Learner’s Dictionary of Quotations: Background and Initial Results

Abstract

The article is devoted to a new type of learner’s dictionary, namely a learner’s dictionary of quotations, whose twofold task consists in assisting budding scientists in both understanding and producing English texts in their sphere of research. As a means of education and cultural enlightenment, a learner’s dictionary is meant to help the student by concentrating the relevant information and presenting it in a readily accessible and easily understandable form. The first learner’s dictionary of quotations compiled for students of languages and literatures by MSU associate professors Lilia Boldyreva and Irina Gubbenet in 2000, is used as an example to demonstrate how the general principles of learner’s lexicography, those of minimization of the word list and optimization of the content, macro- and microstructure of the dictionary, could be realized and modified in the learner’s dictionary of quotations. Present-day lexicography is greatly facilitated by the creation of electronic corpora of English of various sizes – from representative all-embracing national and mega web-based corpora to the so-called “small” computer corpora pertinent to specific research projects. A corpus-based approach to compiling learner’s dictionaries of quotations will make determination of frequency of quotations and popularity of their sources in different styles, genres and disciplines of scientific discourse much easier and more reliable. According to preliminary observations that have to be verified by corpus-based methods, among the most frequently quoted authors in life sciences discourse are Shakespeare, Kipling and Carroll.

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