991-94): 'An Anonymous Seventeenth-century Bodleian Manuscript Dictionary: Its Authorship and Significance to Old English Studies.' - Bodleian Library Record 14, 145-57. Gneuss, M. (1996): English Language Scholarship: A Survey and Bibliography from the Beginnings to the End of the Nineteenth Century - Binghampton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies. Great Britain (1810-28): The Statutes of the Realm. 11 vols. - London: G. Eyre and A. Strahan. Hetherington, M. S. (1982): 'The Recovery of the Anglo-Saxon Lexicon.' - In: C. T. Berkhout & M. McC. Gatch (ed.): Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: The First Three Centuries, 79-89. Boston: G.K. Hall. Hüllen, W. (1999): English Dictionaries 800-1700: The Topical Tradition. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jones, R. F. (1953): The Triumph of the English Language. - London: Oxford University Press. Lancashire, I. (forthcoming): "The First Monolingual English Lexicon: MS Rawlinson 108 or John Rastell's Exposiciones terminorum legum anglorumV Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Larin, Β. Α. (1959): Russko-angliyskiy slovar'-dnevnik Richarda Dzhemsa (1618-1619 gg.) - Leningrad: Leningradskogo Universiteta. Manwaring, G. E., & W. G. Perrin (eds.) (1920): The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring. [London]: Navy Records Society, 54. Marckwardt, A. H. (ed.) (1952): Laurence Nowell's Vocabularium Saxonicum. - Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. McConchie, R. W. (1997): Lexicography and Physicke: The Record of Sixteenth-century English Medical Terminology. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. MPBS = THE MANUSCRIPT PAPERS OF BRITISH SCIENTISTS 1600-1940. Royal Commission on Historical

Manuscripts. Guides to Sources for British History based on the National Register of Archives 2. London: HMSO 1982 Munby, A. N. L., intra. (1968): The Phillipps Manuscripts. - London: Holland Press. Murray, J. A. H. (1900): The Evolution of English Lexicography. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Norden, L. V. (June 1946): The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries. - PhD. dissert. University of California at Los Angeles. (1950): 'Sir Henry Spelman on the Chronology of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries.' - The Huntington Library Quarterly 13.2, 131-60. O'Kill, B. (1977-80): 'The Printed Works of William Patten (c.l510-c.l600).' - Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 7, 28-45. Osselton, Ν. E. (1986): 'The First English Dictionary? A Sixteenth-century Compiler at Work.' - In R. R. K. Hartmann (ed.): The History of Lexicography. - Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, 175-84. Rastell, W. (1624): Les Termes de la Ley: or, Certaine Difficult and Obscure Words and Termes of the Common Lawes of this Realme. - London: Adam Islip for the Company of Stationers. Robbins, R. H. (1970): 'Medical Manuscripts in Middle English.' - Speculum 45.3, 393-415. Roberts, P. R. (1989): 'The Welsh Language, English Law and Tudor legislation.' - Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 19-75. Rosier, J. L. (1960): 'The Sources of John Joscelyn's Old English-Latin Dictionary.' -Anglia 78, 28-39. (1977): Ά new Old English glossary: Nowell upon Huloet.' - Studia Neophilogica 49.2, 189-194. Ross, T. W., & E. Brooks, Jr. (eds.) (1984): English Glosses from British Library Additional Manuscript 37075. - Norman, Oklahoma.

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Salmon, V. (1961): 'Joseph Webbe: Some Seventeenth Century Views on Language-teaching and the Nature of Meaning.' - Bibliothèque d'humanisme et renaissance 23, 324—40. (1992): 'Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) and the English Origins of Algonkian Linguistics.' Historiographia Linguistica 19.1, 25-56. SG= A SEA GRAMMAR. Ed. John Smith. London: John Haviland 1627. siG = A SHORTE INTRODUCTION OF GRAMMAR. Ed. William Lily & John Colet. Menston: Scolar Press 1970 ['1567 London: Reginald Wolf], Simmons, J. S. G., & B. O. Unbegaun (1951): 'Slavonic Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library.' - Oxford Slavonic Papers 2: 119-27. Simon, J. (1968): 'Dr. Cowell.' - Cambridge Law Journal 262, 260-72. Starnes, D. T., G. E. Noyes & G. Stein (1991): The English Dictionary from Cawdrey to Johnson: 16041755. - Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Stein, G. (1985): The English Dictionary before Cawdrey. - Tübingen: Niemeyer. (1997): John Palsgrave as Renaissance Linguist. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Strachey, W. (1953): The Historie of Travell into Virginia Britania (1612). Ed. Louis B. Wright and Virginia Freund. - London: Hakluyt Soc. 2nd ser., CHI. TST = A TREATISE OF SCHEMES & TROPES. Ed. Richard Sherry. London: John Day 1550.

Olga Karpova, Ivanovo State University

AUTHOR'S LEXICOGRAPHY WITH SHAKESPEARE DICTIONARIES'

SPECIAL

REFERENCE

TO

English author lexicography represents the largest group of reference works. More than three hundred monolingual and bilingual dictionaries of different types appeared in the sixteenth century as commentaries on 'difficult', 'hard' or 'obscure' words. Geoffrey Chaucer was the first English writer to attract the attention of lexicographers (Karpova 1989, 1993). The aim of such glossaries was to select and describe Chaucer's "most elegant words and to introduce their usage into everyday language of Englishmen" (Speght 1598: ii). Speght's glossary opened a new era in English lexicography which for five centuries contributed various types of reference books on English writers. These included glossaries, lexicons, encyclopedias, terminological and pronouncing dictionaries, dictionaries of characters and place-names and concordances from the works of Charles Dickens, Herbert Wells, Robert Burns and other writers. Their contents, i.e. the principles of corpus formation2 and lexicographical description3 differed from century to century. But all types of author's dictionaries including glossaries, indices and concordances have been developing certain characteristic features in their macroand microstructure. Let us consider concordances as the biggest group of writers' reference books. The first concordances of English authors appeared during the eighteenth century with Shakespeare concordances coming first (Anonymous 1787; Ayscough 1790). In addition to Shakespeare, they were devoted to the works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Speght 1598; Tatlock and Kennedy 1927; Oizumi 1991-1992), John Milton (Bradshaw 1965; Cleveland 1854; Cooper 1923; Ingram and Swaim 1972; Lushington 1857), Alfred Tennyson (Baker 1931, 1967; Brightwell 1970), William Congreve (Mann 1973) and William Blake (Erdmann 1967). Thirty more names of English writers could easily be mentioned here whose works have attracted the attention of lexicographers from the sixteenth century to the present day: Thomas Kyd, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Gordon Byron, Alfred Housman and James Joyce. It should be mentioned that Joyce concordances and indexes constitute one of the largest collections in the world after Shakespeare concordances (cf. Karpova 1993). All these concordances differ in the manner in which the material is presented, the number and variety of information categories per entry line, and even the type of notational devices used,4 all of which need to be studied more closely in the context of the general history of author lexicography. Some of the entries in concordances include references to authors and works from which a particular item or a quotation had been taken. In some of John Milton's ' 2

3

4

An earlier version of this paper was published in Hartmann (2003: III 112-23). "Prescriptive" (based on the selection of certain words to relate the norm of the writer's usage to that of his contemporaries), or later on, "registrative" (including all words from the writer's works without any exception). Definition, labels, number of citations or illustrative examples, and their locations in the author's works. Italics, abbreviations of authors' works, page format, etc.

32

Olga Karpova

concordances, for example, we find similar literary references and authors cited, because for three centuries Milton dictionaries have formed a separate branch of author lexicography. A number of concordances were also compiled to Robert Burns' and James Joyce's literary works thus forming separate branches of author lexicography. The majority of available concordances have been published in the United States by Haskell House and American university presses. Georg Olms Verlag in Hildesheim has published a special series of concordances to Elizabethan and other writers (among them: Fuger 1979; Mittermann and Schendle 1986; Ule 1979; Watt 1995; see also the catalogue: Olms Weidmann 1996). The publication of these concordances has influenced the character and extent of the entry lines in the concordances to English authors which have appeared since. Let us trace the peculiarities of their development using as an example the most comprehensive group, viz. Shakespeare dictionaries, which includes not only concordances, but also encyclopedias, onomasticons, indexes, glossaries and other reference works, among them even such 'exotic' dictionary types as E. Partridge's Shakespeare Bawdy, M. Ryden's Shakespeare Plant Names and A. Falconer's Shakespeare's Sea and Naval Terms including Gunnery (Karpova 1992: 593-603). The first concordance to Shakespeare is known as Anonymous Concordance, published in 1787. The author, whose name is concealed behind the initials A.P., sets down his aim in the Introduction, saying that his is an attempt to make Shakespeare's language a model for his contemporaries (Anon. 1787: iii). In spite of the fact that other lexicographers simply copied many entries from his concordance, its author's name has remained unknown to the present day. The first problem with any concordance, and this one in particular, has been the choice of a specific edition of Shakespeare's works as the source for the dictionary, because this is considered to be both the primary task and the main difficulty in author lexicography. This compilor tried to reflect and evade this issue even in the title of his concordance: "... suited to all editions ..." (Anon. 1787). The second problem for so-called "Old Shakespeare Concordances" (Howard-Hill 1979: 12-13) has been the layout of the material in the corpus, which can be clearly seen from the following example:5 HONOUR ... Rightly, to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw, When honour's at the stake. Hamlet, A. 4, S. 4

The second Shakespeare concordance compiled by the librarian Ayscough (1790) was obviously based on the previous one. The compiler enlarged his edition by inserting the missing quotations by hand, although his handwriting is very difficult to read. The example from his concordance confirms that the author was trying to find a more compact way of laying out the material, separating headword, quotations and their locations by means of different typefaces:

5

Every compiler tried to develop his own system of reference to Shakespeare works to make it clear for the concordance users. Normally it included reference to the title of the play, act, scene and line.

Author's Lexicography with Special Reference to Shakespeare

Dictionaries

33

CONJURATION

-Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords Richard 77/3/2/337/2/4

-I do defy the conjurations Romeo and Juliet ¡5/3/893/1

-An earnest conjuration from the king Hamlet /5/2/926/2/18

In 1845 M.C. Clark published another Shakespeare concordance. At first sight it looks like Ayscough's copy printed in 1827, but upon closer inspectation one notices a significant difference. Clark introduced lists of abbreviations, placed examples in two columns, used different typefaces to distinguish information categories and headwords and their locations in Shakespeare's texts. She also changed the entry line format and used shortened forms of the headword in each entry line: CONTEMPLATION c. makes a rare Twelfth Night, ii. 5

leaden c., have found Love's L.L.. iv. 3 live in prayer and a. Mer. of Venice, iii. 4 leave him in this c.? As you like it, ii. 1 the sundry c.of my travels As you like it, ii. 1... Other distinctive characteristics of Clark's approach to the lexicographic description of Shakespeare's word-stock included a thoroughly analytical view of all word occurrences. This made it possible to include 18,000 headwords on 860 pages with 300,000 quotations. Using a smaller typeface gave Clark the opportunity to enlarge the corpus and to add further words and quotations. For example, the headword love has 1900 illustrative examples, time 1150, god more than 1400. Ayscough registered headwords only in their basic form, but Clark placed all word forms as headwords: chicken/chickens; condition/conditions, etc. She also added whole word clusters from the corpus: child/children/child-changed/childish-foolish/childishness. The main feature of Clark's concordance is its registrative nature, with no omitted words, which of late are normally given in separate lists of omitted words (auxilaries, pronouns, modal verbs, etc.), usually in the front matter of the dictionary. Some but not all of these items, mainly frequently used words, were incorporated in the text of J. Barlett's concordance (1889), where they were obvious candidates for removal to make way for newer vocabulary items. A systematic comparison of various parts of both concordances provide interesting insights into the principles of corpus design (for details, see Karpova 1994: 110-12). Clark's concordance is considered by Shakespeare scholars to be an exemplary specimen of nineteenth century Shakespeare lexicography. Another Shakespeare concordance worth mentioning here is H.H. Furness's (1875) concordance to Shakespeare's sonnets and the poems "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece". The more limited corpus enabled the compiler to register every word from these texts and to show all the contexts of these words. Furness was the first to register (and support with citations) form words such as prepositions and conjunctions. Thus quotations for and occupy almost ten pages, the interjection o(h) is accompanied by 133 quotations, the entry of covers six pages, and so on. There are other innovations in this concordance which greatly affected the general structure of the reference book, including not only the generally accepted appendices, but Shakespeare's texts themselves - the sort of device which is useful and comforting for editors, but goes unnoticed by most users. This structure allows the user fast access to Shakespeare's text.

34

Olga Karpova

Many authors and editors of Shakespeare glossaries and lexicons published at the beginning of the twentieth century used the Barlett and Furness concordances as the most reliable sources of quotations from Shakespeare's works. The next step in the development of Shakespeare concordances could be called 'Computer Concordances', which made it possible to create quite new types of reference works. The most comprehensive project in Shakespeare lexicography was initiated in the 1970s at the English Department of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universitat in Munster, Germany, where a series of concordances to Shakespeare's works were compiled, the first being A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare (Spevack 1968-1980). The compilers used a new method, allocating separate volumes to different genres of the author's works: Volume I - Concordances to the Dramas and Characters of the Folio Comedies; Volume II - Concordances to the Dramas and Characters of the Folio Histories; Volume III - Folio Tragedies, and so on. Influenced by the latest achievements in 'reference science', Spevack contributed many additional information categories, such as absolute and relative frequency, the number of occurrences in verse and prose, etc.6 Hoo 6 FR 0.0006 REL FR 5V IP hoo! COR. 2 01 106 Ρ our enemy is banish'd , he is gone! hoo! hoo! 3 03 137 hoo, says 'a there's my cap ANT. 2 2.07 134 hoo, hearts, tongues (figures, scribes, bards) 3 02 16 think, speak, cast, write, sing, number, hoo! 3 02 17

Spevack's overall Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare (Spevack 1973) was also a product of the circumstances influenced by A Complete and Systematic Concordance (Spevack 19681980). The new reference book was simply a concise edition of the previous one, and the structural resemblance is rather striking, the treatment of the headwords being the same as in the multi-volume concordance: Chooser 1 FR 0.0001 REL FR IV OP so far forth as herself might be her chooser

Spevack had left a unique mark in the layout of the material, but in one important respect, i.e. modern spelling, both concordances were of course different from another impressive series of concordances called the Oxford Shakespeare Concordances (Howard-Hill 19691973). Thanks to the work done by Spevack as well as other contributors (Neuhaus 1991: 3350; Howard-Hill 1979: 2-3; Spevack and Neuhaus 1977: 15-23), a wide range of Shakespeare registrative concordances now exists. Scholars have a useful tool for linguistic analysis because both concordances (Spevack 1968-1980; 1973) present a fruitful source of information and they may well stimulate further studies. The Oxford series (Howard-Hill 1969-1973) is the first Shakespeare concordance published in old spelling, free from the incubus of being modelled upon a predecessor, organised with an original and fundamentally new technique and structure. It is equipped in almost every entry with absolute frequencies of the word occurrences, and even an index of the character who speaks the words (here: Macbeth). 6

This concordance shows absolute (FR) and relative frequency of the headword occurrence (REL FR) as well as its usage in verse (V) and prose (P). The references to Shakespeare plays are as given above: title, act, scene.

Author's Lexicography with Special Reference to Shakespeare

Dictionaries

35

Abide =2 Macb. He call vpon you straight: abide within 1147 I dare abide no longer. 1793 This multi-volume concordance is an interesting model for other author's dictionaries because it appears to satisfy the general needs of Shakespeare scholars. This structure of a set of concordances for every single work by Shakespeare was a major step forward in author lexicography, since the compilers enriched the entry line with additional information categories, which had never been done previously. In the course of time a stronger 'technical' approach has been adopted. All concordances created during three centuries of Shakespeare lexicography have been utilised in the compilation of Spevack's Shakespeare Thesaurus (1993), creating the first dictionary of this type in author lexicography. The new work is a pioneering attempt to classify and organise the entire vocabulary of Shakespeare. This classified inventory consists of 37 main semantic groups and 897 sub-groups, ranging from the Physical World and Sense Perception to Law, Religion, Time, and Space. Special attention has been paid to such dominating interests as Communication and Motion, Solidarity and Warfare. Although it differs from the Spevack's concordances in terms of design and layout (Kay 1996: 71), it is definitely based on his earlier studies. It has also contributed to the Shakespeare DATABASE (Neuhaus 1995b) which makes available the structural totality of texts and various other literary, linguistic and lexicographical perspectives to enable complete interaction with the Shakespeare corpus. Every word is accessible within the DATABASE, including information categories such as etymology, word-formation, chronological query strategies, etc. Thus the last few years have seen a considerable expansion of the Shakespeare concordance family (Neuhaus 1995a) as well as great number of papers on concordance-making (Busa 1971:51-9). The analysis of writers' concordances given above (Karpova 2002: 49-61) allows us to draw the conclusion that this comprehensive group of dictionaries has three main features: corpus, citation and label. Thus, according to the scope of the corpus, concordances can be 'complete' or 'differential', i.e. including all words or only certain groups of vocabulary (terms, proper names, etc.) from the author's works. According to the type of citations, concordances can also be 'complete' or 'differential'. And according to the kind of labelling (etymological, statistical, expressive, etc.), concordances may again be either 'complete' or 'differential'. Such a classification makes it possible not only to trace the main trends in the history of author's concordances, but also to use this method in classification of other types of writers' dictionaries taking into consideration their own information categories (definition, graphic labels, etc.). Finally, yet other advantages of concordances deserve to be mentioned: first of all they could be used as the most reliable sources of authors' quotations in the compilation of other lexicons, glossaries, onomasticons or other types of writers reference works. Secondly their limited number of information categories (e.g. citations, labels) always saves space for the complete inclusion of all words from an author's works. An historical account of English author dictionaries shows that for many centuries there have been changes in approach as to the word-list, citations, and other information categories, including choice of labels (grammatical, etymological, chronological, statistical, etc.) and even the structure and format of presenting locations of quotations in an author's works (e.g. shortened titles of Shakespeare's plays, omitting numbers of scenes or pages in the edition of his texts, and so on).

Olga Karpova

36

These changes and innovations can be easily seen when looking at a modern group of new Shakespeare dictionaries (Armstrong 2000; Clark 1997; Clarke 1999; Foaks 2000; MacConnell 2000; Miner 1996; O'Connor 2000; Shewmaker 1999). They must be taken into consideration not only in author lexicography in different countries, but in other branches of reference science like electronic corpora where concordances have been used as a source of language material for different types of dictionaries.

References

(a) Cited Reference Works Anon. (1787): Concordance to Shakespeare: Suited to all Editions, in which the Distinguished and Parallel Passages in the Plays of that Justly Admired Writer are Methodically Arranged. To which are Added Three Hundred Notes and Illustrations. - London: Robinson. Armstrong, J. (2000): The Arden Dictionary of Shakespeare Quotations. - London: Thompson Learning. Ayscough, S. (1790, 1827): An Index to the Remarkable Passages and Words Made Use of by Shakespeare. - London: Tegg. Baker, A. (1931): A Concordance to Tennyson's "The Devil and the Lady". - New York: Barnes and Noble. (1967): A Concordance to the Poetical and Dramatic Works of Alfred Tennyson. - New York: Barnes and Noble. Barlett, J. (1889): A New and Complete Concordance or Verbal Index to Words, Phrases and Passages in the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare, with a Supplementary Concordance to the Poems. - London: Macmillan. Bevan, E. (1971): A Concordance to the Plays and Prefaces of Bernard Shaw. - Detroit: The Book Tower. Bradshaw, J. (1965): A Concordance to the Poetical Works of John Milton. - London: G. Allen and Unwin. Brightwell, D. B. (1869, 1970): A Concordance to the Entire Works of Alfred Tennyson. - New York: Haskell House. Clark, M. C. (1845): The Complete Concordance to Shakespeare. - London: C. Rnight & Co. Clark, S. (1997): NTC's Dictionary of Shakespeare. - Lincolnwood: NTC Publishing Group. (1999): The Penguin Shakespeare Dictionary. - London: Penguin Books Ltd. Cleveland, C. (1854): A Complete Concordance to the Poetical Works of John Milton. - London: S. Sampson. Cooper, L. (1923): Concordance of the Latin, Greek and Italian Poems of J. Milton. - Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer. Downame, J. (1630): A Briefe Concordance to the Bible of the Last Translation. London: [printed by H. Lownes and R. Young for] the assignes of Clement Cotton. Erdmann, D. (1967): A Concordance to the Writings of William Blake. 2 vols. - Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Floren, C. (ed.) (1992): A Concordance to John Milton's Paradise Lost. 2 vols. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. Foaks, M., & R. Foaks (2000): The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations from Shakespeare. - New York: Barnes & Noble. Fuger, W. (ed.) (1979): Concordance to James Joyce's Dubliners. With a Reverse Index, a Frequency List, and a Conversion Table. - Hildesheim; G. Olms Verlag. Furness, H. H. (1875): A Concordance

to Shakespeare's

Contained. - Philadelphia PA: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

Poems.

An Index to Every

Word

therein

Author's Lexicography with Special Reference to Shakespeare Dictionaries

37

Howard-Hill, T.H. (1969-1973): Oxford Shakespeare Concordances. 36 vols. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ingram, W., & K. Swaim (eds.) (1972): A Concordance to Milton's English Poetry. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lushington, G. (1857): A Complete Concordance to the Poetical Works of Milton. - Madras: Pharoah. MacConnell, L. (2000): Dictionary of Shakespeare. - Teddington: Peter Collins Publishing Ltd. Mann, D. (1973): A Concordance to the Plays of William Congreve. - Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Miner, M., & H. Rawson (1996): A Dictionary of Quotations from Shakespeare. - New York: Penguin Books USA Inc. Mittermann, H & H. Schendle (1986): A Complete Concordance to the Novels of John Lyly. Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. Neuhaus, H.J. (1995a): A Phonetic Concordance to Daniel Jones's "Phonetic Readings in English". Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. (1995b): Shakespeare DATABASE CD-ROM. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. O'Connor, E. M. (2000): Who is Who and What's What in Shakespeare. - New York: Randomhouse. Oizumi, A. (ed.) (1991-1992): A Complete Concordance to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 10 vols. Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. Shewmaker, E. (1999): Shakespeare 's Language. A Glossary of Unfamiliar Words in His Plays and Poems. - New York: Checkmark Books. Shinagel, M. (1973): A Concordance to the Poems of Jonathan Swift. - Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press. Speght, T. ( 1598): The Old and Obscure Words in Chaucer Explained whereof by Nature of Derivation. London: Printed by Adam Islip, at the charges of Bonham Norton. Spevack, M. (1968-1980): A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the Works of Shakespeare [9 volumes]. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. (1993): A Shakespeare Thesaurus. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. Tatlock, J., & A. Kennedy (1927): A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and to the Romaunt of the Rose. - Washington DC: The Carnegie Institute. Ule, L. (1979): A Concordance to the Works of Christopher Marlowe. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. (1987): A Concordance to the Shakespeare Apocrypha [3 volumes]. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. Watt, R. J. (1995): A Concordance to the Poetry of Philip Larkin. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. Williams, M. (1907): The Dickens Concordance. - London: F. Griffith.

(b) Other Literature Busa, R. (1971): 'Concordances'. - In: A. Kent and H. Lancour (eds.): Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. Vol. 5: 51-9. New York: M. Dekker. Hartmann, R. (2003): Lexicography: Critical Concepts. 3 vols. - London: Routledge. Hausmann, F.J. et al. (eds.) (1989-90): Wörterbücher/ Dictionaries/ Dictionnaires. An International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. 3 vols. - Berlin: W. de Gruyter. Howard-Hill, T. H. (1972): Literary Concordances. A Guide to the Preparation of Manual and Computer Concordances. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. (1979): 'Computer analysis of Shakespearean texts' - Shakespeare Newsletter 1: 2-3. Karpova, O. M. (1989): Slovari jazyka pisatelej [Author's Dictionaries], - Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo Poligraficheskogo Instituta. (1992): 'Shakespeare Lexicography. Trends of Development'. - In: H. Tommola et al. (eds.): EURALEX '92 Proceedings. Part II: 59-60. Tampere: Tampere University. (1993): Bibliograficheskij Ukazatel' Slovarej Jayka Anglijskikh Pisatelej, XVI-XX w. [Bibliographical Index of English Author's Dictionaries, 16th to 20th Centuries], - Ivanovo: Ivanovo State University.

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(1994): Slovari jazyka Shekspira. Opyt Istoriko-tipologicheskogo Issledovanija [Dictionaries of Shakespeare's Language. Historical-Typological Research]. - Ivanovo: Ivanovo State University. (2002): 'Sovremennaya Kartina Shekspirovskoi Leksikografii' [Modern Shakespeare Dictionaries]. - In: Y. G. Korotkih (ed.): Lexika. Leksikografia [Lexics. Lexicography], 49-61. Moscow, Oriol: Tehnicheski Univeristet. Kay, C. J. (1996): Review of A Shakespeare Thesaurus by Marvin Spevack - International Journal of Lexicography 9,1: 71-5. Neuhaus, H. J. (1991): 'Integrating Database, Expert System and Hypermedia: the Shakespeare CD-ROM Project' - Literary and Linguistic Computing 6,3: 33-50. Olms W. (1996): Alpha-Omega Léxica. Indizes. Konkordanzen. - Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag. Spevack, M., & H. J. Neuhaus (1977): 'SHAD: Shakespeare Analytical Dictionary' - Bulletin of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing 5,1:15-21.

Natascia Leonardi, University of Macerata A N ANALYSIS OF A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY CONCEPTUAL DICTIONARY WITH A N ALPHABETICAL LIST OF ENTRIES AND A NETWORK DEFINITION STRUCTURE: JOHN WILKINS' AND WILLIAM LLOYD'S AN ALPHABETICAL DICTIONARY ( 1668)

Introduction The Alphabetical Dictionary is part of An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language published in 1668 by John Wilkins as a project for the elaboration of a philosophical and universal language. The collaboration of William Lloyd was essential to Wilkins for the compilation of the Alphabetical Dictionary (1668: cl), 1 a text mainly characterised by the fact that it is not an autonomous work, since it was created as a by-product of a more comprehensive plan. This is the reason for its basic dependence on the Tables of the Universal Philosophy, which are the second of the four parts of the Essay, "Conteining [sic] a regular enumeration and description of all those things and notions to which names are to be assigned" in the universal language proposed by Wilkins (1668: 22). Wilkins' purpose in the compilation of the Essay was the creation of a philosophical language, which would be universally intelligible and capable of allowing more precise communication. 2 In order to achieve his aim, he elaborated a device centred on the construction of a classification that would ensure the attainment of an accurate definition of "things and notions". These defined notions would then be expressed through an artificially elaborated code, planned to express a direct correspondence between every single meaning and its uniquely attributed 'word-form'. With the Tables of the Universal Philosophy Wilkins intended to produce a clear-cut delineation and classification of the concrete and abstract elements existing in the world through the representation of their "mental Image" (1668: 20), that is to say their conceptual equivalent as it is known by men.3 As a matter of fact, in Wilkins' plan natural language is conceived as a device subsidiary to the hierarchical taxonomy, which is the main and the only trustworthy instrument of definition (1668: a3, 1, 20). Consequently, the classificatory system 1

2

3

In order to give a more precise reference to the introductory sections of the Essay, numbers (from 1 to 4) will be added to the letters (a to d) marking the unnumbered folio pages. The Essay as a project for a universal system of communication has been studied in recent years especially in the context of what is generally referred to as the 'universal language movement'. Different analytical foci characterise the works devoted to this topic (cf. Knowlson (1975), Slaughter (1982), Large (1985), Strasser (1988), Subbiondo (1992), Eco (1993), Maat (1999)). In the introductory section to the Tables, Wilkins points out the founding principle of his analysis: "As men do generally agree in the same Principle of Reason, so do they likewise agree in the same Internal Notion or Apprehension of things" (1668: 20). This point is clearly expressed by Wilkins also in another text, devoted to religious matters and published posthumously: "Now as there is an universal agreement in the sensation of outward objects; The Eye and the Ear of all sensitive Creatures, having the same kind of perception of visible and audible things. [...] So must it be with the understandings of men likewise, which do agree in the same kind of Perception or simple apprehension of intelligible objects. Now those kind [sic] of Apprehensions wherein all men do agree, these are called natural Notions" (Wilkins, [1675] 1683: 56-7).

40

Natascia

Leonardi

of the Tables has a twofold functional role because, on the one hand, it is the foundation of the artificial language that is supposed to represent the conventional form of a universally shared conceptual scheme; on the other hand, the conceptual definition provided in the hierarchical structure of the Tables is also adopted as the foundation of the lexical definition of the meanings of the English words, alphabetically listed in the appended Dictionary. It follows that Wilkins' Alphabetical Dictionary - and in particular the typology of its definitions - are basically characterised by being appended to a text which, for a great part, is a conceptual analysis of man's knowledge of the world. This analysis is also intended to become a semantic representation of the linguistic elements used by men both to talk about the world and to understand and conceptualise it. The complete title of Wilkins' and Lloyd's Dictionary clearly reveals the peculiar connection between its lexical definitions and the Tables, as it reads: An Alphabetical Dictionary, Wherein all English Words According to their Various Significations, Are either referred to their Places in the Philosophical Tables, Or explained by such Words as are in those Tables. The particular architecture devised by Wilkins for his Essay implies that each meaning of the words included in the Alphabetical Dictionary is defined (either directly or indirectly) through the notion corresponding to it in the Tables of the Universal Philosophy, where its definition is provided by the place the concept occupies in the relational structure proposed by the author. In this way the defining section of the Alphabetical Dictionary ultimately refers to the hierarchical structure in which the concepts are arranged.4 The classificatory scheme of the Essay can be broadly described as a system allowing a basic three-level definition model, consisting of the hierarchically embedded categories of Genus, Difference, and Species (cf. Hüllen 1999: 250-84). ! The arrangement of the Tables in the text reproduces in a linear order the hierarchical systématisation of the classificatory levels: the scheme is broken down into forty main Tables of the Genera which both demarcate the conceptual and semantic fields of the notions classified and show the branching of the cotaxonymic Differences from each Genus.6 The forty main Tables are further articulated in 'subTables', one for each subsumed Difference which, in turn, display the branching of the Species at the lowest level of the classification. The scheme illustrated above represents the core of the defining procedure in the Essay. Nonetheless, it is necessary to highlight that the complete classificatory structure is articulated in a wider unitary hierarchy, illustrated by Wilkins in the General Scheme which introduces the Tables and displays the properties of the forty Genera and their mutual relations (1668: 23; cf. Figure 3 below). As far as the lexicographic properties of Wilkins' and Lloyd's Dictionary are concerned, the focus of attention in the present paper is mainly centred on the interrelation between the Alphabetical Dictionary and the defining Tables, which are a list of words and their corresponding senses, and a taxonomic arrangement of the basic meanings of such words 4

5

6

The lexicographic value of Wilkins' major work has been analysed from different, but complementary perspectives, by Dolezal (1983, 1985, 1994a) and Hüllen (1989: 195-245, 1999: 244-301). Dolezal's attention is mainly directed towards the defining methodology of the Alphabetical Dictionary, while Hüllen provides an in-depth scrutiny of the defining procedure of the classificatory Tables. Capital letters will hereafter be used for the three terms indicating the main defining levels of the Tables of the Essay in order to clearly identify their terminological value in the text here analysed, in accordance with Wilkins' practice in the Essay (cf. 1668: 22 and passim). The notion of 'field' is here intended in its specialized meaning, as introduced in linguistics by Trier (1931); cf. also Lyons (1963, 1977), Geckeler (1971), and Lehrer (1974).

