有聲英文閱讀-各類詞書都是怎樣編成的

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How Dictionaries Are Made
各類詞書都是怎樣編成的

It is widely believed that every word has a correct meaning, that we learn these meanings mainly from teachers and grammarians, and that dictionaries and grammars are the supreme authority in matters of meaning and usage. Few people ask by what authority the writers of dictionaries and grammars say what the say. I once got into a dispute with an English woman over the pronunciation of a word and offered to look it up in the dictionary. The English woman said firmly, "What for? I am English. I was born and brought up in England. The way I speak is English." Such self-assurance about one's own language is fairly common among the English. In the United States, however, anyone who is willing to quarrel with the dictionary is regarded as either eccentric or mad.
Let us see how dictionaries are made and how the editors arrive at definitions. What follows applies only to those dictionary offices where first-hand, original research goes on - not those in which editors simply copy existing dictionaries. The task of writing a dictionary begins with the reading of vast amounts of the literature of the period or subject that the dictionary is to cover. As the editors read, they copy on cards every interesting or rare word, every unusual or peculiar occurrence of a common word, a large number of common words in their ordinary uses, and also the sentences in which each of these words appears.
That is to say, the context of each word is collected, along with the word itself. For a really big job of dictionary writing, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, millions of such cards are collected, and the task of editing occupies decades. As the cards are collected, they are alphabetized and sorted. When the sorting is completed, where will be for each word anywhere from two or three to several hundred quotations, each on its card.
To define a word, then, the dictionary editor places before him the stack of cards illustrating that word; each of the cards represents an actual use of the word by a writer of some literary or historical importance. He reads the cards carefully, discards some, re-reads the rest, and divides up the stack according to what he thinks are the several senses of the word. Finally, he writes his definitions, following the hard-and-fast rule that each definition must be based on what the quotations in front of him reveal about the meaning of the word. The editor cannot be influenced by what the thinks a given word ought to mean. He must work according to the cards, or not at all.
The writing of a dictionary, therefore, is not a task of setting up authoritative statements about the "true meanings" of words, but a task of recording, to the best of one's ability, what various words have meant to authors in the distant or immediate past. If, for example, we had been writing a dictionary in 1890, or even as late as 1919, we could have said that the word "broadcase" means "to scatter" (seed, for example), but we could not have states that from 1921 on, the most common meaning of the word should become "to send out programs by radio or television." In choosing our words when we speak or write, we can be guided by the historical record provided us by the dictionary, but we cannot be bound by it, because new situations, new experiences, new inventions, new feelings, are always forcing us to give new uses to old words. Looking under a "hood," we should ordinarily have found, five hundred years ago, a monk; today, we find a car engine.

人們普遍認為每個單詞都有準確的詞義，人們還認為我們主要是向教師和語法學家們學習這些詞義，人們還謚為一切詞典和語法書都是解釋詞義和詞的用法的最高權威。幾乎沒有人會提出這樣的問題：詞典和語法的編著者們根據(jù)什么權威資料來說出他們所說的那些話。我有一次曾和一位英國婦女爭論過一個英語單詞的發(fā)音。我讓她查一查英語詞典。這位英國婦女堅定地說："還查詞典干什么？我是英國人。我生在英國，長在英國。我講的話是英語"。在全體英格蘭人當中這種對自己語言的十分自信的態(tài)度是相當普遍的?？墒?，在美國，若是有人想同詞典爭論，那或者會被認為是顛狂或者是瘋子。
讓我們來看看各類詞書都是怎樣編成的，看看編者們是怎樣給每個詞條下定義的。下面所述的方法是那些匯集第一手的原始研究資料的詞典編纂機構所采用的，而不是那些只是簡單地抄一抄現(xiàn)有的一些詞典的內(nèi)容的那些編詞典的機構所采用的方法。編詞典的工作始于博覽所編的詞書內(nèi)容所包括的該段時期里該門學科內(nèi)有關的浩瀚的文獻資料。在詞書編者們博覽群書的過程中，他們把每一個有趣的詞匯，罕見的詞匯，每一個普通詞匯的不普通的特別的用法，大量常見詞的種種常見的用法，以及這些詞匯所出現(xiàn)的例句都一一作成卡片。
這也就是說，不但要匯集該詞匯，而且還要把每個詞所出現(xiàn)的上下文語言環(huán)境也匯集起來。對于編寫詞典這樣十分龐大的工程來說，例如編像《牛津英語大詞典》之類，要匯集數(shù)百萬張卡片。因此要完成這樣一部巨著需要費時數(shù)十年。在匯集卡片的過程中，要把卡片按字母順序排列加以分類整理。分類整理工作完成之后，整本詞典不論在任何位置上的單詞都應當有從二三句到數(shù)百個例句的引文出現(xiàn)在該單詞的卡片上。
為了確定單詞的義項，然后，詞典的編者就把能說明該單詞用法的那一堆卡片擺在自己的面前；每一張卡片都闡明了某一文學作品或某一重要歷史文獻的作者對該單詞的實際用法。詞典編者要仔細認真地研讀，再根據(jù)詞典編者認為單詞所含有的幾個義項將這一推卡片加以分類。最后詞典編者寫出每個義項的定義，在下定義時，編者必須遵守這樣一條不容改變的鐵的規(guī)則：那就是每個義項的定義編者必須根據(jù)擺在面前那些卡片上的例句所含有的該詞的詞義來寫。詞典編者不能接受到自己認為某詞應該有某個義項的這一想法的影響。詞典的編者必須根據(jù)所匯集的卡片來編詞典，不然的話，就根本不必去匯集那些卡片了。
因此，編寫一部詞典并不是這樣一種工作：編者以權威的身份給所有的單詞都規(guī)定出一些所謂的"真正的詞義"；編寫詞典是一種記錄工作，編者要盡自己的最大努力記錄下在很久以前或在最近剛出版的著作中，各種不同的的單詞所具有的意義。例如，如果我們是在1890年或者遲至1919年或者遲至在1919年編寫一本詞典，我們本來可以說broadcast這個詞的意思是"撒播"（例如：撒播種子），但是從1921年起我們就不能再這樣說了。從1921年起這個詞最普遍的意義應該是"通過收音機或電視機播出節(jié)目"。當我們說話或寫作時在精選推敲用詞方面，我們要依詞典提供給我們歷史上的記錄為準繩，但也不能受詞典上的記錄所束縛，因為一些新的情況，新的經(jīng)歷，新的發(fā)明，新的感情總是迫使我們給舊的詞匯賦予新的用法。我們查一下"hood"這個詞，就會發(fā)現(xiàn)，在500年前，意思是"修道士"（a monk），今天這一詞條下的解釋卻是汽車引擎或汽車發(fā)動機。