1st Edition

Ashgate Critical Essays on Early English Lexicographers Volume 3: The Sixteenth Century

Edited By Roderick McConchie Copyright 2012

    Laying the foundations for the first monolingual dictionaries of English, the sixteenth century in English lexicography is here shown to form a bridge between the glossarial compilations which had slowly evolved during the Middle Ages, and the more recognisably modern dictionary incorporating synonymy, illustrative citations and other standard features. The articles collected here treat general lexicography and dictionaries in this period, their uses, and the state of research in this field. The volume also covers a fascinating and diverse collection of lexicographers, from the well known - John Palsgrave, Thomas Cooper, Thomas Elyot and John Florio - to those about whom next to nothing is known - Richard Howlet, John Baret and Peter Levens.

    Contents: Introduction; Part I General: Narrative and persuasion in early modern dictionaries and phrasebooks, John Considine; 'Dumb significants' and early modern English definition, Ian Lancashire; Doctors and dictionaries in 16th-century England, Roderick McConchie; English specialized lexicography in the late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, Noel Edward Osselton; Bilingual dictionaries in Shakespeare's day, D.T. Starnes; The emerging role of English in the dictionaries of Renaissance Europe, Gabriele Stein; A footnote on the inkhorn controversy, James Sledd; Language helps for the Elizabethan tradesman, Louis B. Wright. Part II Latin-English: Definitions and first person pronoun involvement in Thomas Elyot's Dictionary, Gabriele Stein; The English of the 'Nomenclator', William A. Craigie; A note on 16th-century vernacular English, Don Cameron Allen; Thomas Thomas makes a dictionary, Allan Stevenson. Part III English-Latin: Richard Huloet as a recorder of the English lexicon, Gabriele Stein; Women and their world in Withal's Dictionary of 1553, Werner Hüllen; A note on the use of Renaissance dictionaries, James Sledd; John Baret's 'diligent bees', H. Rocke Robertson and Philip M. Teigen; Peter Levins' lexicographic approach, Roberta Facchinetti; The 'hard words' of Levins' dictionary, Maurizio Gotti. Part IV Familiar Vernacular: Law and early modern English lexicons, Ian Lancashire; Bilingual lexicography in the Renaissance: Palsgrave's English-French lexicon (1530), Douglas A. Kibbee; William Thomas: a forgotten clerk of the Privy Council, E.R. Adair; Claudius Hollyband and the earliest French-English dictionaries, Mark Eccles; Negotiating Florio's A Worlde of Wordes, David O. Frantz. Part V Unfamiliar Vernacular: The earliest list of Russian Lapp words, John Abercromby; Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) and the English origins of Algonkian linguistics, Vivian Salmon; Mark Ridley (1560-1624): an Elizabethan Slavist, Gerald Stone; Russian medical terminology in Mark Ridley's dictionary, Vera Fedorovna Konnova; The achievement of William Salesbury, Glanmor Williams; Index.

    Biography

    Roderick McConchie is Lecturer in English at the University of Helsinki, Finland