An Analysis of a Seventeenth Century Conceptual Dictionary

41

respectively. An example entry will illustrate the way in which meanings are retrievable from a conceptual classification of "things and notions".7

L o o k i n g up in the Alphabetical

Dictionary

and the Philosophical

Tables

The word KNOWLEDGE will be used to exemplify how information about the defining features of an item is displayed in the Essay and how it can be obtained by the users of the text through both the structure of the definition included in the Tables and its relation to the alphabetical section of the Dictionary. 8 Figure 1 reproduces the entry for the English word KNOWLEDGE in the Alphabetical Dictionary·.

LA Kno&¡td¡t, [Knowing] [Science,] Ha. VI. I. [Experience.'! HÎ. VÎ.4· Knackt;. PG.Y.~ 7 . A.

Knar/, [Ksot] PP. 1.1. A.

Figure 1. J. Wilkins and W. Lloyd, An Alphabetical

Dictionary,

The words in brackets represent the different meanings of the lemma, which is therefore clearly identified by Wilkins and Lloyd as a polysemous word. The first gloss, KNOWING is intended to give the basic sense of the term. The two sub-lemmas in the indented column indicate the complete conceptual overlapping of KNOWLEDGE with the two items, and the ensuing relation of 'absolute synonymy', which, in the perspective of a universal language based on the classificatory Tables, connects the English word KNOWLEDGE with the words SCIENCE and 9 EXPERIENCE respectively. In the Tables, the two meanings are two distinct notions, as the 7

8

9

For a thorough description of the formal devices and of the different defining procedures used by Wilkins and Lloyd in the composition of the Dictionary, Dolezal's works on the topic (1983, 1985) are an outstanding point of reference. The generic terms 'item' and 'element' will hereafter be used for referring to a unit when it is taken into consideration in the classificatory Tables, where concepts are defined. The same unit in the Alphabetical Dictionary will be referred to as a 'word'. It is necessary to clarify the use of the concept of 'absolute synonymy' in the present work. In lexicological and lexicographical studies absolute synonymy is considered as extremely rare, or even alien to semantic relations in natural languages (cf. Cruse 1986: 268-70 and 2000: 157-8; Zgusta 1971: 89-90; Landau 1984: 105-6; Hartmann and James 1998 s.v. "synonymy"). Nevertheless, this concept finds its own place in Wilkins' commitment to the creation of an unambiguous artificial language system (cf. 1668: 18). In the Essay what can be considered a conceptual-semantic overlapping of the content of different English word-forms is stressed by the absence of any differentiations in the definitions of those words, since neither semantic nor grammatical modifications are specified in the Alphabetical Dictionary. But only a gloss is given and/or a code-reference (cf. η. 10) to the same place in the Tables, where one single concept is defined. Consequently, in the artificial language based on the Tables one single form will be used for indicating one single concept,

42

Natascia Leonardi

code-reference shows. The first meaning of KNOWLEDGE, i.e. SCIENCE, will b e taken into consideration: the reference given for this item indicates the place in the Tables (displayed in Figure 2):

Chap. V I I I .

Hdit.

205

* VI. Thole are ftyled A C Q U I R E D I N T E L L E C T U A L HABITS 'I. ICQÚÍwhich may be gotten by Induftry, and tend to the perfeûing of the ^ t u - l · Mind or Uaderitanding. They are diftinguithable by their CTUAA 'Otjech i being either HASrrs, 'Speculative ; fiirniihing the mind with due Notions and conceptions concerning the Nature of thingyheir Caulis, Differences, Relations and Dependencies. / S C I E N C E , Knoaledgi, skill, Theory Lesrni»·, Infight.

\ KcVRiosiTr. ¿IGNORANCE, rude, untaught. Active ; denoting Skill in men and buitnels, whereby

we are babied to judge what is fit and convenient,according co various cafes and circumlUncej. J W 1 S D O M , Prudcncc, D'fcreticn, Sapience, nife, fig',politic.

2 s CRAFT, Cunning,Subititi, Shineft,Policy,Dcvicc,£nirk_, Sleight, ) fetch, Wile, Tricky, ß},ßremt, Knave, Shark., Shift, canu ) over ette, ever reach, {FÜLLT,Fool-ißneß,Simplicity,Silljmfi,Impnidtttcc,I>idißrction, uitleß, unwife, aifird, ßaJiijp, tiiddj, Ninny, Sit, infittale, Foppery, effective 5 implying Skill in thofe lèverai Operations and Works which concern Humane life. ("ART, Siili, Dexterity,Craft,Cunning, Ixßght, Knacky

expert ffeiU a. Sfienin,goedat,artipciaL,tVorkptan, Artiß. ivHSKlLFVLNESS, bungling blundering, htchinfrfumUingjiiling. ßuhtcr, fnattcr, ignorant,ßlly, rude,grnf Jtjtuic ,inex(írt¡ inartificial, amipard, Freßman, Novice. Tie manner f f acquiring them 5 whether by -Cm· can Omrvatien, and repeated Trials.

I

C E X P E R I E N C E , Trad ice, Excrrift, KHc»Iidge,csnvcrfi*t, verfid, '4-< expert, Experiment, Smpyric. \ LlSEXTEXJEUCE, inexpert, raw, tt ßeifc, Pan;, Novice, Freßmt», I uttverß. ¡\7heTeactingef othert, either || vivi voce,or « fcrivtit. C L E A R N I N G , Literature, SchtUrßip,fibolaßic,Librai Science, 5. < sh¡¡, ixdoctinate. i VNLÍJBHEDNESS, illiterate, unlettered, rtde,furple4 Figure 2. J. Wilkins, Essay: 205.

Here, the notion is 'structurally' defined as *a Habit, *acquired intellectual (glosses are also available for both the Difference and the Genus), * distinguishable by its objects, * speculative (the characterising features of the item are highlighted here by asterisks). 10 In fact, the defining nodes in the Tables of the Essay are not limited to a consistent correspondence to the three m a i n classificatory levels. It is true that the layers of Genus, Difference, and Species provide a regular definitional pattern for all the classified items, nevertheless the features given b y such a pattern are regularly enhanced by additional properties formally represented in the Tables as

10

notwithstanding the fact that the English words placed in the same classificatory slot are not complete synonyms (see below). The code-reference (Ha. VI. 1.) is an abbreviated indication o f ' G e n u s HABIT, sixth Difference, first Species'. The table in An Advertisement to the Reader that opens the Alphabetical Dictionary provides a key to the abbreviations used in the Dictionary. When the full form is hereafter provided, it will be quoted from the aforementioned table.

An Analysis of a Seventeenth Century Conceptual

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43

differential nodes. The following gloss is added to the 'structural definition' of SCIENCE: "[...] furnishing the mind with due Notions and conceptions concerning the Nature of things, their Causes, Differences, Relations and Dependencies. SCIENCE, Knowledge, Skill, Theory, Learning, Insight". This example shows an interesting implication of the hierarchical organisation of the classificatory structure: in the Tables of the Essay the definiens always precedes the definiendum. The gloss given by Wilkins to SCIENCE illustrates the rationale of his project, since it contains the keywords for understanding the principles on which his heuristic and defining procedure is based (cf. 1668: 1, 20, 22, 289). Such a procedure determines that information about the nature of an item in the classificatory scheme is centred in the locus in which it is collocated. Consequently each 'slot' in the taxonomical Tables represents a relational node that gathers the defining features of the elements included in it.

The network of semantic relations in the Essay

Main distinguishing features Wilkins' scheme provides, on the one hand, the direct (or positive) statements about the features characterising the classified elements. On the other hand, the architecture of the Essay also makes available information, retrievable through an indirect (or negative) line, following the diverging nodes of co-taxonyms at the different levels of the classification. The above description of the first meaning of the word KNOWLEDGE (i.e. SCIENCE) is focused on the positive path of analysis. The negative aspect of the definition will be illustrated later. In the classification of the Tables, the basic properties of an item are inherited from its hypernym or hypernyms (depending on the level of the hierarchy): the Genus inherits its characterising features from the relational nodes that determine its position in the global hierarchy reproduced in the General Scheme (1668: 23; cf. Figure 3). In tum, the Genus, together with the Difference, act as delimitations of the conceptual fields, and transfer their properties to their subordinate elements (cf. Hüllen 1999: 255-7, 273^4). Furthermore, specific characterising features are added on the three main classificatory levels. The elements included in a conceptual field are in a mutual, or network relation; consequently, all the other elements, apart from the key one which the focus is centred on, represent an additional source for increasing the completeness of the definition. The general principle of differentiation has a fundamental role in the Essay, where it is thoroughly applied from both a procedural and formal point of view, as clearly appears in the Table of the Difference proposed above (cf. Figure 2), where braces and indentation show the divergence of the relational nodes (cf. Hüllen 1999: 254). Differentiation is implemented in the Tables as a relation of conceptual opposition. From a lexical point of view, opposition can be identified in the Essay in its different facets: it is possible to find relations of complementarity, converseness, gradable oppositions, and so on." But it is necessary to point out that in the

11

Detailed parameters, such as those proposed by Cruse (1986, 2000), are used by Eco (1993: 270-1) to sketch the different kinds of lexical oppositions detectable in the Tables; cf. also Frank (1979: 133-6).

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Tables Wilkins does not provide any formal devices for distinguishing these relations, which are generally identified as oppositions. At the Species level, differentiation can involve up to four items, even though this is not the standard (cf. Maat 1999: 144-7); and in the case of oppositions which are not 'single' but "double", this relation is broadly interpreted by Wilkins as a gradable one, as suggested by the terminology used to define these words in the Dictionary.12 Affinity is another basic relational principle applied in the structure of the Tables; it characterises one of the concepts placed in the same locus (or relational node) as distinct but not opposed to the other one, as the corresponding definition in the Dictionary points out.13

Chap. I.

The General Scheme.

i·}

All· kinds of things and notions,« whichnamesare to btaffignc^may be dU fiributed kuolbch atareeithcrmort i'G»«r*/-i namely ihoùiUrùveriâlaoàom, whether belonging more properly to I. C GENERAL. I C T W T A L M TRANSCENDENTAL·) RELATION MIXED. II ^V 4 1 ( RELATION- OF ACTION. ILL DISCOURSE. IV [sperili îdetKxirg cither ICREATOR. V , ICrestm ; namely l*uch· things as were cithet irejlal or entretui by God, not excluding fevers] of thole notions, which are framed by the minds of men, confidered either ¡CEBTÜTPEFYI WORLD. VI , . IDtâriintHMÎji according to the leverai kmds of Bebgs. whetherfiichas do ~ÍM**e, f ( bel»"« to 'BUMMTA ; ELEMENT. VU jmimiU, conüdered according to their fcvenu ' ΐselcili1 whether

¡ 'Vetetatroe ί

„ , .STONE- VIII (Imrfrti «'^«"'.ÍMETAL. Κ «LEAF. X < rHERE cooM.accojd.tQ the< FLOWED. XI (FT^ASW^&JRUB. ΧΠΙ (SEED·VESSEL ΧΠ (EXANGUIOUS. XV Se^Hveù (FISH. XVT 7 » ^ » . « . / , J BIRD. XVII „„¿PECULIAR. XIX C BEAST- XVM '¿GENERAL. XX

Xctjjugi R

(MAGNITUDE. XXI ΧΧΠ (MEASURE. XXIII C NATURAL POWER. XXIV \HABIT. XXV «ulilss whethrr/MANNERS XXVI JSENSI8LE QUALITY. XXVII

£*imtit, S< SPACE.

(SICKNESS, x x v m

(SPIRITUAL. XXIX J8UM< CORPOREAL. XXX ^MOTION. XXXI 'OPERATION. ΧΧΧΠ

S

(OECONOMICAL. ΧΧΧΙΠ < POSSESSIONS. XXXIV (. PROVISIONS. XXXV F CIVIL. XXXVI.

Privale,

JUDICIAL. χχχνπ

RJÄCI. ¿MILITARY, χ χ χ ν π )NAVAL. XXXIX {ECCLESIASTICAL. XL.

Figure 3. J. Wilkins, Essay: 23.

12

13

In the above example the node SCIENCE contains also CURIOSITY and IGNORANCE, which are respectively identified in the Alphabetical Dictionary as its "Exceeding extreme" and its "Deficient extreme"; Wilkins also gives a brief explanation of his interpretation and application of the relations of opposition and affinity (1668: 290). In the Tables considered here an example of this relation is represented by the concept DISPOSITION which is classified as "Affinis" to the Genus H A B I T (cf. Figure 5).

An Analysis

of a Seventeenth

Century Conceptual

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45

The Alphabetical Dictionary has a fundamental role in the delineation of semantic relations, and in particular for the phenomena of synonymy and polysemy, which are reflected through the collocation of word-forms in relation to the corresponding meanings in the Tables. In the taxonomic scheme, the words interpreted as 'absolute synonyms' are included in the same locus and the references to the Tables contained in the Dictionary for these words contribute to clarifying the typology of the semantic relation in which they are involved. But no further specification that can help the user to identify the semantic differences between (near-)synonyms is provided (cf. η. 9). Consequently, in the perspective of the universal language proposed, the word KNOWLEDGE represents an example of 'complete synonymy' with SCIENCE and EXPERIENCE respectively: in the Tables it is listed after the two items (cf. Figure 2), and in the Alphabetical Dictionary this relation is highlighted by the code-references given (cf. Figure 1). Polysemous words find multiple collocations in the Tables: EXPERIENCE - the second meaning given for the word KNOWLEDGE - is both defined as a HABIT (Ha. VI. 4 . ) and as a Species under the Genus TRANSCENDENTAL RELATIONS OF ACTION (TA. III. 4. Α . , i.e. "Affinis" to ENDEAVOURING, under the headword ESSAYING). Furthermore part-whole relations are occasionally used in the taxonomic scheme as classificatory principles because Wilkins provides specific Tables in order to arrange only the parts of living entities (the Genera in question are: PARTS PECULIAR and PARTS GENERAL of Plants and Animals). But for the other items, meronymic relations are sometimes used as distinguishing features. An example of this kind of relation can be found under the Genus OECONOMICAL POSSESSIONS: the fifth Difference is CARRIAGE, and its subordinate Species are distinguished by being either "considered as Whole" or "considered as Parts" of the superordinate Difference (1668: 257).14 After this cursory consideration of the relational principles adopted by Wilkins in the realisation of his classificatory scheme, it is interesting to consider how the complete set of information (i.e. the defining features) of an element can be gathered, both through the hierarchical structure and the wider relational network provided by the Tables. The former gives positive information about what the elements contained in it are, while the latter contributes to determining what an item is not, specifying how it relates to the other elements included in the same conceptual-semantic field, and the way in which it differentiates itself from the others.

The wider relational network The definition of the term SCIENCE previously mentioned starts from the Genus level, which allows the reader to retrieve the basic conceptual and semantic information about both the concept and the English word. In fact this basic level can be considered as that which gives the main lexicographic definition, as it makes available to the user of the text the meaningful properties characterising and uniquely identifying the item in question. Nevertheless, further meaningful features can be retrieved through the consideration of the complete relational structure of which the notion SCIENCE is a part, as Figure 3 shows.

14

A further distinction is represented by the consideration of the "Furniture of the Animals which draw or carry [...]" (1668: 257).

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The General Scheme in the Essay precedes the Tables of the Genera and clearly illustrates the further hierarchy present above the level of the Genus with different degrees of embedment for the various Genera. In addition to the properties deriving from the relational nodes on the upper levels of the hierarchy, the concept SCIENCE inherits the features that the Genus HABIT draws from its co-taxonymic relations, displayed in Figure 4, which illustrates the node from which the Genus HABIT branches.

GHAP.

VIII.

Concerning the Predicament if Quality ί the feveral Gentit belonging to i t , namely,

τ. Natural Power.

II. Habit.

UL Manners.

IV. Sentible quality. V. Difeafe* with the varim Difftrtnctt and Speciej under each of tbefi.

W

Hcther many ofthofc things now called gntility, be not reducible to Motion and Figure, and the Situation ot the parts of Bodies,« ζ queftion which I (hall not at prefent corfider. T i s fufficient that the particulars here ipecified are moft commonly known and apprehended under that notion as they arc here repf cfented,and are itili like to be called by the fame namcs,whatever new Theory may be found out o f the caufts ot them. The leverai Genus's under this Predicament are fiich kinds o f Quali· f Internal ; whether ("ties as arc cither Ninnate-, N A T U R A L POWER. ! ¿Sttpcrináuctd ; confidered more j $Gen*,ralij ; ftyled by the common name o f H A B l T i J ¿specialty 5 with rcfpeû to the cuftomary Aftions o f men conlrdered [External 3 denoting either (as voluntary MANNERS. CThofe more general afTeûions of bodies which are the o b i e ô s o f j SENSIBLE QUALITY* ( fenfe. (..Thofc fpccial i m potencies of living bodies,whereby they are difabled SICkNESS. (for their natural funôions.

Figure 4. J. Wilkins, Essay. 194. HABIT is one of the five elements identified as "Qualities", distinguished from the others by a series of features which characterise it: HABIT is "Internar rather than "Externar, as are SENSIBLE QUALITY and SICKNESS; it is also "Superinduced' rather than "Innate", this feature differentiating it from NATURAL POWER, and it is considered "more Generally", rather than "more Specially", as is the case with MANNERS. These traits of the Genus, together with the information provided by a gloss, added to define it, are inherited by its subordinate Differences. Furthermore a relation of affinity is underlined for the Genus HABIT which diverges from the concept DISPOSITION, placed in the same locus, as it is a "Quality" of more perfect degree (cf. Figure 5). Figure 5 displays the Table of the Genus level, representing how the subordinate Differences branch from it. In this Table, the hypernymic Difference of the Species SCIENCE, is more specifically identified as one of the "Kinds of vertuous Habits", this property distinguishing it from the other Differences under the same Genus that are characterised

An Analysis of a Seventeenth Century Conceptual

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47

instead as being either "States or Conditions of life" (namely ENDS OR REWARD OF VERTUE and INSTRUMENTS OF VERTUE) or "Qualifications" (i.e. AFFECTIONS OF VERTUE, either INTELLECTUAL or MORAL). SCIENCE is further labelled as an ACQUIRED INTELLECTUAL, not INFUSED HABIT.

200

Habit.

Of A It·

Par·· JL α χ ν · TfA i i

H A B I T ,

OUch f*peri»iJ»etd $*'lilitf, whether infufed or acquired, wbtrtbj tit ^ ntturnlFacuititi tre perfected, and rendred more ready and vigorous in the ejercife of their feveral Aits, according to the morcwlefi perfe& Degrees of them, are ftyled by the name of

SWABIT, Endmment, enure, ¡¡tulipe, Gift, Tdext. ¿ DIS ros Π ION, rrepcrflìJriiclivitj.PrtMftHudcfTmenefsylncUntiion, retdintft, give* te, tadiction, fit »ψ; ¿pt'tude. Το «he taore general confederation of Habit may appertain Thofe S tätet or Conditions of life which either reward or enable men for vertuous Aâions ·, comprehending the SENDS OR. R E W A R D OF VERTUE. Γ. ¿ I N S T R U M E N T S OF V E R T U E II. Thofe gutlificitiont, which, though they are not properly Venues,yet do prepare for, and difpofeunro,and,in other refpeÛJ,arcumftantiate Vertue it felf, both in the H*bit and Ofentions of it, and are therefore ftyled AFFECTIONS OF V E R T U E , either 5 1 N T E L L E C T U A L . ill. ¿ M O R A L . IV. The Kind* of vertuou» Habits, whether SINFUSED, both Intelledual and Moral V . ¿ A C Q U I R E D INTELLECTUAL. VL

Figure 5. J. Wilkins, Essay: 200. In the Tables of the Essay the above-mentioned structure (cf. Figure 5) precedes the definition previously illustrated (cf. Figure 2) for which only the positive line of characterisation of the notion SCIENCE has been mentioned; but if the relations completing the principle of inheritance are pointed out as well, the item SCIENCE is further identified by being more specifically distinguishable by its "Objects", rather than by "The manner of acquiring them", being "Speculative", as different from both "Active" and "Effective". All the elements included in the same Table - or conceptual/lexical field - and depending on the other branches of the hierarchy, contribute to establishing the nature of the concept considered, since they allow the reader to have a complete image of the domain in which the key element is included and from which it receives its content. The display of clear-cut relations among the elements in a field plays an important role in the reader's understanding of the meaning of its members.15

15

Cf. Lehrer and Kittay (1992) for a collection of contemporary perspectives on the analysis of lexical and semantic organisation.

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Moreover, a further relational pattern is provided in the Essay for the items listed after many of the headwords in the classification. In the taxonomic Tables only a selection of simple "things and notions", called "Radicals" by Wilkins, has been classified and given the place of headwords in the different loci (1668: b4, 20, 22, 295). The reason for this choice is the need for a quantitative limitation of the elements to be included in the classificatory Tables imposed by the method devised by the author. This method, on the one hand, allows a uniform and economical defining procedure but, on the other, also determines a programmatic decision to define, through the hierarchical structure, only the elements "à Priori"" identified as "simple" (1668: b4). The remaining items, added to the Tables after a consideration of the inventory of words resulting from the compilation of the Dictionary (1668: b4), are defined through their reduction to the headwords, or "Radicals" which, as a consequence, acquire also a role of semantic basis for the words associated with them and placed in the same classificatory locus. Consequently each locus becomes a semantic 'sub-field', since the non-Radical words included in the text are either 'complete synonyms' of the headword to which they are connected - as they express the same concept - or they are semantically subordinated to it, and are defined in the Alphabetical Dictionary in terms of their grammatical and/or semantic relation to the "Radical" (cf. 1668: 290). The definition of these items consists in a reference to the headword to which they are related, with the addition of grammatical and/or semantic modifiers, defined by Wilkins respectively as "Grammatical" and "Transcendental Particles" (cf. 1668: 298, 304, 318). The value of these Particles, established by the author, is indicated in the section of the Universal Grammar, but the definition of the 'sub-species' items is not provided in the Philosophical Tables, as clearly appears from the page of the Essay previously presented (cf. Figure 2).16 In fact, the complete information about these elements can be retrieved only from the lexical definitions in the Alphabetical Dictionary, which directly contributes to clarifying their semantic and conceptual analysis. A brief scrutiny of the information given in the Alphabetical Dictionary for the words listed after SCIENCE ("Knowledge, Skill, Theory, Learning, Insight") illustrates some of the relations present at the 'sub-species' level.17 "SkilF and "Insight" are identified as 'complete synonyms' with the headword; "Learning" is nested in the Dictionary under the entry "Learn" and reveals one of the formal irregularities of the text, because the reference given is only to a different locus of the same Table (Ha. VI. 5.) where it appears as headword, but no mention is made of the first Species. As far as "Theory" is concerned, one of its defining references gives, in abbreviated form ("sp. adj. a. Science (apt.]" [sic]), the following information: "especially adjective active [of] aptitude or proneness to Science", where both grammatical and semantic modifications are indicated by the components of the definition. 18

16

17

18

It is beyond the scope of this paper to go into the necessary details related to the nature and method of application of the Particles provided in the Essay because, since they depend on Wilkins' theory of a philosophical language, their treatment would imply a wider and more exhaustive analysis (for a thorough scrutiny of the Particles in the Essay cf. Frank 1979: 190-227; Dolezal 1983: 72-82; Hüllen 1995: 339^12 and 1999: 268-73; Maat 1999: 187-91). The consideration will be limited here to the relations pointed out in the Dictionary between these words and the headword SCIENCE. In this definition "adj." and "a." are grammatical markers, while "aptitude, or proneness" is one of the Transcendental Particles.

An Analysis of a Seventeenth Century Conceptual

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Conclusion The illustration of the relational structure of the concept SCIENCE and of some of its related items - in particular the word KNOWLEDGE, which has triggered the present analysis - shows the lack of coincidence between the English words and the concepts they indicate. This is the basic assumption that originated Wilkins' project (1668: 19-21), which is structured so that the conceptual and the semantic analyses are made possible by the combined roles of the network of the Tables and the Dictionary. On the one hand, in the Advertisement to the Reader that introduces the Alphabetical Dictionary, Wilkins points out the distinct natures of the two components of the Essay considered in this paper, writing that: "The Design of the Philosophical Tables is to enumerate and describe all kinds of Things and Notions: And the Design of this Dictionary, is to reckon up and explain all kinds of words, or names of things". Nonetheless, in the illustration of the parts composing his Essay Wilkins also highlights the dependence of the Dictionary definitions on the conceptual analysis brought about in the Tables, stating that the last part consists in "[...] a Dictionary of the English tongue, in which shall be shown how all the words of this Language, according to the various equivocal senses of them, may be sufficiently expressed by the Philosophical Tables here proposed" (1668: 1 2). This 'reconciliation' of the two sections is consistent with what is declared in the title of the Dictionary itself quoted above. In the Essay "things", "notions" and "words" are in a kind of complex mutual relationship19 in spite of the fact that with his work Wilkins intended to simplify and make their interrelation clear (1668: a2-a3). As far as the lexicographic aspect of the Essay is concerned, this topic appears particularly problematic since the very concepts of 'definition' and of 'object of definition' are affected by the possible interpretations that can be given to the defining principles applied by the author through the joint activity of the hierarchy of the Tables and the procedures implemented in the Dictionary. In fact two distinct basic methods are used by Wilkins for the definition in the Essay: in the Tables the items classified as headwords are structurally defined through the hierarchy - with the occasional addition of descriptive glosses mainly providing encyclopaedic information; and the words used to identify these items have the status of labels for the corresponding concepts (or "mental notions", 1668: 20). While the words in the Tables have the function of mere conceptual labels, the ones listed in the Alphabetical Dictionary are actual English words for which various kinds of defining procedures are used (Dolezal 1985: 58-93); nonetheless they are eventually defined through the concepts classified in the Tables (Hüllen 1999: 250-84), where their core specific meaning is identified and 'delimited' by the place they occupy, as the author also stresses in the title of the Dictionary. It is possible to identify a double status for both the Dictionary and the Tables, since each of them can be submitted to independent consideration; but if their interrelation is analysed, they acquire a sort of additional value, as they mutually enhance each other's potential (Leonardi 2002: 170-95; Leonardi 2003). The Alphabetical Dictionary, as a list of the English word-forms whose meanings are defined through the Tables of the Universal Philosophy, represents a sort of analytical index of the elements classified in the Tables, since it contains regular references to the locus where every single concept - labelled by a corresponding English word - is arranged in the

" This question has been analysed by both Dolezal (1994b) and Hüllen (2000: 16-17).

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taxonomy. In the meantime, if the focus of attention is on the Alphabetical Dictionary, the structure that characterises it also shows an autonomous status, which implies an ancillary role for the defining section. Nonetheless, in Wilkins' Essay the organisation of meaning definitions overlaps with the definition of 'universal' concepts; as a consequence the particular structure of the lexicographic defining system heavily depends on the notional analytical hierarchy contained in the Tables of the Universal Philosophy. For the majority of the lemmas in the Dictionary - mainly those not corresponding to "Radical" items - what can be considered a 'lexical' definition is given; but an ultimate reference to the 'conceptual' definition in the Tables is nevertheless implied. In addition, the latter kind of definition is the only one available for the words corresponding to the items classified as headwords. As the example illustrated in this paper is intended to show, this assumption does not invalidate the defining potential of the Essay, since the definitions resulting from the overall structure of the Tables supply the semantic content of the English words listed in the Dictionary. The conceptual and semantic layers are not neatly distinguishable in the Essay since 'concepts' are intended by Wilkins as the mental contents (1668: 20) - obtained through the joint activities of the senses and the intellect (cf. Wilkins, [1675] 1683: 2-3, 55-6) - that find their expression through a formal linguistic system: the identification of notions and meanings ultimately originates from the intention of the author to analyse notions in order to obtain their precise linguistic expression. The distinguishing features of the Alphabetical Dictionary can be explained by the fact that Wilkins' main concern is not so much the form of natural language as the communicative effectiveness of language. Consequently, his linguistic speculation is centred, as he states in the Epistle Dedicatory of the Essay, on "things", "real knowledge" and "the good of mankind", as opposed to "words", "elegancy of speech" and the good of particular countries or nations, to which in Wilkins' view the Académie Française and the Italian Accademia della Crusca appeared prone in their "Work of Dictionary-making", as he defines it (1668: a3). This is the reason why he considered the compilation of a Dictionary a "minor" undertaking when compared with a project, endowed with a philosophical foundation, like the one he developed. Wilkins' stance on natural and philosophical languages is responsible for both the assets and the shortcomings of the Alphabetical Dictionary which, on the one hand, lacks many of the typical components of an entry - e.g. it does not display any information on pronunciation or etymology nor are the morphological or syntactic features of the lemmata given. On the other hand, the treatment of semantic relations and especially of the relations of polysemy and synonymy in the Alphabetical Dictionary can be considered unprecedented in English monolingual lexicography, especially if its wide coverage of ordinary words is taken into account (Dolezal 1985: 2, 57). Furthermore, the Alphabetical Dictionary provides fixed expressions and multi-word combinations; these are the only usage information available in Wilkins' and Lloyd's Dictionary. As a result, this work displays the deep concern of its authors with the semantic value of lexical units rather than with the formal properties of English lexemes. But the most outstanding characteristic of the Alphabetical Dictionary is undoubtedly the organisation of its defining structure, which has no parallel in its contemporary lexicographic theory and practice. This architecture is the device that allows Wilkins and Lloyd to point out the single lexical units and to produce an accurate analysis of each of them. In fact, many of the features characterising the Alphabetical Dictionary appear unrelated to the contemporary lexicographic tradition and can be explained only by their dependence on Wilkins' main purpose in the elaboration of the Essay, that is to say the creation of a universal and philosophical communication system which was to be free from ambiguity, and which

An Analysis of a Seventeenth Century Conceptual Dictionary

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consequently required a clear enumeration and description of the "things and notions that fall under discourse" (1668: passim). The network definition structure used by Wilkins in the Universal Philosophy, and consequently in the Alphabetical Dictionary, follows the tradition of knowledge representation schemes and heuristic devices, and it can be interpreted in this perspective (cf. Hüllen 1999). In fact, this kind of analytic procedure is well known in the traditions of classical logic and of the elaboration of knowledge thesauri, from Aristotle's Organon to Bacon's Novum Organum. Nonetheless, Wilkins does not limit its application to the analysis and ensuing representation of "things and notions": with the artificial language, and above all with the Alphabetical Dictionary of the English language he extends this analysis to linguistic meanings. This operation elicits a double characterisation for the Tables of the Universal Philosophy as both a conceptual and a semantic analysis.

References

(a) Cited Dictionaries Hartmann, R. R. K., & G. James (1998): Dictionary of Lexicography. - London, New York: Routledge. Wilkins, J. [& W. Lloyd] (1668): An Alphabetical Dictionary, Wherein all English Words According to their Various Significations, Are either referred to their Places in the Philosophical Tables, Or explained by such Words as are in those Tables. - London, Printed by J. M. for Samuel Gellibrand and John Martin [bound together with Id., Essay],

(b) Other Literature Cruse, A. D. (1986): Lexical Semantics. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (2000): Meaning in Language. An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dolezal, F. F. M. (1983): The Lexicographical and Lexicological Procedures and Method of John Wilkins. University of Illinois Dissertation. - Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International. (1985): Forgotten but Important Lexicographers: John Wilkins and William Lloyd. A Modern Approach to Lexicography before Johnson, Lexicographica Series Maior 4. - Tübingen: Niemeyer. (1994a; 31996): 'The Canon of the English Dictionary.' - Centre for Computing in the Humanities Working Papers 4 [Computing in the Humanities Working Papers B.20, 1996: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/chwp/dolezal]). (1994b): 'Towards a Narrative of Structure.' - In: W. Hüllen (ed.): The World in a List of Words, Lexicographica Series Maior 58, 95-104. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Eco, U. (1993): La Ricerca della Lingua Perfetta nella Cultura Europea. - Roma, Bari: Laterza. Frank, T. (1979): Segno e Significato. John Wikins e la Lingua Filosofica. - Napoli: Guida. Geckeier, H. (1971): Strukturelle Semantik und Wortfeldtheorie. - München: Fink. Hüllen, W. (1989): "Their Manner of Discourse". Nachdenken über Sprache im Umkreis der Royal Society. - Tübingen: Narr. (1995): 'Die semantische Komponente der Universalsprache von John Wilkins.' - In: U. Hoinkes (ed.): Panorama der lexikalischen Semantik. Thematische Festschrift aus Anlaß des 60. Geburtstag von Horst Geckeier, Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 412, 329-45. Tübingen: Narr. (1999): English Dictionaries 800-1700. The Topical Tradition. - Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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(2000): 'Wilkins's Tables and Roget's Thesaurus: An Investigation into Traditions of Onomasiology.' - The Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas Bulletin 35, 15-26. Rnowlson, J. (1975): Universal Language Schemes in England and France, 1600-1800, University of Toronto Romance Series 29. - Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. Landau, S. I. (1984): Dictionaries. The Art and Craft of Lexicography. - N e w York: Scribner. Large, A. (1985): The Artificial Language Movement. - Oxford: Blackwell. Lehrer, Α. (1974): Semantic Fields and Lexical Structure. - Amsterdam: North Holland. & E. F. Kittay (eds.) (1992): Frames, Fields, and Contrasts. New Essays in Semantic and Lexical Organization. - Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Leonardi, Ν. (2002): ' UniversalNet. Lo Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language di John Wilkins come rete universale.' - Rivista Italiana di Linguistica e di Dialettologia 4, 149-99. (2003): An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language and An Alphabetical Dictionary. Implications of a Conceptual and Alphabetic Arrangement in Defining Procedures. University of Macerata Doctoral Dissertation, 10 March 2004. Lyons, J. (1963): Structural Semantics. An Analysis of Part of the Vocabulary of Plato, Publications of the Philological Society 20. - Oxford: Blackwell. (1977): Semantics. 2 vols. - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maat, J. (1999): Philosophical Languages in the Seventeenth Century: Dalgarno, Wilkins, Leibniz, ILLC Dissertation Series 1999-03. - Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam. Slaughter, Μ. M. (1982): Universal Languages and Scientific Taxonomy in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strasser, G. F. (1988): Lingua Universalis. Kryptologie und Theorie der Universalsprachen im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. - Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Subbiondo, J. L. (ed.) (1992): John Wilkins and 17,h-Century British Linguistics, Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 67. - Amsterdam: Benjamins. Trier, J. (1931): Der Deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes. Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feldes. - Heidelberg: Winter. Wilkins, J. (1668): An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language. By John Wilkins D.D. Dean of Ripon, And Fellow of the Royal Society. - London, Printed for Sa: Gellibrand, and for John Martin Printer to the Royal Society. ([1675] 1683): Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion: Two Books. By the Right Reverend Father in God, John late Lord Bishop of Chester. To which is Added, a Sermon Preached at his Funeral, by William Lloyd, D.D. Dean of Bangor, and Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty. London, Printed for T. Basset [...]; Joanna Brome [...]; R. Chriswel [...]. Zgusta, L. (1971): Manual of Lexicography, Janua Linguarum Series Maior 39. - The Hague, Paris: Mouton, Prague: Academia Press.

Rowena Fowler, University of Bristol

TEXT AND MEANING IN RICHARDSON'S DICTIONARY

Richardson's New Dictionary of the English Language (1836-7) aims to create its own ideal reader. It is not one of those "books to which idleness may fly for instantaneous relief from ignorance" (Preface: Section III), for it has no definition field and relies almost entirely on quotations to establish and demonstrate meaning. The Preface "premonishes" - a very Richardsonian word - "the unlearned of the present", and "the youth of the rising generation" that they will be "instructed and improved" by bringing an active intelligence to the Dictionary, and making their own discoveries and connections. Such readers should not expect always to find a word in its precise alphabetical position, but will soon learn to track it down etymologically with "no very toilsome exertion of their faculties" (52-4). The more literary reader will be inspired by encountering unfamiliar Middle English texts to read more of these "uncouth" early writers (52). Emigrants and foreigners will value the Dictionary as a textual and linguistic resource at a moment when English is emerging as a world language. The three major dictionaries before OED with extensive quotations (Johnson, Webster and Richardson) all unashamedly claim non-lexicographic purposes and pleasures, including aesthetic delight, education, moral instruction, guidance in matters of style and taste, and the establishment and transmission of a national literature. Johnson, in the Preface to his Dictionary (1755), hoped that "every quotation should be useful to some other end than that of the illustration of a word", and should even be appreciated for its own sake, so as to "relieve the labour of verbal searches, and intersperse with verdure and flowers the dusty desarts of barren philology..." (Preface: B2 verso). The sequences of quotations cannot help but constitute what Johnson explicitly tried to avoid: a "genealogy of sentiments" (Preface: C recto). Webster (1828) drew on his own authority in confidently setting out "proper models" for the readers of An American Dictionary of the English Language: "In many cases, I have given brief sentences of my own ... often presenting some important maxim or sentiment in religion, morality, law or civil policy.'" The historical tendency, under the twin pressures of New Historicism and litigation, has since been for lexicographers to distance themselves from the sentiments expressed in their quotations: to move from proud acknowledgement to outright disclaimer. Where George Crabb could confidently name "the justness of the sentiment" as one of the three criteria for inclusion in his English Synonymes (Preface: vi), Philip B. Gove's prefatory statement in Webster's Third (1961: 6a) sounds as much legal as lexicographical: "authors are quoted for their use of words or for the structural pattern of their words but not for their opinions or sentiments."2 Johnson, Webster and Richardson are all authors of their own dictionaries, a concept of authorship that includes taking responsibility for the "authorities" cited as much as for the surrounding material. Recent studies of the dictionary as text and the lexicographer as author - Anne McDermott's work on Johnson and intertextuality (1995), for instance, Fredric Dolezal's work on the canon (1986) or William Frawley's work on the theory of the text (1989) - encourage us to consider both the autonomous qualities of dictionaries as

1 2

This was the first of Webster's dictionaries to include quotations. On the editorial policies of Webster, see Morton (1989) and (1994).

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texts and their relationship to the writers they cite and the readers they address. 3 Richardson often supplies commentary and explanation in place of definition so that his Dictionary has some features of a single-authored encyclopaedia - and of course it did originally appear as entries (at first intercalated and later consolidated) in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.4 It may also be seen as a Dictionary of Quotations or as an alphabetically-arranged anthology, intended by the editor both as a treasury to be enjoyed and as a primary resource for readers and writers: "it contains the choicest sentiments of English wisdom, poetry, and eloquence; it may be deemed a suppliai of many books" (Preface: 61). The unusual word "suppliai" offers both a clue to the genesis of Richardson's method and an example of his influence on later lexicographers. His own series of illustrations for the headword Supply and its derivatives includes two quotations from William Warburton's Argument of the Divine Legation (1751), one of which characterises the essence of Isaac Newton's scientific method as "to leave the suppliai of the unconnected parts to his reader's sagacity". OED2 incorporates both the Warburton quotations to support the definition of Suppliai as "the act of supplying" and then adds Richardson's own usage from the Preface with the new sense, b., "A thing that supplies the place of another". Richardson's Preface makes enormous, even epic, claims for his project (after Webster he must be the least self-effacing lexicographer in English), invoking Gibbon's Decline and Fall, but substituting for the twilight of the Roman Empire the never-setting sun of the Empire of Great Britain: '"The treasures of our tongue' [quoting from Samuel Daniel's Musophilus] are spread over continents, scattered among islands in the Northern and the Southern Hemisphere, from the 'unformed occident, to the strange shores of unknowing nations in the East.' The sun, indeed, now never sets upon the Empire of Great Britain ... At the very moment, when I am concluding this final page, I have reason to believe that the early portions of these volumes have found a resting place upon the tables of an English Settler on the banks of La Plata: I am assured that they are admitted to relieve the languor of military inaction at the Mess of Abednuggar" (61). Studying the commentaries, selections and juxtapositions in Richardson's Dictionary today's reader might piece together an authorial presence which is witty, recalcitrant, sceptical, Protestant, philosemitic and Francophobe. It would also be possible to read the Dictionary as a historical document, quarrying it for evidence of early nineteenth-century knowledge, attitudes and mentalities. In the most comprehensive study to date of Richardson's use of quotations, Fredric Dolezal (2000) has analysed some of the values implicit and explicit in the entries for law and liturgy and compared them with Johnson's. Another telling entry is abolition - always an interesting word to look up in dictionaries because it has a series of highly-specific political meanings depending on what is to be abolished at any particular moment, from slavery to the death penalty. Richardson's entry reads: "Abolitionist is a modern word, lately of frequent use." (This would have been written around 1818 when the letter A was compiled for the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.) He offers no quotations in this contemporary sense of abolition of the slave trade; he assumes the reader will be aware of the topical meaning and so only

5 4

See also Wiegand( 1990). The Encyclopaedia was issued in 29 volumes from 1818 to 1845; Richardson's dictionary material is incorporated between Vols. 14 and 25, inclusive. Sample collations of the Encyclopaedia and the published Dictionary reveal substantial differences in the choice, length, spelling and order of quotations.

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provides examples of earlier usages. In dealing with a fashionable but dubious phenomenon such as phrenology, Richardson is brisk: "a compound term of modern formation, in very common use, but not very clearly explained by those who employ it".5 My main interest, however, is in the ways dictionaries draw on literary texts, and in the ways lexicographers and writers, particularly poets, may find themselves in accord - or at cross purposes. There is a contradiction built into dictionaries claiming to use quotations from the "best" or "most distinguished" writers, since these writers may not be typical, characteristic or otherwise exemplary from the lexicographical point of view.6 The question cuts two ways: can poetic language provide reliable illustration of meaning, and can or should the dictionary provide adequate treatment of literary usage? In the Preface to his abstracted Dictionary of the English Language (1756), Johnson established the tradition of the dictionary as literary companion: "Many words occurring in the elder authors, such as Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, which had been hitherto omitted, are here carefully inserted; so that this book may serve as a glossary or expository index to the poetical writers" (Preface). The first OED aimed at a comprehensive record of the work of "great writers", a policy continued, amid some controversy, by the editors of OED2.7 The languages of literary nonsense and of Modernism, in particular, required and challenged definition and presented the editors of OED2 with their fourth biggest headache - after race, sex and brand names (Burchfield 1973). But dictionaries are better able to respond to analytical usages and to sequences of significations than to processes of association and assimilation, and, as John Simpson says in his Preface to OED3 (online), they cannot be expected to record every last nuance. Webster's Third avoids the problem of having to define tricky literary usages by only using "literary" quotations where they clearly illustrate a particular definition. Richardson, in spite of his extensive coverage of literature, feels under no obligation to account for every literary usage; he starts with the word and then selects a quotation to explain it. His Preface states that the quotations are "produced for the purpose of exemplifying, confirming, and illustrating the explanations which precede them" (51), but in practice he often dispenses with explanation altogether: "For the application, see the quotation" is a typical formulation.8 It is the task of the quotations not only to illustrate but also single-handedly to establish, meaning. As Dolezal (2000: 133) has shown, Richardson is not always successful in relying on quotations to take the place of definition; his example is deflower (which Richardson spells deflour): "To strip or rob of the flower; the bloom, the grace, the beauty. Used literally by Mountague." Another example would be circumcision, where it is hard to imagine any reader working out the meaning from Richardson's quotations, even with knowledge of Latin and "toilsome exertion of their faculties". One might, however, with the help of the quotations from Chaucer, make an educated guess at swive (Richardson 1856). We could say that Richardson ends where Murray in his Scriptorium began, with the raw materials of a dictionary on historical principles, from which the meanings still remained to be

5

6

7

8

Compare Murray's treatment of ectoplasm fifty years later - the OED uses words like "supposedly" in such definitions. A number of scholars have addressed the relationship between dictionaries and literary texts; see Fowler (1998) and (2002). . . . "the language of great writers, including poets, should be registered, even once-only uses, virtually in concordance form" (Burchfield 1987: 18). OED and OED2 (but not OED3) occasionally use this kind of definition.

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deduced. As Murray (1900: 44-5) says in his appreciative account of Richardson, "his special notion was quite correct in theory. Quotations will tell the full meaning of a work, if one has enough of them\ but it takes a great many to be enough, and it takes a reader a long time to read and weigh all the quotations, and to deduce from them the meanings which might be put before him in a line or two. ... Nevertheless, [his] was a service never to be undervalued or forgotten, and his work ... still continues to be a valuable repertory of illustrations".9 The OED's debt to Richardson can be discerned in Murray's belief that each word should "exhibit its own history and meaning" (Preface: vi) and his insistence on referring us back to the text, where the writer's "original meaning ... may always be ascertained, and the full context recovered" (xxii). Although Richardson's quotations are more spacious than those of the OED (a typical syncope is five lines long) they must still depend on the source text for the exact establishment of meaning in context. Irony, for example, is not easy to recognise. The OED, even with its much shorter quotations, displays a good ear for irony, and for tone and nuance in general, but it does so through the definition field, employing a whole palette of adverbs such as ironically, playfully, endearingly, elliptically, jestingly, allusively, and so on.10 Richardson seems less at home with irony or deprecation. His quotations for the headword Irony are definitional but not what Richard Chenevix Trench (1860: 50-6) would consider "happy", that is, they do not contain their own definition within themselves by offering actual examples. Richardson's explanation of honour is sincere and unambiguous, and his numerous quotations give no hint that the word is frequently used in English in its opposite sense, that is, patronisingly or ironically, as in Julius Caesar: "For Brutus is an honourable man". Richardson's quotations are arranged chronologically within four broad historical periods and illustrate all the derivatives of a headword: for example after the headword Integer we have all the quotations for integral, integrated, integrity, and so on. His passionate belief in roots overrides any classification based on orderings of senses, compoundings or transferred meanings. The Richardsonian reader really needs to study the whole entry, deducing his or her own categories of signification from what Ladislav Zgusta (1989: 225) calls the "undigested coacervation of citations".11 This testing of the same word in multiple contexts is the converse of Coleridge's ideal of "desynonomisation", which aimed to discriminate between shades of meaning in different words within the same semantic field (see McKusick 1992). There are many and various ways in which quotation may relate to meaning: by contrast, extension, elaboration, and so on, and in Richardson's entries any or all of these may be called into play.12 The most striking aspect of Richardson's method - and this is the exact opposite of his intention - is the comparative irrelevance of etymology in determining meaning. Although he urges us to look back at roots, the quotations entice us forward to look at the creatively developing meanings and associations of words in use through time. The headword Hen, for example, after a wildly speculative etymological excursus taking in Latin canere [sing=crow], 9

10

11

12

In his Introduction to the 1933 edition of the OED, C.T. Onions refers to Richardson's Dictionary as a "natural storehouse" (vii). Examples of the effective treatment of ironic usage in the OED might include "thanks a lot" (in the sense of "how could you?"); England 2b. ("England home and beauty"); and "honest" ( "Now my honest man, you have been convicted of a felony"). The word "coacervation" is a favourite of Coleridge's (e.g. in the Biographia Literaria)·, Richardson's own example is from Bacon. See, for example, Willinsky (1994), who discusses nine possible ways quotation may relate to definition. See also Silva (2000).

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A-S hcena [she], Greek anax [king] or anasta [arise], is followed by a beautifully-chosen sequence of a dozen quotations including both the biblical trope of the hen and chickens (Matthew 23) and the derogatory compounds hen-hearted and hen-pecked. Richardson's choice of quotations is eclectic and abundant. Johnson drew almost entirely on dead writers and on writers from the Elizabethan period to the Restoration; that is, from Sidney to Dryden. Richardson tacitly follows the practice of excluding living writers, but goes back to the fourteenth century while also bringing the canon of authors right up to date; Byron, for instance, who died in 1824, immediately starts to be quoted in the Dictionary from the letter F onwards. Unfortunately, from the point of view of literary lexicography, Wordsworth and Coleridge lived too long to be included. (Coleridge, whose original plan for the Encyclopaedia laid the foundations of Richardson's Dictionary, died in 1834 and the only quotation from his work is in the Supplement to the 1856 edition.) In general, Richardson is strong on poets and playwrights. Although his coverage of dialect and loan words is sparse (there are plenty of quotations from Byron's The Giaour but no entry for "giaour" itself), Richardson is surprisingly good for colloquial language, including bawdy, the fruit of his wide reading in medieval literature and in the Elizabethan and Restoration drama. Bearing in mind the lexicographical dubiousness of drawing on fictional dialogue as evidence of spoken usage, I believe it would be rewarding to investigate how Richardson trawls the racier passages of Middleton and other city comedies to illustrate colloquial language. As far as I have been able to ascertain, Richardson's quotations are all genuinely drawn from written sources; that is, he never has recourse to his own invention - as Murray did very occasionally, Webster when it suited him and the Fowler brothers frequently.13 He gives exact references to his sources, quotes accurately and retains original spelling, and for poetry, lineation. The quotations are one point size smaller than the etymological explanations but in the same font and with the source line ranged right; Paul Luna's (2000) study of the typography of older dictionaries has shown how this layout may disrupt the entry and page structure, but offers excellent access for the reader who wishes to scan a page for a particular writer's quotations. Murray, by contrast, runs on quotations and assimilates them into his lemma. Richardson's radical etymology supports a theory of literature which emphasises a particular concept of creativity; his Dictionary entry for Poem, followed by carefully-selected quotations, reads as a Coleridgean manifesto or Defence of Poetry: "Modern writers (see especially the quotations from Elyot, Bacon, B. Jonson, and Temple) consider making, creating, inventing, i.e. invention, not verse-making, as the characteristic of poetry." His account of the words speak and write, in his Preface, offer a truly physical, kinetic account of language: To spark and to speak, (D. Spreck-en), I consider to be the same word; and to mean, - to throw out, to emit, to utter. We call a small particle of light thrown out or emitted, - a spark: we call vocal, articulate sounds, thrown out, emitted, uttered, - speech.

Write, Richardson suggests, is linked with the Anglo-Saxon Wrotan (to turn the earth), "since he writes, ploughs, cuts into, digs into, the paper." His Tookean commitment to sounds' being linked to things or to "sensible objects. . . or correspondent objects in the human mind" may be nonsense philologically but has much in common with certain kinds of poetry, where the logic 13

H. W. and F. G. Fowler invented all the "quotations" in their Concise Oxford Dictionary, see Allen (1986).

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of phonetic association, as in rhyme and alliteration, yokes together quite different, incongruous or even antithetical meanings. The reduction of language to onomatopoeia has its picturesque moments (as when Richardson, following Skinner, derives wolf "ab ululatu, from its yell or yelp"), but it can falsify poetry as much as etymology. Richardson's derivation of lay (short lyric poem) from Anglo-Saxon Hlydan (to make a loud noise, low or bellow) renders it crude and raucous and directly contradicts the sense of his five examples - as they echo back from Thomson's nightingale: "The sober-suited songstress trills her lay", to Piers Plowman·. "And under lynde in a launde, lenede ich a stounde/ To lithen here laies, and her loveliche notes". To explore some of the ways literary texts are at work in Richardson's Dictionary I conclude with four brief case studies, looking at compounds, rhyme and metre, metaphor, and puns. Richardson expects his readers to study his list of terminations in -ish, -age, -full, -ment, ness, -some, and so on, and then to carry out their own processes of deduction. He also relies on a light coverage of the second element in compounds, earning Trench's gratitude for such austerity in the face of continual inflation: there is a defect of true insight into what are the proper bounds of and limits of a Dictionary, in the admission into it of the innumerable family of compound epithets, such as 'cloud-capt,' ... having after 'cloud' inserted 'cloud-capt' and 'cloud-compelling,' [Johnson] holds his hand; while Todd ... adds seven more,... and then Webster is a step still further in advance; ... Richardson very properly excludes all these. (Trench 1860: 62)

Richardson's (1836-7) entry for Hyphen offers a short essay on the semantics and stylistics of compounding: In other instances the interpretation of [the hyphen's] force is more circumlocutory: as - blood-red, - having the redness of blood, or red as or like blood: flint-hearted, - having a heart of flint; or like, or as hard and impenetrable as, flint. These may more properly be denominated elliptical phrases than even composite words. Some of our elder writers carried their ingenuity in this composition or connexion to an extreme; none more so than Chapman ...

Richardson's treatment of prefixes, however, is surprisingly full; although he recommends in the Preface that we should study, for instance, con- and de- in order to work out wordformations for ourselves, such morphemes are treated with a measure of independence, as headwords in their own right. So, although different terminations are embedded within the chronological sequence (cloud, cloudy, cloudiness under Cloud), a word such as Uncloud has the status of a headword with a substantial entry of its own (including a beautiful passage from Byron's Corsair and a vigorously anti-papist piece from Milton's Reason of Church Government). Richardson's entries for headwords in un- are particularly full (e.g. unwormwooded, unsepulchred, unparagoned, unaneled) and often find their way straight into the OED.14 Richardson expects his readership to have a good ear for metre and scansion. He offers for the word Spondee an inexact explanation ("a foot of two syllables") but "happy" quotations that enact metrical examples; his approach is the opposite of that of the OED entry, which is accurate but strictly definitional (with no metalinguistic examples). Richardson has quotations

14

Richardson runs together the separate elements classified by the OED as un-, prefix1 and un-, prefu? and identifies them with the word one, conjecturing that this denotes something separate, a negation. The value of Richardson's examples, however, is not compromised by his mistaken etymology.

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from Hall ("The drawling spondees pacing it below," and so on) and from Jonson's version of Horace 's Art of Poetrie: Nor is't long since, they [iambicks] did with patience take Into their birth-right, and for fitness sake, The steady spondœes; so themselves doe beare More slow, and come more weightie to the ear.

To find Sonnet in Richardson the reader must look under Sing, where there is a wealth of quotations but no complete sonnet or clue as to its form; since no quotation in Richardson is as long as fourteen lines he would perhaps have been better advised to have chosen an explanatory quotation. Rhyme reveals some authorial conflict. Richardson begins with the traditional false etymology from Greek rhythmos, which tips the scales in favour of unrhymed verse. He then does his best to quote the right authorities, adducing quotations about the barbarity of rhyme and general superiority of native blank verse, yet it is obvious throughout the dictionary that he enjoys rhyme, quoting a disproportionate amount of hudibrastic and other outrageous examples: for example metamorphose/Orpheus. (His lineation, too, emphasises the presence of rhyme.) Richardson's chronological listing of quotations makes no distinction between primary and transferred meanings; as he points out disarmingly in his Preface: "It is ... an unavoidable consequence of this mode of chronological arrangement, that a metaphorical application will not unfrequently take precedence of a literal" (52). The entry for Trope itself turns and twists in all directions, and bewilders the reader with its quotations for topological, tropical (hot), and so on. Within the entry for Pastoral, sheep, clergy and literary modes are inextricably mixed, and the reader turns with relief from Richardson's twenty or so examples to the OED's beautifully-ordered lemma: A l l . sheep 2. literature A II church ... etc. On the other hand, Richardson's aptly chosen quotations for Cloud, Honey, Sugar and Sea reveal a rich but coherent matrix of metaphorical meaning. A good test of how dictionaries approach metaphor is the word "choir" as in Shakespeare's sonnet 77 ("Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang"), where the choir is simultaneously poet, building, and tree.15 The literary effect depends on the impossibility of distinguishing primary and transferred meanings. Richardson does not include the Shakespeare quotation but, having explained that the word means both the part of the church and the body of singers, he gives two examples (from Spenser and Thomson) where the choirs are in fact birds, leaving us free to make our own connections. Similarly, Richardson's entry for Fetter offers a range of quotations encompassing literal, generalised and figurative uses and ending with Byron's "Prisoner of Chillón", where all these meanings are bound together: At last men came to set me free, I ask'd not why and reck'd not where, It was at length the same to me, Fetter'd or fetterless to be, I learn'd to love despair.

15

"Choir, quire, n. 2.a. that part of a church appropriated to the singers ... transf. 1600 SHAKES. Sonn. lxxvii, Those boughes which shake against the could Bare ruin'd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang." (OED)

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Puns are something of an affront to dictionaries, for they deliberately confuse and amalgamate meanings which dictionaries aim to tease apart. (A search on pun in the OED's definition field yields 50 or so quotations with usages identified as puns, some of them quite good, though none indecent.) Richardson himself seems quite open to puns and indulges himself with the entry for Pun: "This word is not to be found in our older lexicographers. Serenius goes to the Islandic Funalagh, frivolous, in a sense transferred from fune, ashes. Mr. Todd is very much inclined to make fun of it." (The entry then lists some "happy" definitions, incorporating explanations of the word and examples of punning.) Robert DeMaria (1986: 163) contrasts Richardson in this respect with Johnson (who is generally suspicious of word play) and connects him with the Romantics, especially Coleridge, who once projected an "Apology for Paranomasy, alias Punning". Tookean etymology, too, runs words and senses together in ways that are akin to punning, as we see in Richardson's entry for Wild: "willed ... in opposition to those (whether men or beasts) who are tamed ... to the will of others". Some famous puns, on the other hand, are lost in Richardson: kin and kind are treated as the same word, so there is no opportunity for exploring Hamlet's paradox "A little more than kin and less than kind". For Richardson's treatment of particular puns, we might look up, for example, virginalling - that terrifying play on words from The Winter's Tale (I. ii, 124) when Leontes' jealousy imagines Hermione "To be padling Palmes, and pinching Fingers ... Still Virginalling Vpon his Palme?". Because in Richardson the twenty quotations for the entry Virgin are all mixed up (the musical instrument, the adjective virginal and this nonce verb that brings the two meanings back together with savage irony) it works better than the OED's more obviously correct citing and labelling: "virginal, n. 2. attrib. and Comb. Hence [obsolete status sign] fvirginal v. intr. Obs. The Winter's Tale quotation also gains from its context in Richardson by being immediately preceded by Shakespeare's use of virgin as a verb: — O a kisse Long as my exile, sweet as my reuenge! Now by the ielous queene of heaven, that kisse I carried from thee deare; and my true lippe Hath virgin'd it here since. (Coriolanus, V. iii, 44-8) 16

I believe that Richardson's dictionary, that "valuable repertory" of texts, is itself a text offering the reader some challenges but many pleasures. Its very eccentricity allows us to rethink the value of literary quotations as the source and illustration of meaning and to discuss the selection, ordering and contextualisation of quotations, their use and misuse in establishing or unsettling definitions and their sometimes unassimilable autonomy in works of reference and record. Richardson's testimonial (Preface: 51) to his favourite medieval writer, Gower, may stand as epigraph to his own work; he Undertake In Englysshe for to make a boke, Which stant betwene ernest and game.

16

Coriolanus' wife is called Virgilia, so there is a further, half-submerged pun that Richardson's context cannot elucidate.

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References

(a) Cited Dictionaries Crabb, G. (1816): English Synonymes, and Explanations, Drawn from the Best Writers - London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy. Gove, P. (1961): Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged. Springfield, Mass: G. and C. Merriam. Johnson, S. (1755): A Dictionary of the English Language, in which the Words are Deduced from their Originals, and Illustrated in their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers ... 2 vols. - London: J. & P. Knapton. OED = THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. Originally published as A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Eds. J. A. H. Murray, H. Bradley, W. A. Craigie, and C. T. Onions, 10 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884-1928; Supplement 1933 (= OED1) OED2 = THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ... COMBINED WITH A SUPPLEMENT TO THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. Eds. J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, 20 volumes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989; also online O E D 3 = THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, 3rd edn. Ed. J. A . Simpson. In progress; parts online. Richardson, C. (1836-7): A New Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols. - London: William Pickering. (1856): New Edition, 2 vols. - London: Bell and Daldy. Webster, N. (1828): An American Dictionary of the English Language.-New York: S. Converse.

(b) Other Literature Allen, R. E. (1986): Ά Concise History of the COD' - In: R. R. K. Hartmann (ed.): The History of Lexicography, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science: Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, Vol. 40: 2-11. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Burchfield, R. W. (1973): 'The Treatment of Controversial Vocabulary in the Oxford English Dictionary'' - Transactions of the Philological Society 1-28. (1987): 'The Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary: The End of the Alphabet'. - In: R. W. Bailey (ed.): Dictionaries of English: Prospects for the Record of Our Language, 11-21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. DeMaria, R., Jr. (1986): Johnson's Dictionary and the Language of Learning- Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dolezal, F. F. M. (1986): 'How Abstract is the English Dictionary?' - In: R. R. K. Hartmann (ed.): The History of Lexicography, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science: Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, Vol. 40: 47-55. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (2000): 'Charles Richardson's New Dictionary and Literary Lexicography, being a Rodomontade upon Illustrative Examples' - Lexicographica 16: 104—51. Fowler, R. (1998): 'Robert Browning in the Oxford English Dictionary·. A New Approach' - Studies in Philology 95: 169-83. (2002): 'Virginia Woolf: Lexicographer' - English Language Notes 39: 54—70. Frawley, W. (1989): 'The Dictionary as Text' -International Journal of Lexicography, 2: 3: 231-48. Luna, P. (2000): 'Clearly Defined: Continuity and Innovation in the Typography of English Dictionaries' - Typography Papers, 4: 5-56. McDermott, A. (1995): ' The Intertextual Web of Johnson's Dictionary and the Concept of Authorship'. In: Bernard Quemada (ed.): Informatique et Dictionnaires Anciens, 165-71. Paris: Didier. McKusick, J. C. (1992): '"Living Words": Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Genesis of the OED' Modern Philology 90: 1-45.

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Morton, H. C. (1989): 'Gove's Rationale for Illustrative Quotations in Webster's Third New International' -Dictionaries, 11: 153-64. (1994): The Story of Webster's Third: Philip Gove's Controversial Dictionary and Its Critics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murray, J. A. H. (1900): The Evolution of English Lexicography. The Romanes Lectures. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Silva, P. (2000): 'Time and Meaning: Sense and Definition in the OED.' - In: L. Mugglestone (ed.): Lexicography and the OED: Pioneers in the Untrodden Forest, 75-95. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trench, R. C. (1857, 1860): O n some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries' - London: John. W. Parker. Wiegand, H. E. (1990): 'Printed Dictionaries and Their Parts as Texts. An Overview of More Recent Research as an Introduction' - Lexicographica 6: 1-126. Willinsky, J. (1994): Empire of Words: The Reign of the OED - Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zgusta, L. (1989): 'The Oxford Dictionary and Other Dictionaries' - International Journal of Lexicography 2: 188-230.

Joan Beai, National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield AN AUTODID ACT ' S LEXICON: THOMAS SPENCE'S REPOSITORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (1775).

GRAND

Abstract Thomas Spence (1750-1814) was born into a working-class family in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he was taught to read by his father. He went on to become a schoolteacher and a wellknown radical thinker and writer. His Grand Repository of the English Language (1775) is a pronouncing dictionary in which each entry is respelt in a phonetic script of Spence's own devising. This work was intended for "the laborious part of the people" who could not afford either the time of the expense of normal schooling, and who, Spence insisted, would learn to read more easily using his reformed spelling. Whilst other pronouncing dictionaries of this period (e.g. Walker 1791) aimed only to teach 'correct' pronunciation and so took over wholesale Johnson's words and definitions, Spence's Grand Repository, as the title suggests, set out to provide a complete guide to the English Language. Spence's pronunciation has been covered in detail elsewhere (Beai 1999). In this paper, I consider the sources of Spence's words, some of which are not found in Johnson, and of his definitions, some of which carry a radical message.

The Grand Repository of the English Language The Grand Repository of the English Language was published in 1775 in Newcastle upon Tyne, the most northerly city in England. There is no evidence of a second edition, and only two copies of this work are extant, one located in Newcastle City Library, the other in Boston, USA. Almost nothing is known about the readership of this dictionary: the only mention of Spence by a fellow lexicographer is a reference to the spelling system devised by "Mr Spence of Newcastle" in the preface to William Perry's Royal Standard English Dictionary (1775).1 However, as the latter was published in the same year as the Grand Repository, it is unlikely that Perry had actually seen Spence's work at this stage. Until relatively recently, Spence was better known for his political writings than for his place in the history of lexicography. Although the Grand Repository is mentioned in biographical works such as Welford (1895) and Rudkin (1927), it was unknown to linguistic and lexicographical scholars until Spence was 'discovered' as one of Abercrombie's "forgotten phoneticians" (1948: 1). It is thus absent from Kennedy (1927), and from the accounts of pronouncing dictionaries provided by Sheldon (1938, 1946, 1947) and Emsley (1933, 1940, 1942), but included both in Alston's bibliography (1965-73) and in his series of microfiche reproductions (1972). The Grand Repository is a small, octavo book containing 14, 936 entries. The lexicon is preceded by a preface consisting almost entirely of extracts from Thomas Sheridan's Dissertation on the Causes of the Difficulties which Occur in Learning the English Tongue (1761) (the only source acknowledged in this work), and a 10-page grammar. In the dictionary proper, entitled An I am indebted to Massimo Sturiale for drawing my attention to this reference.

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Accurate New Spelling and Pronouncing Dictionary, each word is presented first in conventional spelling, then, in parentheses, in Spence's 'New Alphabet', a phonemic system devised by Spence for the purpose of spelling reform. There follows an indication of part of speech: n. for 'name', v. for verb, or q. for 'quality', and a brief definition. For example, the entries for lazy and leap read: Lazy, (LAZE) q. idle; not willing to work Leap, (LEP) n. a jump. V. to jump.

Spence's 'New Alphabet' was a truly phonemic system, in the sense of one symbol = one sound, designed to alleviate the problems encountered by what Spence termed "the laborious part of the people" in learning to read. In designing his own phonemic alphabet, Spence proved himself worthy of the title "forgotten phonetician", and, as far as linguistic scholarship goes, his Grand Repository has been examined primarily as a source of evidence for the history of English pronunciation (Shields (1973, 1974), Beai (1993, 1994, 1999)), or of spelling reform (Abercrombie (1981), Beai (2002)). Little attention has been paid to the lexicographical aspects of the Grand Repository. In conducting the research for Beai (1999), I used the Oxford Concordance Program to compare all entries in the Grand Repository which contained a certain letter in his 'New Alphabet', with the same words in a number of other eighteenthcentury pronouncing dictionaries, including John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791). In the course of this research, I noticed a number of 'gaps' in the comparisons, where Spence had an entry which Walker lacked. As Walker's dictionary is much larger, the presence of such words in Spence suggests that either the two dictionaries must have had different sources, at least to some extent, or that Walker deliberately excluded such words. The short list of words which I compiled at this stage included not only archaisms and rare words such as dorture, but words which were established by 1775 and are still well-used, such as Antarctic. This opened up the question of where Spence might have found the source or sources of his lexicon. In order to answer this question, we first need to consider the intellectual influences on Spence and what opportunities he had for reading.

Spence's Life to 1775 Spence stands out from other eighteenth-century lexicographers, not only because of his unique system of respelling, but also because of his background. Whilst Johnson and Walker came from middle-class stock, Spence was born to Scottish immigrants on the quayside, then one of the poorest districts of Newcastle upon Tyne. He had 18 siblings, but Spence's father did not neglect the education of his sons. Spence himself tells us: My father used to make my brothers and me read the Bible to him while working in his business, and at the end of every chapter, encouraged us to give our opinions on what we had just read. By these means I acquired an early habit of reflecting on every occurrence which passed before me, as well as on what I read. (1807: 65)

The Bible figured largely in Spence's reading because his family belonged to the congregation of the radical Presbyterian minister, James Murray, and his father and brother Jeremiah later joined the Glassites, a millenialist sect who advocated the Apostolic practice of sharing all goods and possessions in common. According to Ashraf (1983: 12), Spence had "some schooling" before embarking on his father's trade of netmaking at the age of ten. For a man as

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poor as Spence's father, even such a minimal education would have entailed considerable financial sacrifice, and bears testimony to the value placed on learning in the Spence household. After trying his hand at several trades, Spence became a schoolteacher. We know that he was established as a teacher by 1775, for the title page of the Grand Repository refers to his "School in the Keyside". As a young man, Spence took an active part in political debate in the radical and dissenting city of Newcastle. According to his friend, the engraver Thomas Bewick, Spence "got a number of young men together and formed into a debating society, which was held in the evenings in his schoolroom in the Broad Garth" (1862: 71). When the Newcastle Philosophical Society was founded in 1775, Spence became a member, but was promptly expelled after taking his turn to read a paper to the Society on 8th November 1775. According to the Newcastle Chronicle of 25th November 1775, Spence was expelled because of the "ERRONEOUS and dangerous levelling principles" advocated in his paper, which was later published under various titles, including The Rights of Man (1793). As a young man, Spence would thus have had access to grammars and other schoolbooks. Newcastle at this time was a hotbed of educational publishing, and more grammars were published here than in any other Anglophone city in the world outside London (Alston 196573: i. 110-11). The highly influential and successful grammarian Ann Fisher lived and published in Newcastle, and, indeed, the short grammar included in the Grand Repository is taken entirely from Fisher (see Shields (1973, 1974)). Although Spence probably could not afford to buy many books, he would have had access to the bookshops such as Barker's and Charnley's and Sand's circulating Library in the Bigg Market, which, according to Horsley were "open for twelve hours a day" and "the regular meeting place of the prominent citizens of the town". (1971: 206). According to Ashraf (1983: 16), Spence first met Thomas Bewick in Gilbert Gray's bookbinding workshop. Gray, the author of The Complete Fabulist (1753) and The Pleasing History, or Impartial History of England (no date) and Epitome of the Annals of Great Britain (1773) allowed boys like the young Spence and Bewick to read the books sent to him for binding. Spence's later works, particularly the periodical Pigs ' Meat,2 which consists largely of extracts from radical writers, demonstrate that his reading was eclectic. In Pigs' Meat, passages from Voltaire ("the candid philosopher") sit alongside extracts from Harrington's Oceana, the sermons of James Murray and Spence's own writings, including songs set to popular tunes. Spence's writings are full of animal imagery and iconography, and one of his favourite images is that of the bee, who gathers pollen from a wide variety of flowers to make honey. When accused by the spider of not producing an original piece of art like the web, the bee replies that he may gather pollen from elsewhere, but that the end result is both sweet and useful. Could it be that, in the Grand Repository, Spence has likewise gathered words from an eclectic variety of sources to produce an original lexicon?

Independence of Spence's Lexicon In her study of the part played by pronouncing dictionaries in the creation and dissemination of "proper English", Mugglestone suggests that writers of these dictionaries simply took over

2

The title of Pigs' Meat, is, of course, an ironic rebuff to Burke's reference to the "swinish multitude". Spence provides intellectual nourishment for the lower-class 'swine'.

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Johnson's words and definitions wholesale in order to concentrate on representing 'correct' pronunciation: "Trading on the popularity of the dictionary in a post-Johnson age ... Kenrick, Johnston, Walker, Browne, Longmuir and Nuttall, among many others, all yoked Johnson's definitions to increasingly complex systems of transcription" (1995: 34-5). This is true, to some extent of those mentioned: both Walker and Kenrick, for instance, select words from Johnson for their shorter dictionaries, and, for the most part, provide near-identical definitions. For instance, under abdicate, Johnson has "To give up right; to resign; to lay down an office", Walker has " To give up right, resign", and Kenrick "To give up one's right". Indeed, Rogers and Rizzo write that Kenrick "drew almost entirely on Johnson's efforts" (2004: 4). Some of Spence's entries are likewise very similar, if not identical, to Johnson's, e.g. cat "a domestic animal that catches mice", but many are different. Particularly where a word has political or religious significance, Spence's definitions are as idiosyncratic as the most notorious of Johnson's. For instance, Spence defines Whig as "A friend to civil and religious liberty", displaying his own left-wing bias. Johnson, by contrast, defines this word as "The name of a faction" and proceeds to give a long historical explanation of the term taken from Burnet. Johnson then provides a quotation from Swift which expresses his own distaste for political extremes: Whoever has a true value for church and state, should avoid the extremes of whig for the sake of the former, and the extremes of tory on the account of the latter.

Spence is not alone in wearing his political heart on his sleeve with regard to this word. Kenrick actually refutes Johnson's etymology: The name of a party - Johnson deduces it, after Bishop Burnet, from the whigs or whiggamores, horsedrivers in Scotland. I conceive, however, from the known principles of this party, that it must be derived from pisa, Saxon, signifying a hero, a man of intrepidity and independency.

Other definitions show Spence's religious tolerance: latitudinarian is defined as "a free thinker", whereas Walker (a convert to Roman Catholicism) has the more judgemental "one who allows himself great liberties in religious matters". Likewise, despite the fact that Spence's mentor, the Reverend James Murray, crossed swords with Wesley several times in the battle for souls in Newcastle, Spence defines Methodist simply as "a new religious sect". These examples demonstrate that Spence (and, with regard to the examples above, Kenrick and Walker) did not always slavishly 'yoke' Johnson's definitions to the words respelt in his 'New Alphabet' : where he had an interest, he made sure that the definition carried a radical or freethinking message. Quite apart from the independence of his definitions, a close examination 3 of the Grand Repository reveals 31 words which are not found in Johnson. These are: acor, Adamites, advigilate, Ana, arms-end, asper, canny, corb, Mac, septentrio, skim (n.), smattering, sodomy, soothsaying, soundings, stook, stour, subaquaneous, suffumigate, sussurate, temse, thorax, tine, toupee, transmissible, trepid, Trinity-House, tronage, undulated, urbane and viscera. These are, in themselves, an eclectic mixture: some, such as Ana (a Turkish coin) and advigilate, carry more than a whiff of the inkhorn, and lead us to suspect that Spence may have 3

The method I used to determine this was firstly to compare every entry in Spence with those in Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary. This produced a list of 131 words which are in Spence, but not Walker. I then looked up these words in Johnson, and found 100 of them were in Johnson, but not Walker.

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been using an earlier dictionary. Either Blount, or a later dictionary which plagiarised Blount, must have had some input, for nine of the above words are found in Blount. These are: Adamites, advigilate, asper (= a coin), Mac, sodomy, subaquaneous (for which OED cites Blount as the only source), sussurate, undulated, and urbane. In several cases, like that of subaquaneous, the inclusion of words in Spence's Grand Repository in 1775 postdates the last citation in the OED. These are: antimonarchial, defined by Spence as "against monarchy" and last cited by the OED from 1749; skim as a noun, last cited 1764, and, as noted above, subaquaneous, for which the OED has a single citation from Blount 1656. In each of these three cases, an alternative form of the word has survived at the expense of that given by Blount and/ or Spence: antimonarchical, scum and subaquatic. Antimonarchial is not in Blount, but the citation from Bolingbroke in the OED suggests that the word was in use amongst freethinkers in the mid eighteenth-century, and so could have been used by Spence's acquaintances, who were most definitely 'antimonarchi(c)aP. However, not all of the 31 words in the above list were archaic or obsolescent in Spence's time. Three of them, acor, canny and corb, antedate the entries in the OED. In the case of acor, the OED has the word, but not in this sense "Sourness contracted by indigestion" until 1847. For canny, Spence gives the meaning used to this day in the Tyneside dialect: "tidy; neat; discreet; handsome; of good report". The O E D ' s first citation for this sense is from 1802, and the definition is followed by the comment: In the north of England a general epithet of approbation or satisfaction, as in 'Canny Newcastle', the 'Canny Town.' Spence gives no information about the dialectal status of this or other northern words, and there is likewise no evidence that he took it from a dialect dictionary (it is not included in Ray, for instance) As a native of 'the Canny Town', Spence may have considered canny a normal, everyday word which should be included in his lexicon. Corb is defined by Spence as "a basket used in collieries". It does not appear as a headword in the OED, but under corf there is the following comment: WEBSTER 1828, followed by other Dictionaries, has Corb, either a misprint of Corf (omitted in W.), or perh. a local form in U.S. It is unknown in England. Heslop's Northumbrian Words (1892), gives the form corf with the plural form corves: "Corves were formerly used to bring coals out of the pits". In the copy of this dictionary held in the Robinson Library (signed 1929), Newcastle, marginalia states: Ger. Korb: a basket. Clearly corf / corb was a word used in the collieries in this city proverbially famous for its coal production ('coals to Newcastle'). As a resident of the quayside, Spence would have had contact with the keelmen who loaded the coal onto colliers for transportation down the Tyne and to London, so it is highly unlikely that he would have mistaken the form of this word. Is it possible that the form corb was used in eighteenth-century Newcastle, and was transported to America either via immigrants, or, indeed, given American interest in spelling reform, via Spence's Grand Repository itself? Either way, it is clearly a word which Spence did not take from any other dictionary. Other words which Spence took from his own dialect, and which are not found in Ray are crudle and stour. Crudle is a metathesised form of curdle and, indeed, Spence defines this word simply as "to curdle". The OED records this spelling from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and marks it obsolete. However, Heslop records crudle with this meaning in

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Northumberland Words (1892). Stour is defined by Spence as "dry dust". The OED marks it as Scottish and Northern and defines it as follows: II. 5. Flying dust raised by the rapid movement of a person or things, or by the wind; hence a deposit of dust; also dust from material undergoing mechanical treatment.

Heslop includes the word with this spelling, but writes: "see stoor 'dust in motion'". However, his illustrative quotation provides evidence that stour was still in use: T. Wilson: "Two veterans still, mid dust and stour".

In all these cases, Spence gives no indication that he is aware of the dialectal nature of the words. We know that he spoke with a strong Northumbrian accent, as his critics were only too quick to point out. Welford, for instance, relates the following story: When soliciting subscriptions to this curious work (The Grand Repository) he called upon the Rev. H. Moisés, master of the Grammar- School, morning lecturer of All Saints' Church, for the purpose of requesting him to become a subscriber to the work. As Mr. Spence had a strong Northern accent, Mr. Moisés enquired what opportunities he had had of acquiring a just knowledge of the pronunciation of the English Language. "Pardon me," said Spence, "I attend All Saints" Church every Sunday Morning!" (1895: 432-3)

I have demonstrated elsewhere (Beai 1999: 182-3) that "most proper and agreeable" pronunciation represented in Spence's phonetic respellings does indeed seem to reflect 'modified standard' pronunciations of the professional classes in Newcastle: a kind of English 'Morningside'. The Northumbrian dialect words cited above could equally have been in general usage amongst educated Tynesiders in 1775, as is canny to this day. Spence gives no indication of their dialectal status and perhaps was not aware of it. Likewise, he gives no indication that words such as mob and banter, to which Swift had objected in the Tatler, and which Johnson had marked as 'vulgar', should be 'branded' with any 'mark of infamy'. If Spence had taken these words from Johnson, he would have made a conscious decision not to brand them. Is his neutral presentation of slang and dialect words evidence of a tolerant attitude towards lexical variation, or simply naivety? In either case, Spence is acting independently rather than taking words and definitions over from, e.g. Johnson.

Conclusion I have argued so far that Spence, unlike the other authors of pronouncing dictionaries cited by Mugglestone, did not simply 'yoke' his respellings to Johnson's definitions, but shows independence both in the words chosen and in some of the definitions of words which he has in common with Johnson. However, the words discussed above constitute a small minority of the entries in Spence's Grand Repository and the vast majority, including Northern dialect words such as lop "a flea" and flit "to move" are found in Johnson. However, Spence's dictionary is much smaller than Johnson's, and it is highly unlikely that he would have been able to afford such a large dictionary. The most likely explanation for the mélange of words in the Grand Repository is that Spence used a short dictionary as the basis of his work, one that either depended on Johnson, or, more likely considering the older 'dictionary' words found in Blount and Spence but not Johnson, a dictionary which shared sources with Johnson. Spence added to this major source words which he had come across, either in his everyday life {canny, corb, tronage), or in his eclectic reading, and changed the definitions wherever he had an axe to

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grind (whig, latitudinariari). Shields attempts to locate the source of the Grand Repository by comparing words and definitions from effort to ejection in seven eighteenth-century dictionaries: A Pocket Dictionary (Anon. 1753); Buchanan's New English Dictionary (1757); A Pocket Dictionary (Anon. 1758); Entick's The New Spelling Dictionary (1766, 1773, enlarged ed. 1784); and Sheridan's General Dictionary of the English Language (1780). This comparison shows that Spence's Grand Repository is more like Thomas Sheridan's General Dictionary of the English Language than either of these is to any of the other five. Since Sheridan's dictionary is much longer than Spence's, Shields concludes that the former cannot be dependent on the latter, and concludes that they must share a common source, 'Dictionary X'. Shields suggests that 'Dictionary X' could be Ann Fisher's Dictionary and Grammar (71774), which is advertised in the 1787 edition of her grammar, but of which no copy survives. Given Fisher's popularity as a grammarian, and the clear influence of her grammar on that which appears in the Grand Repository, this is plausible, but remains unproven unless and until a copy of Fisher's Dictionary and Grammar is found. Moreover, Shields' comparison is limited to a small number of entries, and would not have unearthed the words discussed above which seem to be from other sources. In any case, it is unlikely that Spence, who was doggedly independent in his politics and eclectic in his reading habits, would have confined himself to one source. The Grand Repository of the English Language is truly an autodidact's lexicon, in which the inkhorn terms of early dictionaries, innovations of the eighteenth century, and dialect words from the banks of the Tyne, all find their place.

References

(a) Cited Dictionaries and Grammars Anon. (1753, 2 1758): A Pocket Dictionary. - London: J. Newbery. Blount, T. (1656): Glossographia. - London: Thomas Newcombe. Buchanan, J. (1769): A New English Dictionary - London: G. Keith, J. Johnson, J. Payne, et al. Entick, J. (1766): The New Spelling Dictionary. - London: Edward & Charles Dilly. (1776): The New Spelling Dictionary. New edn. - London: Edward & Charles Dilly. (1783): The New Spelling Dictionary. New edn, rev.William Crakelt. - London: Charles Dilly. Fisher, A. ( 23 1787): A Practical New Grammar. - Newcastle: S. Hodgson. Heslop, R. O. (1892): Northumberland Words. - London: English Dialect Society. Johnson, S. (1755): A Dictionary of the English Language. - London: W. Strahan for J. & P. Knapton, T. & T. Longman et.al. OED = OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, 3rd edn. Ed. J. A. Simpson. In progress; parts online. Perry, W. (1775): The Royal Standard English Dictionary. - Edinburgh: David Willison. Sheridan, T. (1761): A Dissertation on the Causes of the Difficulties, which Occur, in Learning the English Tongue. - London: R. & J. Dodsley. (1780): A General Dictionary of the English Language. - London: J. Dodsley, C. Dilly and J. Wilkie. Spence, T. (1775): The Grand Repository of the English Language. - Newcastle: T. Saint. Walker, J. (1791): Critical Pronouncing Dictionary. - London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson & T. Cadell.

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(b) Other Literature Abercrombie, D. (1948): 'Forgotten Phoneticians.' - Transactions of the Philological Society 1-34. (1981): 'Extending the Roman alphabet: Some Orthographic Experiments of the Past Four Centuries.' - In: R. E. Asher & E. Henderson (eds.): Towards a History of Phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Alston, R. C. (1965 etc.): A Bibliography of the English Language from the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800. - Leeds: Arnold. (ed.) (1968 etc.): English Linguistics 1500-1800. - Menston: The Scolar Press. Ashraf, P. M. (1983): The Life and Times of Thomas Spence. - Newcastle: Frank Graham. Beai, J. C. (1993): 'Lengthening of a in Eighteenth-century English: a Consideration of Evidence from Thomas Spence's Grand Repository of the English Language and other Contemporary Pronouncing Dictionaries.' - Newcastle and Durham Working Papers in Linguistics 1: 2-17. (1994): 'The Jocks and the Geordies: Modified Standards in Eighteenth-Century Pronouncing Dictionaries.' - Newcastle and Durham Working Papers in Linguistics 2: 1-19. (1999): English Pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Spence's 'Grand Repository of the English Language ' (1775). - Oxford: Clarendon Press. (2002): 'Out in Left Field: Spelling Reformers of the Eighteenth Century.' - Transactions of the Philological Society 100. 1: 5-23. Bewick, T. (1862): A Memoir of Thomas Bewick Written by Himself. - Newcastle & London: Ward. Emsley, B. (1933): 'James Buchanan and the Eighteenth-Century Regulation of English Usage.' -PMLA 18: 1154-66. (1940): 'Progress in Pronouncing Dictionaries.' - American Speech 15: 55-9. (1942): 'The First "Phonetic" Dictionary.' - Quarterly Journal of Speech 28: 202-6. Horsley, P. M. (1971): Eighteenth-Century Newcastle. - Newcastle: Oriel Press. Kennedy, A. G. (1927): A Bibliography of Writings on the English Language from the Beginning of Printing to the End of1922 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mugglestone, L. (1995): Talking Proper. - Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rogers, S., & B. Rizzo (2004): 'William Kenrick (c. 1730-10 June 1779)' - In: The New Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rudkin, O. (1927): Thomas Spence and his Connections. - London: Augustus M. Kelley. Sheldon, E. K. (1938): Standards of English Pronunciation according to the Grammarians and Orthoepists of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. - Wisconsin: Diss. (1946): 'Pronouncing Systems in Eighteenth-Century Dictionaries.' - Language 22: 27-41. (1947): 'Walker's Influence on the Pronunciation of English.' - PMLA 62: 130-46. Shields, A. F. (1973): Thomas Spence and the English Language. - University of Newcastle unpublished MA Dissertation. (1974): 'Thomas Spence and the English Language.' - Transactions of the Philological Society 3364. Spence, T. (1793): The Rights of Man. - London: printed for the author. ( 2 1793-5): One Pennyworth of Pigs ' Meat or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude. Volumes I, II, III. London: printed for the author. (21807): The Important Trial of Thomas Spence- London: printed for the author. Welford, R. (1895): Men of Mark 'Twixt Tyne and Tweed. - Newcastle: Walter Scott.

Julie Coleman, University of Leicester

THE THIRD EDITION OF GROSE'S CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF THE VULGAR TONGUE: BOOKSELLER'S HACKWORK OR POSTHUMOUS MASTERPIECE?'

Introduction Francis Grose was already well known as an illustrator of architectural and military antiquities when he branched out into a new field and published the Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1785. Its combination of antiquarian material, gleaned from cant and slang lists dating back to Dekker's Belman of London,2 with contemporary slang and vulgarisms proved to be irresistible. It was so successful that a second edition appeared three years later. Grose died in 1791, and in 1796 the third edition of his dictionary was published. In 1931, Eric Partridge chose to reprint the third edition of Grose's dictionary. He wrote: I had originally planned to reprint the second edition of Grose's Dictionary, but I have good reason to believe that the third edition incorporates many of Grose's addenda and corrigenda, for the second part was published three years before his death: and Grose was not the sort of man to rest upon his laurels. ... The third edition, 1796, may ... be considered the most important of those which Grose himself revised. (Partridge 1963: vii)

Partridge argues that because no additional editor's name is given, we should see this posthumous edition as the best representation of Grose's own work. It has no new preface, and surely, he reasons, a new editor would not have been able to resist taking credit for his work. The new edition was published by Hooper, as were the first two, and may therefore, Partridge contends, represent Grose's own papers left with his bookseller or passed on to the bookseller by his family. This paper considers the evidence for Partridge's claim. An examination of the first two editions of Grose's dictionary can tell us something about his working practices. This will allow us to determine whether the posthumous edition is in keeping with his methods.

The first edition of Grose's dictionary (1785) The first edition belongs to a long tradition of cant and slang dictionaries, many of which are largely copied, without acknowledgement, from early word-lists. Grose, however, is consciously and overtly antiquarian. He lists his sources in the preface, including Dekker's Belman (1608) and English Villainies (1638), B. E.'s New Dictionary (c.1698), The New Canting Dictionary (1725), The History of Bampfylde-Moore Carew, and the dictionaries of Johnson and Bailey. Within individual entries he also cites Shakespeare, Jonson, Butler, and Swift. 1

2

I am very grateful to John Considine, Werner Hüllen, and Anne McDermott for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The wordlist in Dekker's Belman is derived from Harman's Caveat.

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However, where it would not serve to make him seem thorough and learned, Grose is less honest about his sources. He does not acknowledge his use of Hitchen's The Regulator (1718), nor of Parker's View of Society and Manners in High and Low Life (1781), presumably because admitting to having used such recent volumes would undermine his claim to have collected modern terms from: the most classical authorities; such as soldiers on the long march, seamen at the cap-stem, ladies disposing of their fish, and the colloquies of a Gravesend-boat ... [and] the applauding populace, attending those triumphant processions up Holborn-hill (Grose 1785: v-vi)

The first edition of the Classical Dictionary has 3893 entries, over half of which came from earlier dictionaries. From his sources, Grose selected in favour of terms labelled 'cant' (p=0.01): 15.5% of entries have usage labels, and about two thirds of these are marked as cant. He also preferred entries dealing with CRIME & DISHONESTY, BODY & HEALTH, SEX (all p=0.01) and POVERTY (p=0.05).3 Where terms were not labelled as cant in his sources, Grose demonstrates a preference for those illustrated by citations (p=0.01). He clearly wanted his dictionary to be a lively and enjoyable read, because 11.5% of his entries include illustrative citations, and he also provided encyclopaedic and anecdotal material wherever possible. Twelve per cent of entries include etymologies, most of which are highly accessible because they are largely métonymie, metaphorical, or derived from proper names. Thus even the etymologies contribute to the liveliness of the dictionary. A few entries (3.7%) contain cross-references: 16.8% of these are inaccurate or misleading. The distribution of cross-references through the alphabet is fairly even. The only disparity worth noting is that over a fifth of all cross-references are to entries beginning with the same letter. This increases to over a third if the two adjacent letters are also counted. What this suggests is that the inclusion of cross-references was not done systematically, but instead depended on memory. It seems that Grose edited his dictionary by working through the alphabet, and flicked backwards and forwards to include cross-references to the terms freshest in his mind. The first edition includes four additions and three corrections. This demonstrates that either Grose or his editor cared enough about the accuracy of the dictionary to proofread and supplement it, but not in time for these changes to be made silently.

Grose's Working Copy In the British Library's collections are several copies of the first edition of Grose's dictionary. One is described in the catalogue as "interleaved and copiously annotated", but apart from this brief note it has received relatively little attention.4 John Camden Hotten wrote: The Museum copy of the First Edition is, I suspect, Grose's own copy, as it contains numerous manuscript additions which afterwards went to form the second edition. (Hotten 1859: 154)

3

4

p=001 indicates that there is less than a 1% probability of a distribution occurring by chance. p=0.05 indicates that there is less than a 5% probability of a distribution occurring by chance. The volume is shelved at 440.g.25.

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There are a number of reasons for believing that Hotten is correct. Firstly, before the title page, written in ink, are the publication details of Harman's Caveat, Head's Canting Academy, and the anonymous Hell upon Earth, which are listed, in this order, as new sources in the second edition, where they are joined by the Scoundrel's Dictionary. Secondly, written in hand on the interleaved pages are some of the entries added in the second edition. For example: WORKING COPY

Whore Monger One who keeps several Mistresses. A Country gentleman who kept a female friend, being reproved by the parson of the Parish & stiled a Whoremonger asked the parson whether he Had a Cheese in his house, & being answered in the Affirmative, pray said he & does that one Cheese make you a Cheesemonger

2ND EDITION (1788)

WHORE-MONGER. A man that keeps more than one mistress. A country gentleman, who kept a female friend, being reproved by the parson of the parish, and styled a whore-monger, asked the parson whether he had a cheese in his house; and being answered in the affirmative, 'Pray,' says he, 'does that one cheese make you a cheese-monger?'

These could feasibly have been copied from the second edition, but the differences argue against that. The handwritten versions of the entries are less polished, both orthographically and stylistically. Some of them are radically different, so the second edition cannot be their source: WORKING COPY

Bargain a Hum bug. To sell a bargain, because the buyer seldom gives more than the words, What for or Why for it. Ex the Seller comes into a Room with a very grave face & says that Mr A, the barber is just taken into Custody, one of the Company who (as the phrase is) is not up to the Rig very naturally asks „what for." The Answer is, for shaving his wifes xxxx with a wooden razor. Another mode of selling a bargain consisted in the seller naming his hinder parts to the buyer, this was a Species of wit in vogue even at Court, in the reign of K. George the first & is much alluded to by Swift, as a Specimen take the following Instance. A Lady would come into a Room apparently in a great fright, crying it is white, & follows me, on any of the Company asking what, the Lady sold him a bargain by saying Mine A - e

2 n d EDITION (1788)

Bargain. To sell a bargain; a species of wit, much in vogue about the latter end of the reign of Queen Anne, and frequently alluded to by Dean Swift, who says the maids of honour often amused themselves with it. It consisted in the seller naming his or her hinder parts, in answer to the question, What? which the buyer was artfully led to ask. As a specimen take the following instance: A lady would come into a room full of company, apparently in a fright, crying out, It is white, and follows me! On any of the company asking, What? she sold him the bargain, by saying, Mine a - e

In addition, and presumably also on the grounds of indecency, one of the handwritten entries does not make it into the second edition: Moll's three Misfortunes i.e. Broke the pot. bes - 1 the bed & Cut her A-s-e Moreover, the entry for nip includes the date 1786, which is referred to as 'now': WORKING COPY

Nyp or Nip Half a Pint, a Nyp of Ale, whence Nypperkin a small Vissil or pot. The Peacock in Grays Inn Lane is now 1786 called the Nyp-Shop because Buxton Ale is there sold in Nyps

2ND EDITION (1788)

Nyp, or nip. A half pint, a nyp of ale: whence the nipperkin, a small vessel Nyp shop. The Peacock in Gray's Inn Lane, where Burton ale is sold in nyps

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Finally, and most conclusively of all, comparison of the additions with documents known to be in Grose's own hand (e.g. BL Add. MS 17398), confirms that these annotations were written by Grose himself. Some of the new entries found in the working copy were revised for the printed second edition, but Grose did not work his way through them systematically adding, for example, etymologies or usage labels. If his source included an etymology or usage label he included it, but he does not seem to have sought them out. This confirms what we have already seen: that he was not a methodical worker, and that he had little interest in uniformity of style or content. We can recreate some other aspects of Grose's working methods from the annotated copy. For example, changes in ink colour and thickness demonstrate that the notes were largely written in sequence, working through the alphabet.5 This indicates that Grose collected his notes in a format that allowed alphabetical re-sorting, so they may have been written originally on separate sheets or slips of paper. There are three significant categories of new headword in the second edition, of which a small sample only are given here: - malapropisms: Fox's PAW. The vulgar pronunciation of the French words faux-pas. He made a confounded fox's paw NEGLIGEE. A woman's undressed gown, vulgarly termed a niggledigee NINE SHILLINGS. C o r r u p t i o n o f n o n c h a l a n c e

- the names of clubs: HICCOBITES. The brethren of this most ancient and joyous order, held their general court, Dec. 5, 1750, at the Sun tavern Fish-street hill HUGOTONTHEONBIQUIFFINARIANS. A society existing in 1748 KHAJBAR. The worthy brethren of this order met, A.D. 1749, at the Nag's Head, Tothill-street, Westminster

- and jokes: DAMNED SOUL. A clerk in a counting house, whose sole business it is to clear or swear off merchandize at the custom-house; and who, it is said, guards against the crime of perjury, by taking a previous oath, never to swear truly on those occasions ORTHODOXY AND HETERODOXY. Somebody explained these terms by saying, the first was a man who had a doxy of his own, the second a person who made use of the doxy of another man PUBLIC LEDGER. A prostitute: because, like that paper, she is open to all parties

These types of entry are not found in any number among the working notes. This suggests that Grose added entries en masse: that he decided to include malapropisms, for instance, and then sought examples, or that he found all of his examples in a single source. Whichever it was, it happened after the compilation of this working copy. 5

There is a change of ink at Gentleman of the Three Ins [sic] and in the entry for Grog, but the variations in ink colour are otherwise consistent with continuous writing and pen-dipping.

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Annotations to existing entries are revealing, in that they show Grose at work not just as a compiler, but also as an editor of his own work. He corrected spellings: 1 S T EDITION ( 1 7 8 5 )

pump water, (apothecaries Latin)

A Q U A POMPAGINIS,

WORKING COPY Υ

A Q U A POMPAGINIS

2 N D EDITION ( 1 7 8 8 ) A Q U A PUMPAGINIS.

Pump water.

Apothecaries Latin

- and added additional material to existing entries: I ST EDITION ( 1 7 8 5 )

WORKING COPY

BOOTS, the youngest officer in a regimental mess, whose duty it is to skink, that is to stir the fire, snuff the candles, and ring the bell. See skink.

t to ride in any one's old boots, to marry or keep a Cast off Mistress

BRUISER, a boxer, one skilled in the art of boxing.

t also an inferior Workman among Chasers

TESTER, a sixpence.

+ from Teston, a coin with a head on it

2 N D EDITION ( 1 7 8 8 )

BOOTS. The youngest officer in a regimental mess, whose duty it is to skink, that is, to stir the fire, snuff the candles, and ring the bell. See SKINK. TO ride in any one's old boots; to marry or keep his cast-off mistress. BRUISER. A boxer, one skilled in the art of boxing; also an inferior workman among chasers. TESTER. A sixpence: from teston, a coin with a head on it.

What Grose did not do, on the whole, was to rewrite what was already there: what had been typeset tended to stand. However, there was evidently some revision of the handwritten additions before the final published form became settled. Some of the thirty-three annotations to existing entries were accepted as they stand, some rewritten, and some rejected altogether. Questions of capitalization, punctuation and spelling seem to have been decided at a later stage, perhaps by an editor or typesetter. There are 188 new entries in total, largely in the earlier part of the alphabet. In fact, only thirty-eight of these new entries (20.2%) are in the range N-Z (p=0.016). This suggests that Grose began copying out his additions with good intentions, but ran out of patience before he finished the work: a further demonstration of his less than diligent working methods.

The second edition of Grose's dictionary (1788) The second edition contains 4999 entries, which is an increase of about a third in comparison with the first edition. It includes a list of new sources, as mentioned above. Because of the overlap between these and the word-lists he had already used for the first edition, Grose added only sixty new entries from them, but even listing sources that provided nothing new increased his appearance of antiquarian scholarship. Within entries he also cited Fielding, Smollett, and Swift, so it appears that Grose was making notes as he read for pleasure as well as when working through word-lists. Forty-eight of the new entries (4.2%) are from Swift's Polite Conversation (1738), which is a satirical dialogue in fashionable slang. Naturally, Grose did not give this recent text the prominence that he accorded to his ancient

6

This is significant to p=0.01 whether the comparison is with the first edition or with the whole body of additions in the published version of the second edition.

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sources. Neither did he acknowledge his use of the cant glossary in The Whole Art of Thieving (1786) nor his own Provincial Glossary (1787). Despite his continued reticence about recent sources, Grose developed an increasing tendency to cite authorities in his new entries (p=0.01). These, combined with the growing proportion of entries that contain etymologies (p=0.01), show that Grose was deliberately producing a more obviously scholarly and antiquarian dictionary. The scope of the dictionary was also changing. Among the new entries, there are fewer terms labelled as 'cant' than in the first edition (p=0.05), but more 'colloquial' (p=0.05), and more 'naval', 'slang', and 'jocular' (all p=0.01). Having surveyed earlier publications on cant fairly thoroughly for his first edition, Grose was now improving his coverage of slang and nonstandard language in general. In preparing the second edition, Grose clearly checked some of his inaccurate crossreferences, because he sometimes inserted new entries to fulfil them. What he did not do, however, was to work his way through the dictionary systematically correcting errors. Neither was he any more careful in inserting cross-references in the new entries than he had been in the compilation of the first edition.

The third edition of Grose's dictionary (1796) The posthumously published third edition contains 5097 entries. This represents an increase of only 2%. However, there is a much more thorough revision of existing entries than in the second edition, involving rewriting as well as supplementation. In keeping with the earlier editions, recent sources are not acknowledged. This edition certainly uses George Parker's Life's Painter of Variegated Characters (1789), and possibly Humphry Tristram Potter's New Dictionary of all the Cant and Flash Languages (1795).7 There is no change in the proportion of new terms including etymologies, authorities, crossreferences, or citations, or in the accuracy of cross-references. More terms are labelled 'jargon' among the new entries (p=0.01), which is in continuation of the trend already noted. There are also more terms for LAW & ORDER (p=0.05) and LOOKS (p=0.01), and fewer for SEX (p=0.01), but otherwise the new entries are largely in keeping with the semantic coverage of the earlier editions. What about the evidence in favour of Partridge's position that the third edition is Grose's own work? First, it does seem that Grose continued taking notes after the publication of the first edition instead of waiting until the second was due. This is, as Partridge argues, what he would have done after the publication of the second edition in preparation for the third. Secondly, the third edition is in keeping with Grose's use and acknowledgement of his sources, in that new modern sources are not acknowledged. Thirdly, there are no statistically significant differences in lexicographical practice between the additions to the second and third editions. However, not all of the trends observed in the second edition are continued into the third. There are some small changes in semantic coverage, but apart from the increase in terms labelled as various kinds of jargon, the distribution of usage labels is largely unchanged. At risk of arguing

7

The earliest edition now surviving is from 1797.

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from negative evidence, we have seen that consistency is not a characteristic feature of Grose's working methods. What evidence is there against Partridge's assertion? First, we have already seen that Grose collected his word-list at least partially by type: in the working copy he added many nautical and naval terms, and later on came jokes and names for clubs. His whims regarding subject matter also varied through the course of his work. Even in so small a sample as the hundred or so added to the posthumous edition, we would expect to see more evidence of those whims. In the second edition, Grose paid relatively little attention to the task of rewriting existing entries: where they are altered it is largely by addition rather than revision. Some such additions are also found in the posthumous edition, and may be Grose's own work: 2 n d EDITION ( 1 7 8 8 )

3 r d EDITION ( 1 7 9 6 )

APRIL FOOL. Any one imposed on, or sent on a bootless errand, on the first of April; on which day it is the custom among the lower people, children, and servants, by dropping empty papers carefully doubled up, sending persons on absurd messages, and such like contrivances, to impose on every one they can, and then to salute them with the title of April Fool.

... This is also practised in Scotland under the title of Hunting the Gowke.

CROSS PATCH. A p e e v i s h b o y or girl.

... or rather an unsocial ill-tempered man or woman. ... and Scotland.

WHISKY. A malt spirit much drank in Ireland.

These additions are in keeping with Grose's earlier practice, observed both in the working copy and in the second edition. We have seen that Grose was not a patient worker: he began the task of noting his additional entries in the working copy with enthusiasm, but by halfway through the alphabet his interest was waning. It is hard to believe that he would have worked his way through the entire dictionary rewriting definitions for the third edition. Compare cross-patch, where a revised definition is tagged on to the existing one that it supersedes, with apothecary and heathen philosopher, where definitions are rewritten merely to render them more elegant: 2 n d EDITION ( 1 7 8 8 )

APOTHECARY. TO talk like an apothecary; to talk nonsense: from the assumed gravity and affectation of knowledge generally put on by the gentlemen of that profession, who are commonly but superficial in their learning.

3 r d EDITION ( 1 7 9 6 )

APOTHECARY. TO talk like an apothecary; to use hard, or gallipot words; from the assumed gravity and affectation of knowledge generally put on by the gentlemen of this profession, who are commonly as superficial in their learning as they are pedantic in their language

HEATHEN PHILOSOPHER. O n e w h o s e b r e e c h m a y

HEATHEN PHILOSOPHER.

be seen through his pocket hole. This saying arose from the old philosophers, many of whom despised the vanity of dress to such a point, as often to fall into the excess complained of.

may be seen through his pocket-hole: this saying arose from the old philosophers, many of whom despised the vanity of dress to such a point, as often to fall into the opposite extreme.

One

whose

breech

These entries had both been carried over unchanged from the first edition, so Grose had already approved them for publication twice as they stood. The edited version of heathen philosopher, in particular, looks like the result of a fresh eye trying to make sense of a clumsy definition. The edited version of apothecary provides us with a new synonym, perhaps derived from the entry: GALLIPOT, a nickname for an apothecary.

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- which is found in all earlier editions. There is little correlation between the known events of Grose's life and the contents of the third edition. In 1789 he toured Scotland and began publishing his engravings of Scottish antiquities. In 1791, before those publications were complete, he began his tour of Ireland with the same purpose in mind. It was during the tour of Ireland that he died. We would expect his exposure to new vocabulary to be reflected in any notes he had made for the third edition, because both Irish and Scottish terms are well represented in the first and second editions. There is, however, no marked increase in Scottish or Irish vocabulary, although there is some evidence of his travels in revisions of existing entries (see April Fool and whisky, above). The posthumous edition modernized a number of spellings that had become rare by the last quarter of the eighteenth century: was corrected to (in the entry for messmate), to (rum squeeze), 'posture' to (slouch), to {goats gigg), to (grey beard), to (juggler 's box), and to (fib). In addition, , found only in representations of speech by this period, was corrected to (jack pudding, pickle herring). It is hard to believe that a man of independent spirit, at the age of almost sixty, would update his spelling in this way. This, clearly, is the work of a younger editor. The third edition also includes several careless errors, including: 2 n d EDITION ( 1 7 8 8 )

LIGHT-BOB. A soldier of the light infantry company. TUFT-HUNTER. An universary parasite, one who courts the acquaintance of nobility whose caps are adorned with a gold tuft.

3 r d EDITION ( 1 7 9 6 )

LIGET-BOB. A soldier of the light infantry company. TUFT-HUNTER. An anniversary parasite, one who courts the acquaintance of nobility whose caps are adorned with a gold tuft.

This is not evidence in itself against Partridge's hypothesis, because clearly someone other than Grose would have acted as proofreader, but it does undermine the suggestion that this is the best representation of Grose's work. If the booksellers were careftilly comparing Grose's notes with the second edition to produce a definitive version, they would surely have corrected mistakes arising from faulty transcription. All the evidence suggests hasty revision and rapid publication. Grose's association with his publisher was not just a business arrangement: At Hooper's, the bookseller, in High Holborn, who was publisher of Captain Grose's Works, a room was set apart, where a conversationé was held between the literary characters of that period. It is asserted that the Captain was a most prominent feature in those meetings, and that the company were delighted with the peculiar felicity with which he related his various facetious stories and interesting anecdotes. (Egan 1823: xxxii-xxxiii)

Indeed, it seems that Hooper was prepared to turn a blind eye to more or less anything in order to keep his profitable author happy: GOOD WOMAN one who spares her tongue, gives her husband's ears a holiday, or, more pointedly, a silent woman "A silent woman," sir, you said "Pray, was she drawn without a head? Yes, sir, she was: you never read on A silent woman with a head on." Hence it was, that an oil-man in High-street, St. Giles's, was induced to place over his door a wellpainted sign-board of "a good woman," — one without a head. In this shop, Capt. Grose would lounge of a morning, and he it was that suggested this piece of waggery. The Capt. lodged not far

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off with Mammy Hooper, who was also his publisheress, the sempstress of his antiquities, his laundress, bed-makeress, et-caeteris. (Bee 1823)

What Partridge does not explain is why Hooper would wait five years after Grose's death before publishing the third edition of his dictionary. Grose's Antiquities of Ireland, "Edited and in most part written by E[dward] Ledwich", was published in the year that he died, as was the second edition of his Rules for drawing Caricatures. The following year, the Olio, a miscellaneous collection of Grose's writing, appeared, containing, incidentally, lengthy and humorous dialogues with incomprehensible Scots. The third edition of the dictionary, five years after Grose's death, was too late to be part of this post-mortem capitalization on renewed interest in his work. In fact, another death occurred in the interim. The Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1793 notes among its obituaries: Suddenly, Mr. Samuel Hooper, bookseller in High Holborn; the well-known publisher of Captain Grose's Antiquities, and other works. He kept a shop some time in the Strand, and afterwards in Ludgate-street (190)

Bee's reference to Samuel Hooper's wife, Mary, as a publisheress suggests that she was involved in the business, but there is a four-year period after her husband's death during which she apparently issued no books. In 1796 the name of Hooper started appearing on book-covers again, usually linked with that of [William] Wigstead, a partnership that lasted until December 1798.8 I believe that this new partner spotted a business opportunity. The publication of two editions of the Classical Dictionary in the second half of the 1780s had been enough to saturate the market for large slang dictionaries for some time. Only minor cant works were published during the intervening period. For example, several versions of the life of Bampfylde-Moore Carew, containing a short cant list, were published during the 1780s and 1790s, but the public surely bought them because they wanted to read about Carew's life rather than for his vocabulary. Because of the brevity of the list, these volumes were no competition for Grose's dictionary. Equally, although George Parker published successfully on London street life during the 1780s, and included glossaries, his work made no attempt to challenge the thoroughness and authority of Grose's. In 1795, however, two new slang dictionaries appeared: James Caulfield's Blackguardiana and Humphry Tristram Potter's New Dictionary of all the Cant and Flash Languages, both largely derived from Grose's own. This was the incentive for the republication of the Classical Dictionary: not a reverent desire to produce the definitive edition, but an unseemly scramble to out-reach the competition.

Conclusions In summary, Partridge presented the third edition as if it were the product of a later version of the working copy discussed earlier. He argued that the publishers took Grose's unfinished notes on the second edition and incorporated them into the third. Although there is some circumstantial evidence to support this, I believe that Partridge's hypothesis is only part of the 8

Exeter Working Papers in British Book Trade History (http://www.devon.gov.Uk/library/locstudy/bookhist/h.html)

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Julie Coleman

story. It is clear that Grose did continue to make notes between editions of his dictionary. However, although some of the new material may well be from Grose's notes, other additions are made by his editor, and much of the revision of existing entries is also, I believe, done by another hand. Partridge argued that such an editor would have wanted to record his own name, and perhaps write a new preface, but if this edition were motivated by new publications in the same field, it is entirely possible that a bookseller's commercial instincts might have overridden personal vanity. After all, the competition was made up of versions of Grose's dictionary with other people's names on the title page. If Hooper and Wigstead had produced another of these, it would have been just another one among several. What name could have been more authoritative than Grose's own? The title page noted that the edition had been corrected and enlarged, and this was enough to demonstrate its superiority but also its faithfulness to existing editions. I believe that Hooper and Wigstead were hoping that potential purchasers would, as Partridge did, accept the work as Grose's own.

References

(a) Cited Dictionaries Anon. (1703): Hell upon Earth: or the most Pleasant and Delectable History of Whittington 's Colledge, Otherwise (vulgarly) called Newgate — London: n.p. (1725): New Canting Dictionary - London: The Booksellers of London and Westminster. (1754): Scoundrel's Dictionary or an Explanation of the Cant Words used by Thieves, Housebreakers, Street-robbers, and Pickpockets about Town — London: J. Brownnell. (1786): The Whole Art of Thieving and Defrauding Discovered - London: Printed for the Booksellers. Bee, J. (1823): Slang. A Dictionary of the Turf the Ring, the Chase, the Pit, of Bon Ton, and the Varieties of Life - London: T. Hughes. Caulfield, J. (1795): Blackguardiana, or, Dictionary of Rogues, Bawds, Pimps, Whores, Pickpockets, Shoplifters, Mail-robbers, Coiners, House-breakers, Murderers, Pirates, Gipsies, Mountebanks, nTc

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(I 1. Sac rectangular de tela cosit de tots costats, que, farcit de llana, de plomes o d'altra cosa blana, serveix per a jeure-hi damunt, generalment posât damunt un Hit; cast, colchón. Blanquema hac posada la c o c e r á dejós lo matalaf, Llull B l a n q . 52. Restituito los m a t a l a s o s , d o c . a. 1392 ( B S A L , VII, 394). La terra s i a lo teu lit. lo camp s i a lo teu matalaf. C a n a l s C a r t a , c 28. Hun lit encanat ab dos m ata Ufo s de lana, d o c . a. 1478 ( B S A L , ΙΠ, 227). A b s e n g l e s m a t a l a s s e s ab cubertes e s o t a n e s de

cariamaç, doc. a. 1407 (Ordin. Hosp 78). Do3 mathalasos ab listes blaues, doc. a. 1436 (Miret Tempi 571). SI l'obliguessin a jeure sobre m a t a l a s s o s . . . no podría a c l o c a r l'ull, R u y r a F l a m e s 61 Matalaps ni

coixins, res li quedava. Llórente Versos 104 g 2. fig Dona molt grassa (Mall., Men). FON.: matalás (pir-or., or., mall); matalás (occ), matalaf (Pego, Sanet); matai áf (Men., Eiv), mataláp (Gandesa, Tortosa, Amposta, Maesti., Cast., Val., Cocentaina, Vail de Gallinera, El Pinós) INTENS.:—a) Augm.: matalassàs (matalqfàs), mataiassarro—b) Dim.: matai asset (mata! a/et), mata!asso (matalqß).—c) Pejor.: matalassot (mataiafot). ETIM. de l'àrab matrafo, que figura en el Vocabulista atribuït a Ramon Martí amb el significai llatí de «tapetum», i en la glossa marginal del mateix vocabulista es troba la forma catalana «matalafi;·

Figure 5. The lexical entry matalás ('mattress') in the electronic edition of the DCVB

Conclusions The DCVB is the first Catalan work of an integrated and exhaustive character, and includes an enormous range of dialectal information. The result of Alcover's lexicographic work and Moll's painstaking editing is the most extensive and documented study of the Catalan language. In spite of its length, it is a dictionary aimed at a variety of readers - scholars, students and the general public; and it is still unsurpassed in terms of its objectives and in collection of materials. This work is clear proof that the efforts of a small team can produce a

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collective work of unquestionable scientific value and can still exert an important influence on lexicographic works today. References

(a) Cited Dictionaries Alcover, A. M. (2001): Mostra de Diccionari Mallorquí. Ed. M.-P. Perea - Barcelona: Publicacions de Γ Abadía de Montserrat. Alcover, Α. M., & F. de Β. Moll (1929-1932): La Flexió Verbal en els Dialectes Catalans. - Barcelona: Anuari de l'Oficina Romànica, vol. II (1929), 1-112; vol. III (1930), 1-96; vol. IV (1931), 1-96; vol. V (1932), 2-64. (1930): Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear. - Palma de Mallorca: Impremta d'Antoni M. Alcover. (1961-1969): Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear. - Palma de Mallorca: Moll. A L P I = ATLAS LINGÜÍSTICO DE LA PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA. Madrid: C S I C 1962 [vol. I, Fonética]. Escrig, Josep (1851): Diccionario valenciano-castellano. - Valencia: Librería de Pascual Aguilar editor. Febrer i Cardona, A. (2001): Diccionari Menorquí, Espanyol, Francés, Llatí. Ed. M. Paredes -Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans. Figuera, P. A. (1840): Diccionari Mallorquí-Castellá. - Palma: Imprenta y Llibreria de Esteva Trias. Gauchat, L., J. Jeanjaquet & E. Tappolet (1924-1933): Glossaire des Patois de la Suisse Romande. Tome premier. - Neuchâtel & Paris: Éditions Victor Attinger. Labèrnia, P. (1864-1865): Diccionari de la llengua catalana amb la correspondencia castellana i Ilatina. - Barcelona: Espasa Germans.

(b) Other Literature Colon, G., & A.-J. Soberanas (1985): Panorama de la Lexicografía Catalana. - Barcelona: Enciclopédia Catalana. Llompart, J. M. (1960): 'El «Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear».' - Los Papeles de Son Armadans, May, 337-50. Moll, F. de Β. (1933): 'Μη. Antoni M. Alcover.' - Bolleti del Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, XV, 428.

(1962a): Un Home de Combat (Mossèn Alcover). - Palma de Mallorca: Moll. (1962b): 'Comment a été fait le Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear.' - In: Actes du X Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, II, Strasbourg, 819-30. (1983): Aspectes Marginals d'un Home de Combat (Mossèn Antoni M. Alcover). - Barcelona: Curial Edicions Catalanes / Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat. Perea, M.-P. (2001): 'Antoni M. Alcover i la Lexicografía Catalana.' - Serra d'Or, 497, 23-7. Pop, S. (1950): La Dialectologie: aperçu Historique et Methodes d'Enquêtes, 2 vol. - Louvain: Chez l'Auteur. Rico, Α., & J. Solà (1995): Gramática i Lexicografía Catalanes: Sintesi Histórica. - València: Universität de València. Sanchis Guarner, M. (1953): 'Le Dictionaire Historique et Dialectal du Catalan «Alcover-Moll»: Travaux, Problèmes et Méthodes'. - Orbis, II, 104—12. Sanchis Guarner, M., L. Rodríguez Castellano & A. Otero (1962): 'El Atlas Linguistico de la Península Ibérica (ALPI). Trabajos, Problemas y Métodos.' - In: IX Congresso Internacional de Linguistica Romànica (Lisboa, 31 de Março-4 de Abril de 1959). Actas III (Boletim de Filologia, XX): 113-20.

Gregory James, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology CULTURE A N D THE DICTIONARY: EVIDENCE FROM THE FIRST EUROPEAN LEXICOGRAPHICAL WORK IN CHINA

Background and authorship The first Christian missionary officially allowed into China since the earliest days of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) was Melchior Nunes Barreto, Jesuit Provincial of the Portuguese dominions, who went to Guangzhou in 1555 to rescue Portuguese and Indian Christians who had been imprisoned there (Barreto 1555). Other missionaries - Jesuits, Augustinians, and especially Spanish Franciscans from the Philippines - touched on Chinese soil over the course of the next few years, mostly clandestinely, sometimes by shipwreck, or through misjudgement or being blown off course, only to be imprisoned as illegal immigrants, and eventually deported (cf. Boxer 1953; de la Costa 1967; James & Morgan 2003). It was Alessandro Valignano, Jesuit Visitor to Japan and India, who realised that to make evangelical headway in China, the Church had to adopt a concerted strategy, and not rely on casual interaction, or haphazard incursions by small, ill-prepared and ill-informed groups of zealots. "Valignano was one of the rare Europeans who understood that it would be necessary for Christianity to put aside its European adornments if it was to take root in Asia" (Laborinho 1994: online; cf. D'Elia 1941). The key to Valignano's strategy of cultural adaptation was language. He therefore summoned from Goa, a stronghold of the Portuguese on the west coast of India, to Macau, their trading post on the southern Chinese coast, priests whom he identified as having the intellectual qualities necessary to learn Chinese well, and to prepare themselves specifically to treat with Chinese scholars. Two of these were Michele Ruggieri, who reached Macau in July 1579, and Matteo Ricci, who arrived there in August 1582: these two were, in 1583, the first to be allowed to establish a Christian mission in China (see Witek 2001: 152-5). According to his journals, Ricci - with the help of the first Chinese admitted as a Jesuit, Sebastian Fernandez (Zhöng Míngrén ÜPJH— ; Pfister 1932: 47-8), and Lazare Cattaneo (ibid.: 51-6), a Jesuit whose musical talents allowed him to analyse the tonal system as well as phonemic aspiration in Chinese - compiled "a glossary of Chinese words", noting "that the whole Chinese language was made up of monosyllables only, and that certain tones and breathings were used by the Chinese to vary the meanings of words. Ignorance of these tones results in a confusion of speech, making conversation almost impossible, because without them the speaker can not be understood, nor can he understand another" (Gallagher 1953: 315). Louis Pfister (1932: 41) refers to this "dictionnaire chinois" and identifies it with a Vocabularium, DlCTlONARlUM SlNlCUM, cited by Athanasius Kircher (1667: 118). Until 1934, the manuscript of the dictionary was believed lost. In that year, Pasquale D'Elia discovered an anonymous and untitled Portuguese-Chinese glossary in the Jesuit Archives in Rome, to which he gave the title, "Dizionario portoghese-cinese" (Yang 1989: 203, 206). For long it was believed that this glossary was the one referred to by Ricci (D'Elia 1938, 1949: 32, fn. 1 ; cf. Yang 1960: 161). In 1975, Fredric Weingartner reported having obtained a microfilm of the manuscript, and others who have studied this glossary - Paul Yang Fu-mien (1984, 1989), Gregory James (1994), Dieter Messner (1995a, 1995b, 1998), Luis Filipe Barreto (1997), Joseph Abraham Levi (1998, 1999) - have worked from similar reproductions, made available by the Jesuit

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Archives. It was not until 2001, however, that a facsimile, edited by John Witek, appeared, a collaborative publication of the Biblioteca Nacional Portugal, the Instituto Portugués do Oriente in Macau, and the University of San Francisco's Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History. As Weingartner (1975: 224-5) pointed out, the absence of indication of tone in the romanisations in the glossary argues that it is not the one mentioned in Ricci's journal, but a much earlier version. Although he had evidently become aware of the role of tone in Chinese even as early as 1583, when he had first started learning Chinese (Yang 1989: 212) - it was not until after Catteneo's arrival in China 1597 that Ricci began to systematise the indication of tones in his romanisation, by diacritics (ibid.: 202). The toneless romanisation system adopted to represent the Chinese translations in this glossary appears, then, to be the earliest attempt made by any European to transcribe Chinese. Yang (ibid.: 203-5) cites further evidence, from the non-glossary folios of the manuscript, to date the compilation between 1583 and 1588. Robert Streit & Johannes Dindinger (1928: 311) report that Martin de Rada, who visited China in 1575, as a member of a group of Spaniards invited from the Philippines by the Fujian authorities, wrote an ARTE Y VOCABULARIO DE LA LENGUA CHINA ('Grammar and vocabulary of Chinese'). According to Boxer (1953: lxxvi), the existence of this work "has never been fully established; but there seems little reason to doubt that Rada with his linguistic gifts and tireless energy at least made a start with such a work, even if (as is probable) it never got beyond an imperfect draft." Theunissen (1943: 222) cites other Chinese dictionaries known to have been written by Europeans at the same period: a VOCABULARIO SINICO by Miguel de Benavides (Streit & Dindinger 1928: 358), and a DICTIONARIUM SINICUM by Domingo de Nieva (ibid.: 364). It is not known whether either of these works was a bilingual dictionary, and up to now, Ruggieri/Ricci's Portuguese-Chinese glossary ranks as the first such extant in Chinese lexicography (see also Jin 1987; Ramos 1988). The Ruggieri/Ricci manuscript comprises 189 folios on Chinese paper, 26 χ 16.5 cm, of which ff. 32r to 156v are the glossary proper, in three columns: (i) a c.6,600-entry Portuguese alphabetical headword list (with some phrases and short sentences, and occasional explicatory synonyms in Latin or Italian), from aba de vestidura to zuñir a orelha, (ii) romanisations, supposed to have been written by Ruggieri (D'Elia 1938: 173), and (iii) Chinese character translations - with, on ff. 33r-34r, a fourth column, with equivalents in Italian, also supposed to have been written by Ruggieri (ibid.). Folio 157r contains a list of twenty-one words beginning with Ρ (parar to parte), in a different hand, and with no Chinese equivalents; on f. 127a there is a corresponding sign ( |-) after the headword, parar cavalho, which would indicate where it was intended that these words should be included - or, rather, should have been included, since there is a marginal annotation deest 'it is missing', indicating that the original copyist had perhaps inadvertently omitted a page or a column from the source from which he was transcribing the headword list. The text is divided into two sections, as evidenced by the handwriting: the first, ff. 32r-66r, contains headwords Α-C; the second, ff. 72r-156r, contains headwords D-Z. Based on his comparisons of other examples of handwriting by Ricci and Ruggieri, Witek (2001: 157) asserts that the headwords of the D-Z section were written out by Ruggieri, and concurs with D'Elia's (1938) judgement that the romanisations throughout are also by Ruggieri. The headwords of Α-C, and the fourth-column Italian interpolations, are, according to Witek, by an unknown hand. The penmanship of Chinese characters in the third column is that of a native Chinese, "undoubtedly, by a language teacher or a Chinese scholar" (Yang 1989: 207), although occasionally we find characters evidently formed by someone much less fluent in

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Chinese calligraphy - perhaps Ricci, or Ruggieri, or perhaps a later European hand; in this entry, for example, the character f é is clearly that of a non-native hand:

The glossary comprises a list of uncontextualised Portuguese words, with their Chinese equivalents. No definitions are offered. Ostensibly, a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary with Portuguese headwords would be an "active dictionary" (DICTIONARY OF LEXICOGRAPHY 1998), that is, to assist learners in an active command of Chinese. Users would be assumed to know what they wanted to say, and needed the bilingual wordlist as a reference to help them to find the appropriate equivalent Chinese term or expression. However, in many cases the Chinese translation is expanded with one or more synonyms, as in a thesaurus. "The Chinese entries contain words, phrases, and short sentences taken mainly from the colloquial form. This is significant as until then Chinese dictionaries contained only single characters as lexical items exclusively from the literary or Classical Chinese. A Portuguese entry may have more than one corresponding Chinese entry. Usually, the first one represents the colloquial form; it may be followed by one or more synonyms in colloquial and/or literary forms ..." (Yang 1989: 207). No identification in terms of register or connotation is offered, and it would therefore have been difficult for a user learning Chinese to differentiate among the choices. Moreover, the romanisations - and thus guides to pronunciation - are, in the vast majority of cases, given for only the first item, where more than one set of translational equivalents occurs in the third (character) column.

Sources for h e a d w o r d s and h e a d w o r d selection Ruggieri/Ricci did not create the glossary ex nihilo. Yang (1989: 206) surmised: "It seems that these entries were not randomly copied from a Portuguese dictionary, but rather carefully selected with regard to common usage of spoken Chinese." More recently, Dieter Messner (1995a, 1998) has demonstrated that the Portuguese headwords, at least in the Α-C section, are derived from the second, posthumous, edition of the DLCTLONARLVM LATINOLVSITANICVM (1569-1570, ed. Sebastian Stockhammer), first published in 1563, by Jerónimo Cardoso, "le père de la lexicographie portugaise" ('the father of Portuguese lexicography') (Teyssier 1980: 7; cf. ibid. 10, 24—6; Almeida 1959; Révah 1964; Verdelho 1994). There are various pieces of evidence for this conclusion, not least the ordering of the headwords (e.g. Rucci/Ruggieri's Ca, Co, Cu, Cl, Cr, Ça, Çe, Çi, Çu, Ch follows Cardoso [who, however, uses no cedilla at Ce, Ci}), and the use of the FEMININE ADJECTIVE + cousa construction for the citation of adjectives as headwords, e.g. Cardoso Abastada cousa Abastante cousa Aberta cousa Abominauel cousa

Abastada cousa Abastante cousa Aberta cousa Abominauel cousa

Ruggieri/Ricci 'well provisioned' 'sufficient' 'open, opened' 'detestable'

122 Abondosa cousa Aborrecida cousa Abreuiada cousa Abrigada cousa Acabada cousa Acrarada cousa

Gregory Abomdosa cousa Aborecida cousa Abreuiada cousa Abriguada cousa Acabada cousa Acrarada cousa

James

'abundant' 'irksome' 'shortened, abbreviated' 'sheltered, protected' 'complete, completed' 'clear, clarified'

In the later part of the glossary, however, there is greater variation, indicative perhaps of a different source, or of a combination of sources, e.g. at L: Cardoso Ladrilhada cousa Lagrimosa cousa Lanuda cousa Larga cousa Leue cousa Licita cousa Liquida cousa Lisa cousa Liure cousa Lustrosa cousa

Ruiieien/Ricci ladrilhada lagrimosa cousa lanudo larga cousa leue licito liquido lisa cousa liure home lustrosa cousa

FEM ADJ

FEM ADJ + cousa MASC ADJ FEM ADJ +

COUSa

MASC/FEM ADJ MASC ADJ MASC ADJ FEM ADJ +

MASC ADJ +

COUSa

home

FEM ADJ + cousa

'tiled' 'tearful' 'woolly' 'wide' 'light' 'lawful' 'liquid' 'smooth' 'free' 'bright'

Messner's identification of the relationship between the Cardoso and Ruggieri/Ricci compilations is important because it places the latter glossary in a very different context from that suggested by Barreto (1997), who claimed that it had indeed not been compiled by Ricci or Ruggieri at all since "neither ... knew enough Portuguese, let alone Chinese, to have made a list of about three [s/c] thousand terms". On the basis of this assumption, Barreto speculated that the glossary was "a collective work, undertaken by members of the Portuguese commercial, political and religious communities in Macau. The vocabulary accumulated through contributions of numerous lettered Chinese, Portuguese as well as Chinese merchants and seamen, besides Jesuit missionaries." In support of his theory, he suggested that the glossary focuses on "geonautical, political and diplomatic terminology ... with very few terms dealing with scholarly theories or religion" and highlights particularly his perception of the high incidence of nautical vocabulary: "There are at least seventy five among a total of over two [sic] thousand lexical terms showing how important naval life was in Macau and that by the 1580's there was already a list of Portuguese and Chinese nautical words." He cited, for example (from section A-C): almadia "long narrow canoe", a nao "sailing vessel" (in fact, a misreading of αηαδ [mod. anäo] 'dwarf) ancora (in the text, amcora) "anchor" ancorar (in the text, amcorar) "to drop [i.e. cast] anchor" a remos de vela "on sailing oars" [íí'c] (a misreading of a remos & a vela 'with oars and sails') arimar a outro "brace the other" [sic] (a mistranslation for 'to support someone' ; in the text, aRimar, mod. arrimar) barcada "boatload" barra de naos "ship's capstan" (rather, 'harbour entrance'; in the text, bara de naos), batel "skiff' borda "gunwale" (but here in the general sense of 'side') borda de nao "ship's gunwale" cabo "rope" (but here in the general sense of 'end') cabo do mundo "cape of the world" [j/c] (rather, 'ends of the earth') caraca "an ancient small Portuguese vessel" (a misreading of caracol 'snail')

123

Culture and the Dictionary carta de marear "ship's log-book" (rather, 'navigation chart') cobertura "saloon deck" (but here in the general sense of 'covering')

- all of which appear in Cardoso (1570), and, if anything, have more to do with life in Portugal than in Macau. Unfortunately, not only did Barreto not realise that the first part, at least, of Ruggieri/Ricci's headword list had been taken from a standard European Portuguese-Latin dictionary, but he did not seek to check the Chinese translations - either source would have confirmed the intended senses of the entries. His unjustifiably specialised interpretations of e.g., borda as "gunwale", cabo as "rope" and cobertura as "saloon deck" are just three instances of the extremes to which this author went to offer 'evidence' for his preconceptions. Witek (2001: 159) has already punctured Barreto's contentions, and, citing Messner (1995a), admits that "a number of entries" were drawn from Cardoso. Messner's case is, however, stronger than this: Cardoso's work is - directly or indirectly - the primary source for the Ruggieri/Ricci headwords. This said, it is nevertheless true that some selection was made, since not every headword from Cardoso was cited: for example, Ruggieri/Ricci have 2,392 headwords from A to C, to Cardoso's 4,290. The headwords were not meant to constitute an exhaustive list of Portuguese vocabulary, but a user-related subset. As an illustration, I show in Tables 1 and 2, comparisons of the first fifty headwords in Cardoso (at letters A and D respectively), and those selected for inclusion in the Ruggieri/Ricci glossary. Ruggieri/Ricci's glossary was, thus, conceived of as a personal reference manual, as well as for the active use of missionary learners, and with selective, rather than comprehensive, content. Place-names, which would have no Chinese equivalents - e.g. at B: Babilonia, Bayona, Barcelona, Beja, Bejar, Beiern ('Bethlehem'), Berbería, Bilbao, Bizcaya, Bolonha, Bordeos, Borgonha, Braga, Bragança, Bretanha, Bruxeles, Burgos - are regularly omitted, as, interestingly, are headwords with specific Arabic/Islamic references, e.g. aduares de mouros 'Muslim villages', Arabia 'Arabia', Arabio 'Arab', caciz de mouros 'kasis', cafilla de mouros 'camel train'. Table 1: A comparison of the first fifty headwords at letter A, from Cardoso (1570) and those selected for inclusion in the Ruggieri/Ricci glossary, from a relational database constructed by Bronson So: James & So (2002). CARDOSO Aba de vestidura

RUGGIERI/RICCI Aba de vestidura

Abada Abade Abadessa Abadinho Abadía Abafar

Abafar

Abafar.s.cobrir

Abafar - s - cobrir

Abafamento

Abafamento

Abainhar vestidura

Abainhar uestidura

Abayxar

Abaixar

Abayxar a cabeça

Abaixar acabesa

Gregory Abayxar a cabeça côsentindo

Abaixar a cabesa côsentindo

Abayxo.s.pera baixo

Abaixo

Abayxo de algua cousa

Abaixo dalguä cousa

Abalar a outrem

Abalar aoutro

Abalarse.conuem a saber, darse pressa Abalarse - s - darse preça Abalado

Abalado

Abalo Abalroar

Abalruar

Abalroar com alguem Abalisar Abalisador Abanar

Abanar

Abano

Abano

Abañador que abana

Abañador

Abañadura Abanar moscas

Abanar moscas

Abano de moscas Abarolecer

Abaroleser

Abarrisco Abarregado. s. amancebado

Abariguado

Abarregada com solteiro Abarragada com casado Abarregamento Abarcar

Abarguar

Abarcar.s.tomar tudo

Abarcar - s - Tomar tudo

Abarcamento desta maneyra Abarcador Abarcamento dos mâos Abastar

Abastar

Abastada cousa

Abastada cousa

Abastança

Abastança

Abastadamente Abasta

Abasta

Abastarda

Abastarda

Abastecer

Abastaser

Abastante cousa

Abastante cousa

Abater

Abater

Abatido

Abatido

James

Culture and the Dictionary Table 2: A comparison of the first fifty headwords at letter D, from Cardoso (1570) and those selected for inclusion in the Ruggieri/Ricci glossary, from a relational database constructed by Bronson So: James & So (2002).

CARDOSO

RUGGIERI/RICCI

Dadiva

Dadiua

Dado

Dado de jugar

Dado a molheres Dadoa Dama

Dama, virgè

Dama do paço

Dama do posso do rei

Damasco

Damasco

Dança

Danço

Dança de espadas Dança de armados Dançador Dançadeira Dançar

Dançar

Danar.s.derrâcar

Dañar

Danado Dani car Dani cado Daninho Danoso

Damnoso

Daño

Da'no

Dali

Da li

Damdam de casa Dahi.s.onde tu estas

Da hi

Daiam Da porta a dètro Daqui

Da qui Da porta a dentro

Daqui a diante

Da qui a diante

Dar

Dar

Dar de comer

Dar de comer

Dar de beber

Dar de beuer

Dar a ganho, ou a cambo Dar a o ganho Dar dinheiro de meas Dar a vela

Dar a vela

Dar a bomba

Dar a bomba

Dar olhado

Dar olhado

Dar de mào

Dar de maö. naö q rer

Gregory James

126 Dar de rosto

Dar de rosto

Dar passada

Dar passada

Dar couces

Dar couces

Dar bofetada

Dar bofetada

Dar punhada

Dar punhada

Dar cutilada

Dar cotilada

Dar estocada

Dar estocada

Dar pedrada

Dar pedrada

Darse a si mesmo Dar as mäos

Dar as maos

Dar em nal Darse por vencido

Dar por vencido

Dar de esporas

Dar desporas

Dar a driça

Dar a driza

Indeed, Messner (1998) identifies a number of immediate differences between Cardoso's compilation and Ruggieri/Ricci's Portuguese-Chinese glossary: omission of religious words, and lack of translation of those which remain; extra information at some headwords; spelling differences.

Treatment of terms of religion "Ricci and Ruggieri seem to have submitted the [glossary] to a rigorous pruning of (Catholic) terminology" (Messner 1998: 286). As can be seen from Table 1, some of Cardoso's specifically religious terms have indeed been omitted from Ruggieri/Ricci: abade 'abbot', abadessa 'abbess', abadinho 'junior abbot', abadía 'abbey'; other examples include antechristo 'antichrist' apostolo 'apostle' arcediago 'archdeacon' Aue maria 'Hail Mary' bago de bispo 'bishop's crosier' breuiayro 'breviary' buia do papa 'papal bull' Carmelita 'Carmelite' concilio de papa 'ecumenical synod' clérigo de missa 'priest' clérigo de euangelho 'deacon' clérigo de epistola 'subdeacon'

euangelho 'gospel' euangelista 'evangelist' indulgencia plenaria 'plenary indulgence' legado do papa 'papal legate' mártir 'martyr' mayoral dos frades 'brother superior' missa 'mass' missal 'missal' papa 'pope' perdoança de papa 'papal remission' pia de bautizar 'baptistery' sacerdote 'priest'

The pruning is not as rigorous as may be assumed, however, since the glossary does contain a small number of more general, what one may call 'semi-technical', terms: e.g. jdolo 'idol' jgresia 'church' peccato mortal 'mortal sin' peccato venial 'venial sin'

jnferno 'hell' pulpito 'pulpit' santo 'saint'

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all of which are given tentative Chinese equivalents. We also find Saluador 'Saviour' and Adäo pr° home 'Adam, the first man' - but not 'Eve' (Cardoso likewise has Saluador and Adam primeyro homem, but not Eva). Adäo is given the Chinese equivalent of fëlj , a much earlier attempt than (ia tarn), cited by Yang (2001: 181) from the non-glossary folios of the Ruggieri/Ricci manuscript (which can be dated to 1586), and which Yang cites as an "early transliteration", although this is the combination often used to this day. The glossary version is thus the earliest known Chinese transcription of 'Adam'. "... in a number of cases, the [glossary] lists words related to (Catholic) religious terminology ... but does not supply a corresponding translation in Chinese ... [T]his lack of Chinese ideograms occurs only in the section ... starting with the letters Ά \ ' B ' and ' C ' . From capital ' D ' onwards, a Chinese ideogram directly corresponding to each Portuguese word entry is given" (Messner 1998: 286). The whole question of the translation of terminology was one aspect of the debate over cultural accommodation, a protracted controversy which rocked the Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Kim 2001) - and spilt over into the nineteenth, with the advent of the Protestant missionaries in China. The word for 'God' as a headword, for example, is missing from the Ruggieri/Ricci glossary - as it is, indeed, from Cardoso - but the Chinese equivalent for 'God' used by the Roman Catholics ( ^ ϊ ) is given under criador 'creator'. Examples of headwords from Α-C with no Chinese equivalents given include: adoraçaô 'worship' adro da igreia 'churchyard' aguoa benta 'holy water' alimpamento paer sacrifiçio 'ritual cleansing' alma peccador 'sinning soul' alma infernal 'infernal soul' anjo bom 'good angel' anjo mao 'wicked angel' ante x° 'before Christ' aRependimento 'repentance' as aue marias 'at vespers' asoluiçaô 'absolution' baptismo 'baptism' benefiçio de igreia 'ecclesiastical benefice' bemçaô 'blessing' bespora do santo 'saint's day eve' bispo 'bishop' brasfemar 'to blaspheme' canonizar 'to canonise' capelo defrade 'monk's cowl'

comunhaô 'communion' cöficaö 'confession' consagrar 'to consecrate' côtenplaçaô 'contemplation' conuento 'convent' conuerter 'to convert' coresma 'Lent' clérigo 'priest' crasta 'cloister' credo dos artigos dafe 'creed' cristaö 'Christian' crismar 'to anoint' crisma 'chrism' cruxufiçio 'crucifix' cruxuficar 'to crucify' çelestial 'heavenly' çiliçio 'cilice' çircunçiçaô 'circumcision' chisma na fe 'meditation on the faith'

However, pace Messner (2002), we do also find some examples in D-Z: e.g. jnfernalfogo 'hellfire' perdiçaô 'perdition' poderoso (deos) 'mighty (of God)'

sacrificar 'to sacrifice' tentaçaô 'temptation' trindade 'trinity'

and related abstract terms such as vaôgloria 'vainglory', virtude 'virtue' and umildade 'humility', still without accompanying Chinese equivalents. Jin (1987: 362) notes that in modern Chinese, almost all the (Christian) religious terminology is of Portuguese origin - a lexical subset developed since the sixteenth century.

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Supplementary information "There are also a number of cases when the [glossary] gives a specific number of options to [Cardoso's] word entries. As these extra significants do not exist in Portuguese, they have been added out of affinity for the structural terminology of the Chinese language" (Messner 1998: 287). Messner is referring to the expansion of certain headwords to include distinctions made lexically in Chinese but not in Portuguese. One area is that of kinship terms. Some such are already explicit in Cardoso with respect to Portuguese and Latin, e.g. CARDOSO

RUGGIERI/RICCI

(f. 16r)

(f. 48v)

Auoo Auoo, molher Auoo da parte do pay Auoa da parte da mäy

Auoo Auoa - molher Auoo de parte de paj Auoo da parte da may

(f. 79v)

(f. 149r)

Tia, Tia, Tia, Tia,

irmaä irmaä irmaä irmaä

do da do da

pay mäy auo auô

Tia Tia Tia Tia

irmaä irmaä irmaä irmaä

de pai da mai de auò de auo molher

'grandfather' 'grandmother' 'paternal grandfather' 'maternal grandfather'

'aunt, 'aunt, 'great 'great

father's sister' mother's sister' aunt, grandfather's sister' aunt, grandmother's sister'

Otherwise, Ruggieri/Ricci added the necessary lexis to accommodate Chinese idiom, e.g.: CARDOSO

RUGGIERI/RICCI

(f. 57r)

(ff. llOr-v)

Irmäo Irmäo inteiro Irmandade Irmäamente Irmaä intera Irmaä

jrmaô jrmaô inteiro jrmaamëte jrmaa jrmaô jrmaô jrmaô

peqna gräde peqno de pai e maj

'brother' 'blood brother, brother-german' 'brotherhood' 'fraternally' 'blood sister, sister-german' 'sister' 'younger sister' 'elder sister' 'younger brother' 'blood sister, sister-german'

Other examples of expansion include the addition of specifically Chinese referents, such as de màdarî 'of a mandarin' and aide pagode 'temple' {pagode also appears as a headword in Ruggieri/Ricci; and in Cardoso, specifically as pagode de gentío 'pagan temple'): CARDOSO

RUGGIERI/RICCI

(f. 57r)

(f. 116v)

Mandar em testamento Mädar, impero

Mädar ë teslam" - de mâdarï - de rei

Mandar como senhor (f. 62v)

(ff. 123v-124r, 124v)

Officio

officio - de mâdarï - de mecánicos

Officio pubrico Officio macanico Official macanico

'to will' 'to order' ' - of a mandarin' ' - of the king' 'to give orders'

'trade; craft; rank' 'office of mandarin' 'craft; occupation'

'public official' 'craft, handicraft' 'artisan'

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129

official Offerta Offrecer Offrecimento Oratorio

offertar a pagode offereçer

oratorio de pagode

'artisan' 'offering' 'to make a temple offering ' 'to offer' 'offering' 'oratory (of a temple)'

A further type of lexical distinction made in Chinese is exemplified by the entries at doar: CARDOSO

RUGGIERI/RICCI

(f. 37r) Doar em testamento Doar

(f. 84r) Doar em Testam'0 Doar pera grande o pqno - pera pqno o grade

'to bequeath' 'to grant, to bestow' 'to give (from junior to senior)' ' - (from senior to junior)'

And, just occasionally, we find the addition of a headword relevant - or, at least, perhaps felt relevant - to the contemporary Chinese cultural background, e.g.: CARDOSO

RUGGIERI/RICCI

(f. 66r) Pena de dinheiro

(ff. 128v-129r) Pena de dinheiro Pena d'auzotes Pena de morte

Pena de tanto por tanto

'penalty 'penalty 'penalty 'penalty

of of of of

a fine' a caning' death' an eye for an eye'

Orthography "... the spelling of the Portuguese words in the [glossary] is sometimes different from the spelling in [Cardoso]" (Messner 1998: 287). Some typical examples occur in Tables 1 and 2 above: e.g. abayxar - abaixar de algüa - dalguä

a outrem - aoutro pressa - preça.

cabeça - cabesa

As Messner (1998: 291) observes, the majority of Ruggieri/Ricci's spellings are such as can be found in texts of the fifteenth century (cf. Domincovich 1948). The discrepancies may be explained by the copyist having retained an 'old fashioned' style, and/or spellings based on pronunciation, most likely from dictation, perhaps by a non-native speaker of Portuguese, either directly from Cardoso, or a list already adapted from this dictionary.

R o m a n i s a t i o n s and transcriptions As we have seen, the romanisation system devised to represent the Chinese translations in this glossary is earliest extant example of a European attempt to transcribe Chinese. It affords us, moreover, an opportunity "to observe and determine the nature of the phonetic and phonological characteristics of Ming dynasty Mandarin" (Yang 1989: 202), both at the formal and informal levels, since "some of the phonetic transcriptions of the Chinese characters therein reflect certain dialectal pronunciations of that period" (ibid.).

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T h e romanisation uses 'phonetic' spellings, according to the conventions o f Italian and Portuguese. There are variations o f transcription in the glossary, as may be expected, but overall the system is remarkably stable and consistent. In section Α-C,

there are 1,023 distinct

characters which are transcribed into the romanised system. For the sake o f exemplification, I show in T a b l e 3 the first forty o f those which occur five or more times, in alphabetical order o f the modern hanyu pinyin transcription, with their frequencies o f occurrence, and percentages o f consistency. I take a handwritten nasalised v o w e l - ä, ë etc. - to be a graphic free variant of a simple v o w e l f o l l o w e d by -n or -m (although -m is almost exclusively used to transcribe a final velar nasal < n g > f o l l o w i n g the v o w e l s α or m in transcription). Table

3: Sample of consistency o f transcriptions o f Chinese characters in the

Ruggieri/Ricci glossary, section Α - C , f r o m a relational database constructed b y Bronson So: James & So (2002). Modern hanyu pinyin bä bài

Chinese Ruggieri/Ricci Frequency of character transcription occurrence

te ö

Percentage of consistency

pa

8

100

pa

11

100

bàn

«

pâ, pan

3,5

100

bäng

m

pan

5

100

bèi

Ä 3Ä

Pi

10

100

pie, pien

2, 8

100

pin

5

100

biän bîng

fi * *

pin

6

100

po

19

100

eia

6

100

eia

7

100

chòng

m

ciù, cium

4, 1

100

chuán

li

ciuò

4

80

ciuà

1

20

za, zan

5, 1

86

bìng bù, bú, bu, bü* chàng cháng

chuäng

m

curi

tt

dà

X

dà

ÍT

dài däng

eia

1

14

çiuô, çiuon

3,2

83

ciuö

1

17 94

ta

15

eia**

1

6

ta

24

75

Ta+

8

25

φ

tai

5

100

'α'

tä, tarn, tan

6, 2, 1

100

m

däo

71

dào

m

tau

4

80

Tau+

1

20

tau

7

100

131

Culture and the Dictionary it

tau

6

100

däo

m

tau

8

100

de

w

de

m

dào

ding döng

ti

43

96

te

2

4

te

13

86

tl

2

14

tin

8

100

tu

8

100

tu

5

100

duän

M tt m

ton

6

100

duô

£

to

9

100

fa

M

fa

7

100

fâ, fan

2,4

100

fa, fan

3,2

100

fan

9

100

fû, fun

1,4

100

fun

5

100

dù

fan fang fáng

« m Β

fëng féng

m

* These hanyu pinyin transcriptions represent the variations of pronunciation contingent upon tone sandhi. This was evidently not significant in the Ruggieri/Ricci transcription. ** In the context, this is an erroneous transcription consequent on a confusion of Chinese characters. t The use of the capital letter may be an attempt to indicate the unaspirated initial, but this is speculative. An analysis of some of the errors in transcription allows us to infer that in most cases the romanised transcriptions were made on the basis of the written characters, thus the material in column 2 was written after that in column 3. On the other hand, in some cases, the oral form is primary, since the transcriptions occur without any corresponding Chinese characters, e.g. ¿ ttrtsr

H-ft-i^Ac-/

c>y

T h e m i s s i o n a r i e s ' learning o f C h i n e s e : e v i d e n c e f r o m errors I highlight here just a few illustrative types of the errors we find in the manuscript. 1.

•

/J '• i m a i r n ^ û » ' r Γ

-'l ml by contraction, 12 and shortening, perhaps a spelling 10

Nor did Walker accord zero a place in his dictionary of "allowable rhymes" (1775: sig. Yyvo), where He'ro is seen to rhyme with Prime'ro, Pedere'ro ("A swivel gun, written also paterero"), and Monte'ro ("A horseman's cap"), words hallowed by Johnson as worthy of a place in his dictionary (1755: sigs 20Lro, 19IV0, 16Sro), though primero and montero were italicized by Johnson to indicate that he felt them to be foreign. " See Wartburg (1922-: XIX 'Orientalia', = fascicle 109, 156-8), who also discusses the semantic development. 12 The word is contracted already in Classical Latin, nihilum > riilum (Glare 1968-82: fascicule V, 1177). NED s.v. nil (Murray 1884-1928: Niche-Nywe 1907: 150) marks it ||, and that indicates that the word

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Eric Stanley

pronunciation because the spelling suggests a short vowel in English rather than /I/ - or because the nineteenth-century English pronunciation of Latin would have made it homophone with Nile. The pronunciation of the French name of that river, as in eau de Nil (not recorded in English by OED before 1870), would have been felt to be foreign. The word O seems not to have found many lexicographers willing to give it an entry. It exists only as an articulation of the arabic numeral, similar or identical in appearance. OED has an entry for a substantive spelt capital O with the description in square brackets: "[From resemblance in shape to the letter O ...]", and as the first sense gives the definition "The Arabic zero or cipher 0; hence, a cipher, a mere nothing".13 The sense, "the arabic zero or cipher 0 read out aloud as if it were the letter capital which it resembles in shape", is made quite clear by Pearsall (1998: 1276), "(also oh) nought or zero (in a sequence of numerals, especially when spoken)". The two branches of cipher are so far apart that, to pursue the tree metaphor in use among semanticists with a special in interest in polysemy,14 they might be regarded as twin-trunks

13

14

had not been naturalized. In Simpson and Weiner (1989: X, 421) the 'tramlines' mark is retained, and the pronunciation is given as '(nil)'; Burchfield (1972-86: II, 1207) rightly omits the 'tramlines', for in the later twentieth century, as now, the word is no longer felt to be alien. Brown (1993: II, 1922), who does not use tramlines but italicizes foreign words that are not felt to be naturalized, does not italicize nil·, and Pearsall (1998: 1253) uses neither tramlines nor italics for any word. In the fount of the integrated edition of OED (Simpson and Weiner 1989: X, 624) the numeral looks almost identical with lower case roman , whereas in NED (Murray 1884-1928: VII part 1 (July 1902), 2) it was in shape clearly the numeral, not the letter. Similarly, the shape of the numeral looks like lower case in other recent Clarendon Press English Dictionaries; e.g. Brown (1993: II, 1961) s.v. O, n. 2 . Brown (1993:11, 1986) has s.v. oh, n.1, "[Repr. pronunc. of O, o as the letter's name.] The letter O, o; the figure zero", recorded from the early twentieth century. Dictionaries produced in the United States of America are similar in giving the sense as "a speech counterpart of orthographic o", and giving as one subsense 'zero' (Gove 1961: II, 1554); Flexner and Hauck (1987: 1334), s.v. O, Symbol, give as one sense "the Arabic cipher; zero". These dictionaries all omit the essential ingredient: in a sequence of numerals when read out aloud. NED (Murray 1884-1928: I, Bra-Byzen, 1888, 1052-3), s.v. branch, sb., has a good account of how the word is used metaphorically: "II. Figurative applications suggested by the relation of a branch to the tree". Murray has no subsense for the metaphor applied to depict a complex polysémie structure, that is, a 'major sense-division, major sense-distinction', nor, of course, does he provide quotations to exemplify that subsense. He himself (Murray 1884-1928; I, 1888:xxi), 'General Explanations' — this wording reprinted without significant change in Simpson and Weiner (1989:1, xxix) — used that sense when explaining how signification is presented in his dictionary: "while the senses are numbered straight on 1,2, 3, &c., they are also grouped under branches marked I, II, III, &c., in each of which the historical order begins afresh." Murray's treatment of signification is well discussed by Silva (2000: esp. at 91-2); and she adverts to the fact that Simpson and Weiner have considerably changed Murray's 'General Explanations'; in a section Ordering of Senses' (Simpson and Weiner 1989:xxxiii) they have introduced the concept of semantic 'level of branching', making use of a figurative sense of branch, v., and branching, vbl. sb., for which the entries in OED s . w . furnish no explication or quotation, and which Murray might well have shunned since that new dendritic metaphor is based, if on anything, on some rare exotica in nature, as a good tree metaphor should not be: senses which have developed along several different and parallel branches are arranged into groups headed by bold capital roman numerals (I, II, III) and these do not interrupt the numerical sequence of the main sense-divisions. If a lower level of branching needs to be recognized ..., an increasing series of asterisks (*, **, ***) is used. The compound or combination sense-division is not recorded in OED s.v. sense, IV., where it, and perhaps sense-distinction, might have been found, and the words 'branch' or 'branching' might

Polysemy and

Synonymy

165

grown from a single root-system. Both senses are features of the French and Italian word, and seem to go back in all European languages to the first introduction of the Arabic word in the later Middle Ages: first, a figure in arithmetic, a numerical symbol; especially (and etymologically, cf. its etymon Arabic sifr 'empty') a zero, now written 0; and secondly, coded or secret writing; a symbol in such writing. The noun null is defined by Johnson (1755: sig. 18H2V0) as: "Something of no power, or no meaning. Marks in ciphered writing which stand for nothing, and are inserted only to puzzle, are called nulls." This is the word which, in NED (Murray 1884-1928: Niche-Nywe 1907, N, 254), is marked obsolete and rare. Its sense is given as "A cipher; a nought", and for that sense seventeenth-century quotations only are recorded. Burchfield (1972-86: II, 1270) bids us "Delete f obs. rare", and adds twentieth-century uses in cryptography and in linguistics; and Simpson and Weiner (1989: X, 586) follow him.15 These are specialized uses of null, a change to a different sense, the earlier sense having become obsolete. The word may have been reimported from, perhaps, German Null (the written numeral) or null (the cardinal number). The word null appears to represent a case of a new specialized sense being developed when an older sense is obsolescent.16 The cricketing term duck can be quickly disposed of.17 As OED s.v. duck, sb.1, 7., tells us, it is slang, short for duck's egg; and s.v. duck's egg (Murray 1884-1928: III, Doom-Dziggetai, 1897, D 702) the following definition is given: "b. in Cricket, the zero or Ό' placed against a batsman's name in the scoring sheet; no runs; hence, generally in school-boy slang, 'nought'." For duck's egg the first quotation in this sense is 1863; for duck the first quotation in this sense is dated 24 August 1868 from St Paul's Mag. in The Daily News: "You see .. that his fear of a 'duck' - as by a pardonable contraction from duck-egg a nought is called in cricket-play -

15

16

17

perhaps have been used in a definition. Burchfield (1972-86: II, 653) gives a good and varied set of quotations for the use of the word level in Linguistics; but he gives no definition beyond "(See quots.)", and, while there is a quotation with semantic levels, there is none for level of branching; and Simpson and Weiner, s.v. level, sb., 4.c. (1989: VIII, 864) add nothing to Burchfield. In effect, the early seventeenth-century uses are cryptographic, and that is where Johnson's definition comes from. Johnson is not mentioned in OED, and knowledge of the semantic histoiy of the word is not advanced by the reference, in Burchfield (followed by Simpson and Weiner), to a quotation of 1961 where the meaning is to be found. That, however, is for null cipher rather than for null. Presumably, continuity from the seventeenth to the twentieth century cannot be demonstrated, and the cryptographic uses are likely to represent a new borrowing. For the etymology of German Null and null see Pfeifer (1989: II, 1182). To exemplify the semantic development of a new sense when the original sense has become obsolete Girard (1718: p. xxxiii) gives mule, by his time restricted to such slippers as the papal slipper, and replaced in general use by the etymologically obscure pantoufle. For the complicated history of these French words as well as of the sense 'chilblain (on the heal)', see Wartburg (1922-: VI/3 'mobilismyxa', 201 s.v. mulleus; XXI Materialien unbekannten oder unsicheren Ursprungs = fascicule 120 L'homme, être physique, 534-5 s.w. pantoufle). A mule is a (soft) slipper that leaves the heal uncovered, whence chilblains, a sense of mule known in Middle English (MED s.v. mule n. (2); NED s.v. Mule1, sense 1. In Scotland, rich in French loanwords, the sense of 'slipper' is preserved longer and the word appears to have been more frequent in early use than it was in England (DOST: IV, 412 s.v. Mule, n. ), and the sense 'chilblain' was preserved much longer (DOST: IV, 412 s.v. (Mule,) Mwill, n.3; SND: VI, 334 s.v. moul); it is rare in other English dialects, northern England and Northern Ireland (cf. EDD: IV, 153 s.v. mool, sb. 3 ). Formerly also used for love in tennis, as appears from the NED entry duck, sb.1 (Murray 1884-1928: III, Doom-Dziggetai, 1897, D 700).

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outweighs all other earthly considerations.'" 8 In Present English, duck is a cricketing term in general use, not just by schoolboys, and schoolboys are mentioned in neither Brown (1993: I, 760) s.v. duck, n. 1 , 5, nor Pearsall (1998: 570) s.v. duck3. The word love in games is well defined in OED s.v. love, sb. 1 , 10.: b. In various competitive games of skill, e.g. whist, football, tennis, racquets: no score, nothing; meaning that the party said 'to be love' has scored no points in the game then in progress, love all·. no score on either side.

c. Applied attrib. to a game or set of games in which there is nothing scored on one side. The earliest quotation is of 1742, and refers to whist; now love is, as far as I know, confined to tennis and other racket-games. N E D (Murray 1884-1928: Lock-Lyyn 1903, L, 465), relates these uses to sense "10. a. For love: without stakes, for nothing"." This small set of words sufficiently illustrates important and obvious aspects of synonymy and polysemy. First, that even for what, on the face of it, look like several words for one welldefined concept, there are in application and register, variations, such that no two of the eight words can be used in all circumstances as equipollent. In defining any one of them, dictionaries resort to synonymy, that is, they give others of the set, with qualifications. Most obviously, these qualifications include, for O, "in use when reading out aloud a string of numbers"; for duck, "cricket slang" where an earlier qualification might have been "cricket slang among schoolboys"; for love, "in tennis and other games making use of rackets" where an earlier qualification might have included card-games and football. It is clear that when used in phrases, compounds, or in attributive use, it is unusual to find that one synonym is as good as another, as Mrs Piozzi noted for London cries, not * London exclamations', there is no way of expressing a nil return by any other of the seven synonyms of nil·, and no other combination is possible for null cipher.

18

19

I have not pursued this quotation further: it appears that the St Paul's Magazine reported in The Daily News the events in which the boys of St Paul's School were engaged; if so, the 'he' is a schoolboy, whose fear is chronicled in his language and that of his peers. 24 August 1868 was a Monday, and I presume the doings of the Pauline cricket team over the preceding holiday weekend were reported in what OED abbreviates as St. Paul's Mag. Pearsall (1998: 1094-5), s.v. love 3, is particularly good in her entry in showing that a folketymology, widely current, is based on nothing other than a vague similarity to French l'œuf badly pronounced by English speakers, whom the word may remind of a duck egg: 3 [mass noun] (in tennis, squash, and some other sports) a score of zero; nil: love fifteen \ he was down two sets to love. | ORJGIN: apparently from the phrase play for love (i.e. the love of the game, not for money); folk etymology has connected the game with French l'oeuf'tgg', from the resemblance in shape between an egg and a zero. English wits seem to have a penchant for French un œuf, as in the (deliberate?) misunderstanding: 'un œuf is as good as a feast', for the familiar proverb, 'enough is as good as a feast'.

Polysemy

and

Synonymy

167

Pronouns of the second person exemplify delimitations of custom and register Function words too may be governed in use by special delimitations of custom and register. Pronouns of the second person form an obvious example. NED (Murray 1884-1928: IX, ThThysle, 1912, Τ 339) s.v. thou, is explicit in this introductory paragraph: Thou and its cases thee, thine, thy, were in OE. used in ordinary speech; in ME. they were gradually superseded by the plural ye, you, your, yours, in addressing a superior and (later) an equal, but were long retained in addressing an inferior. Long retained by Quakers in addressing a single person, though now less general; still in various dialects used by parents to children, and familiarly between equals, esp. intimates; in other cases considered as rude. In general English used in addressing God or Christ, also in homiletic language, or poetry, apostrophe, or elevated prose.

The last sentence in this introduction no longer fits the usage of the twenty-first century, as it did that of 1912 when it was published. English is not unique among European languages in changes in modes of address, familiar, polite, dialectal. Modern German had in the eighteenth century four pronouns in use: (ignoring cases, etc.), du and er singular, as well as ihr and sie plural.20 In origin, er and sie (now with initial capital) are forms of the third person pronoun, probably adopted in German from French and Italian polite usage (Pfeifer 1989:1, 368 s.v. er), and er may have been felt to stand for der Herr, etc.; thus Ludwig (1716: col. 549) gives the following sentence to exemplify "Er oder ihr, you", namely, 'Ήat er das gethan? hat der Herr das gethan? Sir, is it you that have done it?"

Concrete, abstract, figurative, and transferred senses Whenever concrete and abstract or figurative senses of a word exist in a European language it is generally a sound lexicological principle to regard the concrete as the original and the abstract or figurative as derived from the concrete. For non-European languages this rule of lexicology may be less appropriate; this may be connected for some languages, as seen from outside, with Romantic or, alternatively, with bible-based theories on the development of human language from its origins, perhaps Adamic origins. The sound lexicological principle has the effect that in a dictionary the concrete sense or senses should come before all abstract, figurative, and transferred senses, because these have proceeded from the concrete. Exceptions are rare in English lexicology, and would at once be recognized as exceptions. If words meaning 'nothing' can be termed concrete, love in tennis may be more concrete than the abstract, the affection that underlies it. The use by North American shopkeepers of the term notions for 'haberdashery' exemplifies an abstract turned into a concrete. When literal and metaphorical uses are found side by side we are usually right to assume that the literal is the original. Here too there are exceptions, especially where dead metaphors are involved, as in the case of aftermath, the second element of which, used on its own, is

20

The history of the usage o f thou, you, ye, etc., is elaborated with many good examples by Finkenstaedt (1963). He discusses the development in German (240-2), and has a long chapter on Das Quäker-thou (174-213).

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known to me only from the dictionaries: Modern English: math and its doublet mowth are deverbative nouns formed from to mow.21 It seems odd, perverse almost, to attach moral judgements to the use of figurative language; yet that is what Locke does, to whom figurative speech is an abuse of language, for he thinks that truth and knowledge should be the concern of the user of language, not eloquence and rhetoric, "those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived." Locke's eloquent and rhetorical declaration of hostility to eloquence and rhetoric is worth quoting more fully (1690: III. x. 'Of the Abuse of Words' § 34, 251; Locke 1975: 508): Since Wit and Fancy finds easier entertainment in the World, than dry Truth and real Knowledge, figurative Speeches, and allusion in Language, will hardly be admitted, as an imperfection or abuse of it. I confess, in Discourses, where we seek rather Pleasure and Delight, than Information and Improvement, such Ornaments as are borrowed from them, can scarce pass for Faults. But yet, if we would speak of Things as they are, we must allow, that all the Art of Rhetorick, besides Order and Clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of Words Eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else, but to insinuate wrong Ideas, move the Passions, and thereby mislead the Judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheat: And therefore however laudable or allowable Oratory may render them in Harangues and popular Addresses, they are certainly, in all Discourses that pretend to inform and instruct, wholly to be avoided; and where Truth and Knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault, either of the Language or Person that makes use of them. What, and how various they are, I shall not trouble my self to take notice; the Books of Rhetorick which abound in the World, will inform those who want to be informed: Only I cannot but observe, how little the preservation and improvement of Truth and Knowledge, is the Care and Concern of Mankind; since the Arts of Fallacy are endow'd and preferred; and 'tis plain how much Men love to deceive, and be deceived, since the great Art of Deceit and Errour, Rhetorick I mean, has its established Professors, is publickly taught, and has always been had in great Reputation. And, I doubt not, but it will be thought great boldness, if not brutality in me, to have said thus much against it. Eloquence, like the fair Sex, has too prevailing Beauties in it, to suffer it self ever to be spoken against: And 'tis in vain to find fault with those Arts of Deceiving, wherein Men find pleasure to be Deceived. Locke, at the very moment when he is rejecting 'figurative Speeches' as an abuse, though hardly recognized as such by the generality, while he is promoting 'dry Truth and real Knowledge', used dry figuratively and found in the beauties of the fair sex a simile for the beauties of eloquence, availing himself of the resources of 'the great Art of Deceit and Errour, Rhetorick'. Eighteenth-century synonymists were not hostile to rhetoric or eloquence. From Girard (1718) onwards, - un tour figuré, qui rend le discours sublime & fleuri, & qui fait parler en Orateur22 - they prided themselves on the advantage to rhetoric and eloquence of choosing the most appropriate word wherever figurative synonyms present themselves for use. Good examples of figurative speech of a kind Locke might well have regarded as an abuse of language are to be found especially in the hyperbole of advertising English; but they occur also outside advertisements. Figurative uses of both queen and mother will be sufficient to show what is involved, and to see how well such uses are covered in the dictionaries. OED has, 21

22

The Old English word mœô is neuter or masculine; Modern German Mahd (cf. Pfeifer 1989: II, 1045; Paul 1976: 411) appears to be feminine, from Middle High German mât, mâd strong neuter (or feminine), and mâde 'swath', neuter or feminine (cf. Schade 1872-82: I, 581) — and cf. Old High German âmâd (Karg-Gasterstädt, Frings, et al. 1952-: I, col. 309), and mâda (cf. Graff and Massmann 1834-46: II, col. 653). For the morphology see Kluge (1926: §§ 29, 117, 121-3) and Meid (1967: §§ 117-24), but more than one dental suffix appears to be involved in the variety of forms. See p. 158 and n. 3, above.

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s.v. queen, 5.d., "A woman who has pre-eminence or authority in a specified sphere", with good quotations, to which one might add a literary use in Praed's poem 'Quince' (dated 1829), stanza 7 line 6 (Praed 1864: II, 142), "Louisa looked the queen of knitters"; the point in the poem depends on 'looked', for Louisa is one of the 'village slatterns' who, when their squire Quince entered, put their more worldly pursuits aside so as to impress him with their busyness in virtuous domesticity: Whene'er they heard his ring or knock, Quicker than thought, the village slatterns Flung down the novel, smoothed the frock, And took up Mrs. Glasse, and patterns; Adine was studying baker's bills; Louisa looked the queen of knitters; Jane happened to be hemming frills; And Bell, by chance, was making fritters.

Praed depicts Louisa figuratively and feigningly (as Locke might have judged the matter) as 'the queen of knitters'; the rest of that slatternly female group are no better, but receive no metaphor. OED, s.v. queen, 6, has the sense, "Applied to things: a. Anything personified as a woman and looked upon as the chief, esp. the most excellent or beautiful, of its class." For another metaphorical sense "Applied to things," OED has b., "That which in a particular sphere has preeminence comparable to that of a queen". OED (Simpson and Weiner 1989: XII, 1010), s.v. queen, has quotations, under 5.d. from Shakespeare to 1979, and under 6. from 1050 to 1886, of which those under 6. make it certain that the Anglo-Saxons borrowed from Latin the figure queen as 'the most' (to use that slang absolute);23 for the earliest examples, cf. Dictionary of Old English, s.v. cwên (Cameron et al. 1986-: 'C' frame 1156) of virtues and vices: virginity the queen of all virtues, pride the queen, and also the mother, of all evils, of all sins.24 Among figurative uses of queen, we have queen-size and queen-sized, originally of United States bedding, with which we may compare the even bigger king-size(d), used of cigarettes, and other things (Burchfield 1972-86: II, 510, III, 970). These figurative uses are of size, not of potent quality. In cookery queen of puddings is so designated to indicate its supposedly delectable quality. The term is defined by Burchfield as "a pudding made of breadcrumbs, milk, and other ingredients, freq. with a layer of meringue on top", and not to be confused with queen's pudding = queen pudding, not to mention queen-cake, all in Burchfield (1972-86: III, 969-70).

23

24

For this slang use see Burchfield (1972-86: II, 1046), followed by Simpson and Weiner (1989: IX, 1116), s.v. most. Thus /Elfric (Clemoes 1997: 490, Catholic Homily XXXVI, line 129) has mœgdhad is ealra mcegna cwen [virginity is the queen of all virtues] rendering his anonymous source (Godden 2000: 304) omnium virtutum regina. An interlinear gloss shows that in Latin, and therefore in Old English, pride is pre-eminent among the vices as 'pride is the queen of capital sins and the mother': ealdorlicra leahtra cwen & moder ofermodignyss ys glossing principalium uitiorum regina et mater superbia est (Rhodes 1889: 84 lines 13-14). Oxford Latin Dictionary (Glare 1968-82: 1599), s.v. regina, has, in Classical Latin, "applied to any female animal, thing of feminine gender, etc., dominant in its class or situation", usually in the phrase omnium regina. Latin uirtus and superbia are feminine, and so are the Old English nouns oferhygd and ofermodignes, but mœgdhad is masculine.

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The Latinism, mother used metaphorically, in NED's definition, s.v. 2 (Murray 1884-1928: VI, Monopoly-Movement, 1908, M 691), "Applied to things more or less personified, with reference .. to a metaphorical giving birth", was not traced further back in English than to Chaucer by Bradley (who edited M in NED). It occurs in Old English, applied to abstracts, as in 'pride the mother of capital sins'.25 A metaphorical use of mother, different in origin and recent in English, has found its way into Pearsall (1998: 1205), "informal an extreme example or very large specimen of something: I got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams." We may expect the forthcoming third edition of OED to give us the Arabic of Saddam Hussein's mother of all battles in English use, first heard during the Gulf War, and that probably underlies Pearsall's example.

Internal organs used figuratively The 'arts of deceiving' are easily engaged in figurative play with the word heart. I do not mean the problematic identification of the heart as the seat of the affections and of the soul, though that underlies some metaphorical senses as well as many idioms, including the phrase heart and soul not recorded (OED s.v. heart, sb., 52) before 1798, and the colloquial injunction have a heart! not recorded by Burchfield (1972-86: II, 55, s.v. heart lO.d.) before the twentieth century. It appears that speakers of English appear no longer to think that the heart is primarily the seat of courage,26 but is the seat of such affections as make one feel good and in love or at least in tune with virtuous sentiments shared with all that is best in humanity. So it is in the language of our politicians: from their lips the idiom at the heart of falls often, as in 'at the heart of the problem', 'at the heart of Labour Party policy', 'the United Kingdom at the heart of Europe'. One may wonder if, in Lockeian terms, anyone delights in being deceived by such claptrap. Strangely, OED is silent on this use, recording (s.v. heart, 41.b.) to be at the heart of, with only one quotation from Sir Walter Scott, but that gives the political flavour well: "The interests of the establishment being very much at the heart of this honourable council." OED, s.v. 51. b., lists a heart and a heart as a Hebraism with the sense 'duplicity, insincerity' that has not found its way into the Authorized Version except as a marginal annotation (Bible 1611: Psalm 11: 2). The Vulgate (Bible 1926-95: X Psalmi 1953, 62 Psalm 11: 3) has vana locuti sunt unusquisque ad proximum suum \ labia dolosa in corde et corde locuti sunt; translated (Bible 1609-10: II, 31) "They haue spoken vaine thinges euerie one to his neighbour, deiceitful [szc] lippes, they haue spoken in hart and hart." Other internal organs are occasionally invoked as parts in which the affections are rooted: the liver, for example, as in Macbeth's rare term of abuse (Shakespeare 1623: Tragedies 149 = sig. nn3 ro , Hinman 1968: 757; Macbeth V.iii.15), "Thou Lilly-liuer'd Boy".27 The polysémie 25

26

27

See the preceding note. The Old English quotation in which 'mother' is paired with 'queen', cwen moder, was given by NED, s.v. queen, 6. a., and had been published in 1902, under Craigie's editorship. Cf. Toller (1908-21: 641), s.v. módor, II; Glare (1968-82: 1083), s.v. mater, 9 b; Howlett (2001: 1732), s.v. mater, 16 c. This sense is developed from Latin cor 'heart' (Wartburg 1922-: II/2 = fascicules 35-6, 1170-8, esp. 1175-6). The liver as 'the seat of the feelings' goes back to poetic uses of Latin iecur; some quotations from Horace and Juvenal illustrating that sense are to be found in the dictionary of Shakespeare's time and that now used by classicists (Cooper 1565: sig. [Mmm5 ro ]; Glare 1968-1982: 821, s.v. sense 3).

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development o f the spleen used figuratively is especially interesting. The word so used is chiefly expressive o f melancholy and moroseness, but also caprice, and other m o o d s including merriment, richly represented in Shakespeare. 28 The synonym milt, for the internal organ spleen literally, has developed none o f these non-anatomical

senses; and this

non-anatomical

p o l y s e m y w a s not added to after the end o f the seventeenth century, and Burchfield ( 1 9 7 2 - 8 6 : IV, 4 2 5 ) has found nothing to add to the record o f N E D . N E D does not mention the fact that in the medical doctrine o f the humours the spleen w a s identified as the seat o f the humours, as early as Persius' Saturae,

w h o associates the splën with immoderate laughter (Cooper 1565:

sig. AAAaaa™; Glare 1 9 6 8 - 1 9 8 2 : 1807). 29 Figurative uses o f the English word spleen among foreigners w h o think le splene characteristic o f English dottiness.

characteristic o f English hypochondria, der

live on Spleen

30

28

These senses are now largely obsolete in English, as OED shows, s . w . spleen, 1. b., c., 2.-8., splenatic, splenative, splenetic, spleneticaI, splenetive, splenial, a. 2 , splenitive, splenous, splenously (Murray 1884-1928: IX/1 'Speech-Spring' 1914, 637-41). The non-anatomical senses and idioms in NED include these (many quoted from Shakespeare, and it is a cause for wonder how the lexicographers knew which shade of meaning Shakespeare had in mind): 1. b. "Regarded as the seat of melancholy or morose feelings" (Gower to 1665); 1. c. "Regarded as the seat of laughter or mirth" (Gower to 1681); 2. a. of or on the spleen "in jest or play" (15th-c. only); 2. b .from the spleen "from the heart" (Scottish, Henryson to 1571); 2. c. to the spleen "to the heart" (Alexander Scott only); 3. "Merriment, gaiety, sport" (Shakespeare only); 4. a. "A sudden impulse; a whim or caprice" (Shakespeare and Fletcher only); 4. b. "Caprice; changeable temper" (Shakespeare only); 5. a. "Hot or proud temper; high spirit, courage, resolute mind" (Shakespeare to 1605); 5. b. "impetuosity, eagerness" (Shakespeare only); 6. "Violent ill-nature or ill-humour; irritable or peevish temper," in two constructions, (from Shakespeare to the end of the 19th c.); 7. a., a spleen, "A fit of temper; a passion" (from 1589 to 1609, with one quotation of 1814 insecurely assigned to this sense, and presented in square brackets); 7. b., a spleen, "A grudge; a spite or ill-will" (17th-c.); 8. a., the spleen, "Amusement, delight" (one use in Shakespeare, but NED admits that identification of this sense is questionable); 8. b., the spleen, "Indignation, ill-humour" (1600-29); 8. c., the spleen, "Excessive dejection or repression of spirits; gloominess and irritability; moroseness; melancholia" (1664-1726; with one later quotation, 1838, and that probably the use characterized as "Now arch", where 'Now' means at the beginning of the 20th c.); 8. d., the same sense as 8. c., but without the definite article (1690-1860), the last quotation, from Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1860), "He is the victim of English spleen." Clearly, only senses 6. and 8. d. are to be regarded as still in use when NED was being compiled.

29

For an early medieval summary of how the parts of the body operate, cf. Isidore (1911 : ch. χι. i, the spleen at 127). In French, for example, where it is sometimes spelt le splene and from which is derived an adjective splénétique, not before 1776 — and therefore not descended from earlier splenatique, splenetique, derived from medieval medical Latin splenaticus (Wartburg 1922-: XII = fascicule 90, p. 200; XVIII = fascicule 121, p. 117). In German both hypochondria as well as the eccentricity thought characteristic of the English, has since the later eighteenth century been expressed by der Spleen, pronounced /Jpli:n/ and given an adjective spleenig, earlier spleenisch (Pfeifer 1989: III, 1677; Schulz and Basler 1913-88: IV, 380-1).

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Discarded theories about the origin of language and the supposed superabundant synonymy of 'original languages' Words for parts o f the body, external and internal, played a role in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury theories about the origin o f human language. One basic idea was that in the earliest stage abstract senses may have arisen at the same time as the concrete sense o f the word, and not as subsequent metaphors. Though well aware that the account o f Adam's first use o f language was not above dispute, Johann Gottfried Herder (1744—1803) regarded Hebrew and the closely related Near-Eastern languages as the most 'original'. 31 The study o f Near-Eastern languages, which he thought ancient but not the languages o f savages, led him to see the affections rooted in parts o f the body, and given first expression as the name o f the part o f the body. His v i e w o f expressions for the affections, however, comprehended more than parts of the body, as he considered the close relationship o f emotions to visual experience. Thus he writes enthusiastically o f the joyousness that permeates the root in the word for both 'the j o y at virginal freshness' and 'dawn', if I understand him correctly (Herder 1772: 109-10; 1827: 7 9 80; 1891: 7 0 - 1 ) : Wenn wir im Wort Morgenröthe etwa das Schöne, Glänzende, Frische, dunkel hören: so fühlt der harrende Wandrer im Orient auch in der Wurzel des Worts den ersten, schnellen erfreulichen Lichtstral, den unser Einer vielleicht nie gesehen, wenigstens nie mit dem Geiste gefühlet... Je älter und ursprünglicher die Sprachen sind, desto mehr durchkreutzen sich auch die Gefühle in den Wurzeln der Wörter! [If perhaps we darkly hear in the term rosy dawn its beauty, radiance, and freshness, so also the expectant traveller in the Orient feels in the root of the word for dawn the first, sudden, joyous ray of light, which the likes of us may never have seen, or at least have never felt with our entire intellect... The more ancient and original the languages are the more do feelings permeate the roots of words.] Herder goes on to discuss Oriental synonymy, and he mocks those w h o believe in the divine origin o f language, and that therefore language is perfect (1772: 117-18; 1827: 85; 1891: 7 5 6): Je ursprünglicher eine Sprache ist, je häufiger solche Gefühle sich in ihr durchkreuzen, desto weniger können diese sich genau und logisch untergeordnet seyn. Die Sprache ist reich an Synonymen; bei aller wesentlichen Dürftigkeit hat sie den größten unnöthigen Ueberfluß. [The more original a language is and the more often such feelings permeate it, the less frequently can these be subordinated to each other exactly and logically. Such a language is rich in synonyms; for all its essential insufficiency it has the greatest supererogatory abundance.] Herder goes on:

31

I have not searched to see if Herder (1772: 79; 1827: 58; 1891: 50-1) believed that, when Adam named the creatures in Paradise according to Genesis 2: 19-20, the names were given by him in Hebrew. He did not take Genesis as literal truth; thus he thought (1772: 200; 1827: 142-3; 1891: 132) the Tower of Babel as nothing other than an Oriental, poeticization of a subject within the archaeology of ethnohistory. He did, however, follow his rejection of Babel as fact by commenting on mankind's multilingual diversity after that poeticized event as an essential development when humanity multiplied and could not be contained in a single herd.

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Die Vertheidiger des göttlichen Ursprunges, die in allem göttliche Ordnung zu finden wissen, können ihn hier schwerlich finden, und läugnen die Synonyme. - Sie läugnen? wohlan nun, laß es seyn, daß unter den 50 Wörtern, die der Araber fur den Löwen, unter den 200, die er für die Schlange, unter den 80, die er für den Honig, und mehr als 1000, die er fürs Schwerdt hat, sich feine Unterschiede finden oder gefunden hätten, die aber verloren gegangen wären - warum waren sie da, wenn sie verloren gehen mußten? Warum erfand Gott einen unnöthigen Wortschatz, den nur, wie die Araber sagen, ein göttlicher Prophet in seinem ganzen Umfange fassen konnte? Erfand er ins Leere der Vergeßenheit? [Advocates of the divine origin (of language), who think to find divine order in it all, can hardly find it here, and they deny the existence of synonyms. What, do they deny it? So be it: that fine distinctions are said to be found, or were to be found, among the fifty words an Arab has for 'lion', among the two hundred he has for 'snake', among the eighty he has for 'honey', and the thousand and more he has for 'sword', distinctions which, however, are said to have got lost. Why did they ever exist if they were destined to get lost? Why did God create a supererogatory vocabulary such that only a divine prophet, as the Arabs say, was ever able to comprehend it in its entire range? Did God create to fill the void of oblivion?] Herder's celebrated work remained influential for a long time, and this part of it provides the questionable basis for Max Müller's equally questionable view, in his account, not of Hebrew and Near-Eastern languages, but of Sanskrit, the earliest Indo-European language known to him (1867, 1880: II, XVI, 71):32 "The more ancient a language, the richer it is in synonymes".

The role played by etymology in establishing a dictionary entry The headword that opens a dictionary entry is an etymological entity. Sometimes the arrangement is not alphabetical but in some etymological order, used in philological works of reference of the last two centuries.33 In monolingual dictionaries the headword-unit is determined by etymology. For Modern English, a large dictionary, preeminently OED, may treat words derived by conversion as separate entries; not so when the size of the dictionary is small, even when the accentuation is distinct, as for ally noun and verb and record noun and verb. Where not only meanings differ widely, but spellings too have been differentiated, as, for 32

33

NED (IX/2, Sweep-Szmikite, 1919: 384) s.v. synonym, 1. Plural, a., quotes (with wrong page number retained in Simpson and Weiner 1989: XVII, 483) this sentence from Max Müller (1867, 1880: II, xvi 'Comparative Mythology' dated 1856, 71). The context reads: Most nouns ... were originally appellatives or predicates, expressive of what seemed at the time the most characteristic attribute of an object. But as most objects have more than one attribute, and as, under different aspects one or the other attribute might seem more appropriate to form the name, it happened by necessity that most objects, during the early period of language, had more than one name. In the course of time, the greater portion of these names became useless, and they were mostly replaced in literary dialects by one fixed name, which might be called the proper name of such objects. The more ancient a language, the richer it is in synonymes. This is, of course, inconvenient, for such an arrangement requires a voluminous index to the headwords, as, for example, Graff (1834-46) with the index volume by Massmann, and Leo (1872-7) the second part of which Moritz Heyne saw through the press, and 665-740 of which consist of the indispensable 'Register' by W. Biszegger introduced by Heyne. For multilingual etymological dictionaries that inconvenient arrangement is excusable, inevitable perhaps when the headwords are hypothesized roots, as in Walde-Pokorny (1927-32) and Pokorny (1947-69).

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example, coarse and course, metal and mettle, separate entries are usual, though the pronunciation has remained the same, as it has not for master and mister, sir and sire. A highly polysemous word may have widely divergent senses, but to a lexicographer the single etymology will bind them all into a single entry. The adjective fair displays in Modern English a rich variety of senses:341. Beautiful 1. Beautiful to the eye; 1. b., Applied to women, as expressing the quality characteristic of their sex; 3. b., Of an amount, an estate, fortune, etc.: Considerable, 'handsome', liberal; 5. Of external manifestations, words, promises: Attractive or pleasing at the first sight or hearing; specious, plausible, flattering; II. 6. Of complexion and hair: Light as opposed to dark; III. Free from blemish or disfigurement 8. c., Of handwriting: Neat, clean, legible; 9. Of character, conduct, reputation: Free from moral stain, spotless, unblemished; 10. Of conduct, actions, arguments, methods: Free from bias, fraud, or injustice; equitable, legitimate. Hence of persons: Equitable, not taking undue advantage; disposed to concede every reasonable claim. Of objects: That may be legitimately aimed at; 10. b., Of conditions, position, etc.: Affording an equal chance of success; not unduly favourable or adverse to either side; 11. Expressing moderate commendation: Free from grave objection; of tolerable though not highly excellent quality; 'pretty good'; Of amount or degree: Adequate though not ample; 'respectable'; IV. Favourable, benign, unobstructed 12. Of the weather: Favourable; 13. Of the wind: Favourable to a ship's course; 14. Giving promise of success ... Of a star, omen: Propitious; 15. Of a means of procedure, and of language: Gentle, peaceable, not violent; 16. Free from obstacles, unobstructed, open. There are nominal uses of the adjective. NED has, under sense 1. b., a fin-de-siècle definition, in full: "Applied to women, as expressing the quality characteristic of their sex. So, The fair sex ( = Fr. le beau sexe), a fair one"\ under this sense NED quotes 'absolute' uses, including Dryden's in 'The Cock and the Fox: or, the Tale of the Nun's Priest, from Chaucer' (1700: 246): "What will not Beaux attempt to please the Fair?"35 This substantival use of the adjective is of course not easily confused with its homonym, the etymologically unrelated noun fair - in the splendid definition given by NED (IV, F- Fang, 1894, 25): A periodical gathering of buyers and sellers, in a place and at a time ordained by charter or statute or by ancient custom. (In many places fairs are resorted to for pleasure-seeking as well as for business; and in England they sometimes survive merely as gatherings for pleasure.)

Homonymie confusability may lead to misunderstanding, or may be exploited in wordplay Some homonyms approach each other in sense and, being confiisable, invite wordplay. When NED (VI, 534-35, 543) in 1907 published 'Misbode-Monopoly', the entries for mist, sb.1, "A cloud formed by an aggregation of minute drops of water and resting on or near the ground", and sb.2, "things spiritual or mystical", and for the adjectives that go with these nouns, misty,

34

35

The numbers in the following listing are those assigned to senses of the adjective fair in OED, originally by NED (IV, F- Fang, 1894, 26-7), with some slight additions in Burchfield (1972-86: I, 1020-1). I have omitted rare or obsolete senses, and print branches in bold. It is difficult to see how this use differs so greatly from substantival uses given as sb.2 in II., 2. of the entry for the adjective that it could not have gone there; at least, a cross-reference should have been provided.

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a.' and a. 2 , clearly paronomastic uses of the words based on the weather words were treated as weather words. In 1907 single-stranded clarity seemed best. In giving the etymology it was conceded that sb. 2 might have been influenced by mystic, mystery, and similarly for a.2 it was conceded that the word appeared to be the weather word "used by form-association for L. mysticus." The sense of sb. 2 is given as "Things spiritual or mystical. In mist: mystically"; that of a. 2 as "pertaining to, involving, or characteristic of spiritual mysteries; mystical, spiritual." The etymological basis of sb. 2 and a. 2 was, of course, correctly understood as that of sb.1 and a. 1 , and the sense is crossed mystically by wordplay. For sb. 2 N E D quotes Pearl line 462, in context lines 459-62 read: As heued and arme and legg and naule Temen to hys body ful trwe and t[r]yste Ry3t so is vch a Krysten sawle A longande lym to Jje Mayster of myste. [As head and arm and leg and navel very truly and steadfastly appertain (each) to its body even so is every Christian soul a limb appurtenant to the Lord o f spirituality.]

It is a matter of literary taste in exegesis whether one would wish to go even further and play with the sense 'service, office, ministry' attached to Medieval Latin misterium (etymologically rosy. However, some adjectives were given a form in to make them seem like real adjectives, such as paly (< pale), hugy (< huge) and vasty (< vast), and later even

SW has some display panels organised by theme which, although few and selective, are organised by linguistic concept rather than grammatical category; they are additional to the ordinary entries and are not part of the structural organisation.

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some verbs spawned adjectives in , such as choky and slippy. The ending can in principle be applied to any noun, whether Germanic or not, but this does not happen as much as one might assume. The modern idea that this bound morpheme confers a poetic quality on the resulting adjective probably owes much to its use in eighteenth-century poetry, where periphrases like the finny tribe for 'fish' are found. But its use as a poetic and rhetorical form antedates the Augustan period. In editions of Shakespeare's plays this attitude often finds expression. When the opening Chorus in Henry F has the line The vastie fields of France? Or may we cramme (1.0.12)2, Gurr in his edition (1992: 71) has the note: "vasty spacious. For the inflated lexis used by the Chorus, see Introduction p. 15." Not only is the gloss 'spacious' a word with positive connotations in Modern English, for one might expect an estate agent to describe a dwelling as 'Charming house with spacious gardens attached', but also the reference to 'inflated lexis' leaves no doubt that vastie is a poetic word which raises the tone of the passage. When one turns to the introduction of the edition, there is a section on the Chorus and its language (pp. 6 16), and in it one finds the following statement: "There are nouns with rare suffixes: 'portage' and 'stemage'; building terms: 'jutty' and 'abutting'; and elaborated monosyllables: 'vasty'. Any of these might be used by either speaker [Chorus or King Henry], The first and third are Henry's, the second and fourth the Chorus's, and the fifth is used by both of them" (Gurr 1992: 15). This appears to separate vasty from other words in and to equate it with words of foreign origin ending in the originally French morpheme and with technical vocabulary. It is made to seem a highly charged poetic word. Is this justified? If one arranges a dictionary on the principle of putting all words ending in in the same entry, one is immediately struck by the frequency of words ending in , which is hardly surprising given its Germanic origin. On that basis alone, it is in quite a different category from words like portage and jutty. Moreover, the majority of the words ending in belong to a more informal English than the high poetic style claimed for vasty and many of them have a negative, rather than a positive, connotation. We all know today how frequently words like bloody, grubby, mucky, silly and smelly occur in oaths, derogatory forms of address and so on. In Henry V words ending in consist of those which are common like happy, heavy, lucky, merry and mighty, and those which are not unusual but are used in a negative or ironic way like bloody, filthy, frosty, giddy, hungry, lazy, lousy, petty, pretty, puppy and rainy. A few examples from this second category in the play may help to emphasise this point: The lazie yawning Drone (1.2.204) a vaine giddie shallow humorous Youth (2.4.28) this hungry Warre (2.4.104) filthy and contagious Clouds (3.3.114) With raynie Marching (4.3.112) what an arrant rascally, beggerly, lowsie Rnaue it is (4.8.35-6).

The word vasty is picked out by Gurr as the single example of an 'elaborated monosyllable' to suggest its rhetorical force, even though words which show a similar construction are very far from being positive or rhetorical. An advantage of putting words with the same morphological ending together is that it puts individual words into their wider structural context and forces us to consider the force they have. 2

Line references are to Wells & Taylor (1988), but quotations are from the First Folio [F] unless otherwise stated. Quarto texts are abbreviated as Q.

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The word vasty occurs twice elsewhere in Henry V. One spoken by Exeter, not highlighted by Gurr, occurs when he warns France about the dangers of a possible war: On the poore Soules,for whom this hungry Warre Opens his vastie Iawes (2.4.104-5), in which vastie hardly has a positive connotation since it suggests an insatiable appetite. Henry uses vasty when he is castigating the English traitors for their treachery, as if they had been seduced by the devil. The successful devil might returne to vastie Tartar backe (2.2.120) to tell the other devils how easy it is to suborn an Englishman. In both these examples something disagreeable, even evil, implies an immensity which is frightening. Two other examples of the adjective are found in ShE: The Hircanion deserts, and the vastie wildes Of wide Arabia (Merchant of Venice 2.7.412, where vastie is found in Q, but F has vaste) and I can call Spirits from the vastie Deepe (I Henry IV 3.1.51). Glendower's boast in 1 Henry IV recalls the evocation of hell in Henry V, and Morocco's boast in Merchant of Venice suggests infinite spaces which cannot be measured. Generally vasty may be accepted to imply something unpleasant and of an extent which verges towards the supernatural. The vastie fields of France are not pleasant spacious lands, but rather frighteningly extensive and almost supernaturally boundless, like so many uncharted parts of the universe. This was how early commentators saw it, for Schmidt (SL 1310-11) glosses it "vast, boundless". This chilling sense of vasty is supported by its related words. Vast as an adjective has the sense 'unlimited', but it is applied to places which are sombre and frightening, such as hell, the oceans, forests, deserts, the world and chaos; and as a noun it means either the boundless ocean or is applied to the darkness of midnight. The rare noun vastidity means 'immensity' and is applied to the world. There are few favourable connotations associated with vasty and its related words. In principle, one could have deduced the meaning of vasty as something almost supernaturally large and inhuman from the various contexts in which it and its associated words occur, but placing it within the framework of words with the morpheme forces one to consider its origin and connotations to correct what is the current view. Another informative example is the bound morpheme , which in ShE appears as or as well as with or for . This is different from the previous example because the morpheme is of Latin origin. OED -an suffix and -ian suffix notes that these forms derive from Latin -anus and -ian-us, with the sense 'of or belonging to'. The resulting morpheme was originally applied to proper nouns, especially geographical names, hence Italian < Italy, but later extended to other classes. Words with this form are originally adjectives, though they may function as nouns. All this is well and good, and the majority of the forms in or in ShE are adjectives derived from proper nouns, frequently of foreign names. Because of this origin, the resulting adjectives were thought evocatively foreign and, as such, often treated as pompous and strange. In some cases they could be used for little more than the sounds in the name, which were meant to impress those to whom the word was directed. They occur in insulting forms of address and are frequently employed by lower-class or comic characters striving to create an effect. Falstaff calls Pistol O base Assyrian Knight (2 Henry IV 5.3.102), although Pistol has no links with Assyria. Falstaff is trying to mock Pistol's pompous language. The Host notifies Simple that Here's a Bohemian-Tartar taries the comming downe (Merry Wives 4.5.18), although Bohemia has no links with the Tartars or with any characters in the play, and he calls Dr Caius a Castalion-king- Vrinall: Hector of Greece (my Boy) {Merry Wives 2.3.31-2). Dr Caius's work is implied in the reference to urinals, since physicians often inspected urine samples, but Castalion makes no sense even if it means 'Castilian', since the doctor was French. The conclusion to be drawn from these and other examples is that the morpheme was fully anglicised, being used in insulting words with

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little or no relevant semantic content. The sound was sufficient and that meant that, unlike adjectives in , those in were often polysyllabic. This led to two further developments. Firstly, foreign words may have been incorporated into the system, even though the foreign word is not found in English in its original form. This would seem to explain besonian which is thought to derive from Italian bisogno or Spanish bisoño. It was an insulting word meaning something like 'base fellow' and is used by Pistol to Shallow in Bezonian, speake, or dye (2 Henry IV 5.3.114). Secondly, new words with this suffix are created, to which, though clearly derogatory in their context, it is difficult to allocate a precise meaning. It may well be that they never had a precise meaning. One sign of this may be Mrs Ford's comment Shall we send that foolishion Carion, Mist. Quickly (Merry Wives 3.3.183—4), in which foolishion is normally emended out of existence on the grounds that it is a compositor's anticipation of the following Carion. But it may be a means used by Mrs Ford to denigrate Mistress Quickly by employing an ending associated with lower-class speakers given to verbal excess. After all Costard in Love's Labour's Lost can play with this ending when he claims he is playing Pompey the Great and says: I am (as they say, but to perfect one man in onepoore man) Pompion the great sir (5.2.500-1), although he otherwise uses simple Pompey. It may be that this is linked with the form pumpion which appears to mean 'fat man' and is used by Mrs Ford to refer to Falstaff in this grosse-watry Pumpion (Merry Wives 3.3.37-8). Some words have defied attempts to explain their etymology and thus appear to be new formations. The page can upbraid Mrs Quickly with Away you Scullion, you Rampallian, you Fustillirian (2 Henry IV 2.1.61-2), where Scullion makes it clear that Rampallian and Fustillirian are derogatory, and although the former may mean 'prostitute', the meaning of the latter is unknown. In Macbeth the First Witch in referring to the captain's wife says the rumpefed Ronyon cryes (1.3.5); and in Merry Wives Mr Ford addresses Falstaff disguised as a woman with you Baggage, you Poulcat, you Runnion (4.2.171-2). Both quotes presumably have the same word, though its etymology has not been discovered. An interesting example occurs in Merry Wives where Pistol addresses Bardolph as O base hungarian wight (1.3.19) in F, but Q has gongarian instead of hungarian. Editors prefer hungarian and assume that gongarian is meaningless3. Even if it is meaningless, the evidence of the other forms ending in suggests that it may be the original reading, which was corrected to hungarian which, though just as meaningless in this context, could be taken to suggest some semantic content. If we put the various forms ending with in one category in a dictionary it makes us consider the overall use and possible meaning of this suffix. Instead of just dismissing such forms as mistakes, we may need to accept that they are Shakespearian and were introduced for their sound to underline the love of pompous polysyllabic words which meant little or nothing. We may miss some of Shakespeare's humour and satire if we reject such forms too quickly. The third category involves the absence of a bound morpheme as an organising principle. The morpheme I shall consider is the adverbial ending . Traditionally in Old English adverbs were formed by adding the ending to adjectives or by using some of the noun inflections, especially the genitive singular in and dative plural in . Most of these endings disappeared through the loss of final vowels and nasals, except for the of the genitive singular, which was in neither of these categories, with the result that most adverbs came to have the same form as adjectives. This identity is still preserved for some adverbs such 3

Professor Donald Matthew has suggested to me that this word may refer to Gongora, the Spanish writer and poet (1561-1627).

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as fast. The Old English ending , which had principally been an adjectival morpheme, became and was gradually adopted as the ending to signify an adverb. This development was already under way in the fifteenth century and was accelerated by the attempt to create a grammar for English which reflected that of Latin. On this basis, it was believed that different parts of speech, such as adjectives and adverbs, should be distinguished by a characteristic morpheme. Adjectives remained without any ending, but adverbs were increasingly given the ending to distinguish them from adjectives. This development led to confusion and uncertainty, as is to some extent still the case. In Modern English one can both 'drive slow' and 'drive slowly'. Increasingly when the morpheme is not attached to an adverb, the resulting word was regarded as informal, dialectal or archaic. Its absence is particularly characteristic of adjectives used as intensifiers before an adverb or another adjective. This situation remains the most common one for the retention of an adjectival form in ShE, and in these cases it is rare for there to be variation between F and Q, where a play is also preserved in a quarto text. This may be because these forms were very common at the spoken level. Examples of this are frequent: me thinkes they are exceeding poore and bare (1 Henry IV 4.2.68-9) my heart is exceeding heauy (Much Ado 3 . 4 . 2 3 ^ ) in her excellent white bosome (Hamlet 2.2.112-13) Excellent, excellent well (Hamlet 2.2.176) 4 farre-vnworthie Deputie I am (2 Henry VI 3.2.290) With fearefull bloudy issue (King John 1.1.38) Too flattering sweet to be substantiall (Romeo and Juliet 2.1.183) To her foule tainted flesh (Much Ado 4.1.144)

The examples quoted do not occur in the same environments. Where the adjective appears in the complement position as is true of the first two examples or when it occurs before an adverb as in the fourth example, the form's status as an intensifier is hardly in dispute. But if it occurs before another adjective which is itself describing a following noun, it may not be certain whether the two adjectives both refer independently to the head of the noun phrase or whether the first one is actually an intensifier. In Hamlet 2.2.112 is Ophelia's bosom both 'excellent' and 'white' or is it 'extremely white'? In King John 1.1.38 is the issue both 'fearful' and 'bloody' or is it 'frightfully bloody'? In an example from Richard III which reads a wonton ambling Nymph (1.1.17), are we to understand wonton as referring to ambling or to Nymph? Sometimes the matter may be resolved by F and Q having different readings. In Richard II Q reads Gaunt is grieuous siche (1.4.53), whereas F makes the sense unambiguous by reading verie for grieuous; and in Richard III, a murderer can say this most grieuous guilty murder done (1.4.268) in Q, where F simply omits guilty. This matter is of some importance because editors often try to conceal the nature of the intensifier by turning the two adjectives into a single compound. This is less common when the forms occur in a complement position, as in hee's vengeance prowd (Coriolanus 2.2.5-6), which illustrates that nouns acting as adjectives can also be used as intensifiers. But with some common adjectives, especially when they come before participles in an adjectival position, this is not uncommon. Examples include such words as deep 'infinitely', high 'absolutely', new 'recently' and sharp 'acutely', whose corresponding forms in are never made into

4

For a further discussion of this form see Blake 2000.

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compounds if they occur before participial adjectives. The situation in F is mixed because sometimes they occur as compounds and sometimes not: my deepe-fet groanes {2 Henry VI 2.4.34) with deepe premeditated Lines (1 Henry VI 3.1.1) 'Tis deepely sworne (Hamlet 3.2.214) a high wrought Flood (Othello 2.1.2) your high-swolne hates {Richard III 2.2.105) Her new built vertue and obedience (Taming of the Shrew 5.2.123) His new-come Champion (1 Henry VI 2.2.20) With what a sharpe prouided wit he reasons (Richard III 3.1.132) Sharpe-tooth'd vnkindnesse (King Lear 2.2.307).

The corresponding forms in never form compounds when they occur before participial adjectives, though the occurrences are rare: highly belou'd (Comedy of Errors 5.1.6) and newly entertained Reuenge {Romeo and Juliet 3.1.170); but there are no examples of deeply or sharply in this environment. The situation is a difficult one for editors who have to determine how they will handle these variant forms in their texts, but to come to any reasonable decision they need the whole corpus of forms before them. This problem also arises in cases where two adjectives which are not participles occur before a noun and which editors frequently print as compounds in their editions. For example, what is found in F as More actiue, valiant, or more valiant yong (7 Henry IV 5.1.90) is frequently edited as 'More active-valiant or more valiantyoung,' as in Wells & Taylor (1988: 477). Such an editorial procedure may suggest an unwillingness to accept adjectives in intensifier positions where it is more poetic to regard them as compounds, because intensifiers are more informal in their nature. When adverbs occur within a clause rather than as part of a noun phrase, they are more likely to occur with variation between F and Q, since their role as adverbs was more obvious. But the movement is not simply that quartos have forms without and F has them with it, though that is the more common occurrence. Thus Q has the form without morpheme in To haue prooued most royall {Hamlet 5.2.352) and it would scarce allay {History of Lear sc.2.157), where F has royally and scarsely respectively; but the reverse happens in Why do you speake so startingly, and rash? {Othello 3.4.79) which is the F reading, where Q has rashly. The next case I consider is that of some free morphemes found as the second element of compounds. To consider the second element may be more significant than the alphabetical arrangement based on the first element, because there is some evidence to suggest that the second element was more important than the first which acted to some extent as an adjective or intensifier to it. I want to consider the elements -footed, -gaited and -paced/ -pacing which all have reference to the movement of humans or animals, or to material or insubstantial items which are metaphorically equated with them. The first element -footed when it implies some form of movement appears most frequently: Gallop apace, you fiery footed steedes (Romeo and Juliet 3.2.1) this feare, Which now goes too free-footed {Hamlet 3.3.25-6) the hasty footed time {Midsummer Night's Dream 3.2.201) The nimble-footed Mad-Cap, Prince of Wales {1 Henry IV 4.1.95) swift-footed time {Sonnets 19.6) This Tiger-footed-rage {Coriolanus 3.1.313).

In some cases speed is explicit, hasty, nimble and swift·, and in the others it is implicit from the context or even the word itself, fiery, free and tiger. In fact, the reason I suggested that the

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second element was more important than the first is that -footed evidently suggests speed and the first element merely accentuates or decorates that meaning. But when one turns to -gaited one finds the opposite sense, for the compounds formed with this element indicate sluggish or slow movement: And heauie-gated Toades lye in their way (Richard II3.2.15) he is verie slow gated (Love's Labour's Lost 3.1.53) the creeple-tardy-gated Night (Henry F 4.0.20). Here -gaited clearly implies slow movement and the first elements of the compounds merely emphasise that slow progress. The last example which consists of compounds with the final element -pacedf-pacing can indicate either quick or slow movement: these most briske and giddy-paced times (Twelfth Night 2.4.6) When he bestrides the lasie pacing cloudes (Romeo and Juliet 2Λ.73, Ql) Delay leds impotent and Snaile-pac'd Beggery (RichardIII 4.3.53). Clearly the final elements of compounds are significant and need to be given special attention by lexicographers as well as by editors. Naturally some free morphemes can occur as either the first or the second element of a compound, and when that happens there may be illuminating differences. The word head occurs as a first element and as -head or -headed it occurs as a second element. When it occurs as a first element, the reference is factual in that the compound refers to some aspect of the material head. We find head-lugged 'dragged by the head', head-piece 'armour for the head' or sometimes 'skull', head-shake 'nod of the head', and head-stall 'part of the bridle fitting over the head'. It is only when it is an adjective that the meaning becomes more intangible in headstrong 'stubborn, obstinate'. But when -head or -headed is the second element, the reference is to more abstract qualities, usually implying some form of stupidity. Such compounds are often used in insults and almost always with negative connotations. The element -head is often preceded by an animal name: ass-head, calf's head, cod's head or oxhead usually implying stupidity or sexual inadequacy, or by explicit references to stupidity: blockhead 'wooden head', cittern-head referring to the grotesque figure often carved on that instrument, fool's head, jolt-head, and logger-head. Headed as a simplex refers to 'a protuberance, as the head of a boil' as in And all th 'imbossed sores, and headed euils (As You Like It 2.7.67), and so it is not surprising that compounds with -headed are usually negative. Examples suggesting stupidity to some degree or other include beetle-headed, idle-headed, logger-headed, mad-headed, puppy-headed, rug-headed, sleek-headed and waspish-headed. Other examples include references to classical folklore often with reference to many heads; bare-headed suggesting servility, heavy-headed implying excessive carousing, ill-headed 'badly made', and the more positive hoary-headed referring to the frost. But certainly the overwhelming sense of -head(ed) is of stupidity and lack of intelligence. For Shakespeare to call upon more positive connotations of intellectual ability, he used -mind or -minded as the second element. In the history of the English language prefixes which had been attached to verbs to produce other senses gradually gave way to the adverbial particles which follow the verb to produce what are today known as phrasal verbs, which form my final example. Not all verbs with a prefix disappeared, but the dominant pattern increasingly became that of the phrasal verb. Such verbs today originate at the spoken level before being adopted into mainstream English, and it is probable that the same is true of earlier periods. Phrasal verbs grew in popularity in the sixteenth century and ShE contains many. From a lexicographical point of view the

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replacement of prefixed verbs by phrasal verbs meant that verbs which might today be formed with the adverbial particle over are found in different places in a dictionary, because a verb like look over will be found under L, whereas overlook and other words with the prefix over- are located under O. Is this a happy solution? Ultimately one might argue that it is not because the greater semantic input is found in over rather than in look. There is probably greater distinction between look over and look up than there is between look over and glance over. There is a reasonable case for arranging phrasal verbs not by their verb element but by the adverbial particle. I illustrate this point with phrasal verbs containing the particle on. The first thing one can notice is that on occurs in ShE by itself to suggest movement away from the point one is at. Generally that movement is forward and it can represent an encouragement to get started. Hence in Merchant of Venice Lorenzo encourages his companions to move with on gentlemen, away (2.6.58), where both on and away mean 'Let's get going', and in Henry V King Henry urges his soldiers to a renewed assault on Harfleur with On, on, you Noblish English (3.1.17). This usage is significant in underlining that there is significant semantic content in this word alone, and thus also likely to be so in its use as an adverbial particle. The following are some of the phrasal verbs with on in ShE: In goodly forme, comes on the Enemie (2 Henry IV 4.1.20) Dreame on, dreame on, of bloody deeds {Richard III 5.5.125) With the same hauiour that your passion beares, Goes on my Masters greefes (Twelfth Night 3.4.201-2) March on, ioyne brauely (.Richard III 5.6.42) 'Tis they haue put him on the old mans death (King Lear 2.1.98) Set on there (Cymbeline 5.6.485) The silent houres steale on (RichardIII 5.5.38) We did traine him on (I Henry IV 5.2.21).

All of these imply some forward motion or continued action. Thus Goes on implies 'increases' or 'advances', and Dreame on means 'carry on dreaming'. It may also be suggested that in most cases there is little semantic distinction in the choice of the verb element, for come on, go on, march on, set on and even steal on convey an almost identical meaning. The force of the utterances resides in the on rather than in the verb element. In these cases the verb element acts as little more than an intensifier to on. That being the case it seems reasonable to group these phrasal verbs under O rather than under the first letter of the verb element. An additional benefit of this organisation is that when a meaning is represented by both a phrasal verb and a verb with a prefix, these two forms would appear under the same headword. This applies to overlook and look over, which both mean 'to look over' in ShE as when Exeter encourages the King of France you ouer-looke this Pedigree (Henry V 2.4.90) and Bottom requests of his fellows euery man looke ore his part (Midsummer Night's Dream 4.2.33—4). An additional implication is that when phrasal verbs lead to the creation of verbal adjectives or nouns these should also be grouped under their second element rather than the first one. There are a few with on in ShE including: referr'd me to the comming on of time (Macbeth 1.5.8-9); You are abus'd, and by some putter on (Winter's Tale 2.1.143); But by your setting on, byyour consent? (Midsummer Night's Dream 3.2.232), in which the sense of activity forward is still found, though the sense in some is weaker than in the equivalent verb. What I hope to have shown in this article that there could be advantages to lexicographers and editors, to name just these two categories, who could benefit by the arrangement of historical dictionaries on the principles outlined above. In other words, rather than an

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arrangement based on the mechanical application of the alphabet, one built upon those elements which are most semantically meaningful, because it groups together words from the same semantic field or with the same morphological make-up. Such an arrangement reveals new shades of meaning in words and allows an easier comparison of words which are mutually related.

References

(a) Cited Dictionaries Ed. J.A.H. Murray et al. Oxford: Clarendon 1 1 9 3 3 . SL = SHAKESPEARE-LEXICON. Ed. A. Schmidt, rev. G. Sarrazin. Berlin: Reimer sw = SHAKESPEARE'S WORDS: A GLOSSARY AND LANGUAGE COMPANION. Ed. D . Crystal & London: Penguin 2002. OED = THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

B.

Crystal.

(b) Other Literature Blake, N. (2000): 'Excellent in Shakespeare.' - In D. Kastovsky & A. Mettinger (eds.): The History of English in a Social Context: A Contribution to Historical Sociolinguistics, 1-23. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. (= Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 129). Gurr, A. (1992): King Henry V. - Cambridge: University Press. (= The New Cambridge Shakespeare). Wells, S., & G. Taylor (1988): William Shakepeare: The Complete Works: Compact Edition. - Oxford: Clarendon. (= The Oxford Shakespeare)

Index This is a selective index. It is intended only to supplement the Table of Contents, so subjects and people mentioned in single papers are not listed here. Individuals are not indexed unless they are of particular interest to lexicographers. Dictionaries are indexed under the name of their editor, except where they are usually known by their title, in which case they are listed under their full title. Adamic language vi, 167, 172 Arabic 26, 123, 163, 164, 165, 170 Bailey, Nathaniel 71, 163 The Bible 20, 57, 64, 88, 95, 96, 142, 143, 170, 176 «39, 209 bilingual dictionaries 12, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 161 «8, 187 Blount, Thomas 19,67, 68, 85 botanical dictionaries 20, 23-4, 32 Bradley, Henry 144, 145, 152 «8, 170, 175, 186, 188, 189 Bullokar, John 19, 85 Bullokar, William 26, 85 Cawdrey, Robert 19, 27, 85 citation ν, vi, 3, 23, 33, 35, 53-60passim, 72, 76, 116, 138, 144, 201-10 Cockeram, Henry 19, 26, 85 Coles, Elisha 85 Cooper, Thomas 23, 26, 171 Coote, Edmund 19, 27, 85 Cotgrave, Randle 20, 23, 158, 187 Cowell, John Interpreter 25, 26 Crabb, George vi, 53, 84-5, 157-61 definition iv, 13-14,23, 39-51 passim, 5360passim, 64, 66, 77, 86, 90, 138-41, 160, 162, 203 Deutsches Wörterbuch 154, 201, 203, 204, 206 dictionary decorations and illustrations v, 12, 15, 95-107 passim, 116 dictionary dedications 7, 12, 22, 24, 25, 162 Dictionary of Old English v, vi, 137-45, 152, 154, 155, 186 Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue 152, 154, 155 Dutch vi, 4, 190-1, 201-10 passim Elyot, Thomas 19, 20, 23, 26, 57

encyclopaedias iv, 19, 25, 31, 32, 54, 57, 88, 89, 97-8 etymology (as a discipline) 5, 35, 28, 56-60 passim, 138, 149, 158, 159, 161, 163, 1734, 175, 177, 178, 185-98,216 (as an information category) vi, 27, 35, 50, 53, 72, 74, 76, 84, 86, 110, 113-4, 116 figurative language vi, 58, 59, 72, 141,1434, 149, 153, 155, 158, 167-71 Fisher, Ann 65, 69 Florio, John 19, 23 Fowler, Henry 57, 84, 91 French iii, 5-8, 84, 167, 171 «30, 186-7, 190, 194 and passim French dictionaries v, 19, 23, 25, 84, 95107, 187 German 8, 158, 160, 165, 167, 171 «30, 177 Girard, Abbé Gabriel 83-4, 86, 90, 157-8, 159, 160 «7, 165 «16, 168 grammar (as an information category) 35, 41 «9, 48, 85, 86, 114, 116, 139, 149, 203, 213 grammar books 11-17, 19-28, 63, 65, 69, 109, 120,217 Greek iii, 1-9,21,59, 161 «8, 163 Hebrew iii, vi, 5, 170, 172, 173 homographs & homography 87 homonyms & homonymy 138, 174-5, 177 homophones & homophony 132, 133, 164 Huloet, Richard 26, 85 inkhorn controversy 21, 66, 69, 85 Italian 120, 130, 160, 163, 165, 167, 216 Italian dictionaries 19, 23, 50, 84 Johnson, Samuel 5, 158, 175 Dictionary iv, 3, 23, 53-60, 63-8, 71, 86, 90, 159, 162-3, 165 Latin 21, 85 and passim law dictionaries 19-28

224 Locke, John iv, 23, 83, 88-9, 168-9, 170 medical dictionaries 20, 23, 24 metaphors see figurative language Middle English 21, 53, 143, 149-55, 167 and passim Middle English Dictionary v-vi, 140, 14955, 186 morphemes & morphology vi, 50, 58, 111, 116, 145, 155, 202, 205, 213-4, 215 Mulcaster, Richard 20, 28 Murray, James 3, 19, 55-6, 57, 144, 151-3, 186 naval dictionaries and treatises 20, 23, 24, 32, 88 Old English 8, 9, 20, 21, 26, 57-8, 137-45, 163, 167, 216-7 and passim online dictionaries 117, 185, 201 Ortus Vocabulorum 11, 20 Oxford English Dictionary vi, 4, 19, 24, 55, 56, 58, 67-8, 139-40, 149-55, 157-78, 185-98, 201,203, 206 and passim Partridge, Eric iv, 32, 71, 76-80 Perry, William 63, 86-7 Philips, Edward 85 Piozzi, Hester Lynch vi, 84, 86, 157, 158-9, 161, 166 place names 26-7, 101, 106, 110, 116, 123, 193, 198 dictionaries of place names iv, 20, 31 polysemy v-vi, 41,45, 50, 137-45, 149-55, 157-78 Portuguese ν, vi, 119-33, 190-1, 194-5 Promptorium Parvulorum iii, 11,15 «13, 16, 20, 26 pronunciation (the study of) iv, 26, 63, 64, 129, 164, 174 (as a category of information) 50, 66, 68, 86, 110, 116, 121, 133, 186 dictionaries of pronunciation 31, 63-69

Index proper nouns 26-7, 35, 72, 106, 110, 116, 215 dictionaries of proper names 20 Rastell, John Exposiciones 19, 24-5 Roget, Peter Mark Thesaurus iv, 83-90, 158 scientific dictionaries and treatises 20, 23, 24, 88 Shakespeare, William iv, vi, 31-6, 55, 60, 71, 157 «1, 169, 170-1,206,213-21 Sheridan, Thomas 63-4, 69, 163 Somner, William 8-9, 21 Spanish 110, 188, 192, 216 Speght, Thomas 21-2, 31 spelling 78, 129, 173, 186 spelling reform 25-6, 75 Spelman, Henry 3, 8, 23 η 11, 28, 27 «20, 28 synonyms & synonymy v, 41, 45, 48, 56, 83-90, 137-45, 149-55, 157-78 thesauruses 32, 35, 83-90 Trusler, John 84, 86, 157, 160 «7, 161, 162 typography 41, 89, 115, 164 «13 Walker, John Critical Pronouncing Dictionary 63-69 passim, 163 Webster, Noah 54, 57 An American Dictionary of the English Language 3, 53, 55, 84 Wilkins, John Alphabetical Dictionary iv, vi, 39-51 passim, 161-2 Essay Towards a Real Character (including the Tables) iv, 39-51, 88,160-1 Woordenboek der Nederlandische Taal vi, 3-4, 201-10