The terms linguistics and philology refer to different but overlapping areas of the Humanities. An opposition between them does not predate the triumph of structuralism. Structuralist linguistics devoted itself mainly to synchrony and theory, with lexicology and lexicography ending up in no-man’s land. A detailed look at dictionary definitions of linguistics and philology for more than three centuries offers a picture of the goals of both disciplines and of the ways the public understood language studies. Before the twentieth century, the focus of philology was the interpretation of old texts and word origins. The treatment of special terminology (including the terminology of linguistics) in dictionaries shows that despite all the differences a clear line between linguistics and philology cannot and need not be drawn, just as such a line cannot always be drawn between a dictionary and an encyclopedia. In the context of the present study, the use of etymology and phonetic transcription in various dictionaries illuminates the difference between and the unity of philology and linguistics.

This chapter treats the design considerations for dictionaries as printed books, the transition from print to digital formats in the thirty years around the turn of the twenty-first century, and the considerations for digital and online formats. Section 1: Customer-focused decisions about format, size, and extent of physical dictionaries; the mapping of book and page components of printed dictionaries; the mutual influence of editorial and design choices; and the advent of digital composition and production for printed formats. Section 2: Factors driving the choice of digital versus print formats for changing customer needs; functional challenges of converting printed dictionaries to digital; design considerations for online interfaces, including both technical performance and user experience.

This chapter provides an overview of the process of conceiving, researching, editing, and publishing dictionaries, both synchronic (or commercial) and historical. Discussed methods and tools for making dictionaries range from traditional hand-copying of citations from print books and paper-and-pencil editing to sophisticated electronic technologies like databases, corpora, concordances, and networked editing software. The chapter shows how editorial conception of the needs and sophistication of the end user largely determines the dictionary’s length and headword list as well as the format, defining style, and level of detail in entries. The chapter goes on to examine how the pressures of commercial publishing, with its looming deadlines and pressing need to recoup investment by profits from sales, affect the scope of dictionaries and the amount of time editors can devote to a project, and how these pressures differ from those affecting longer-trajectory, typically grant-funded historical dictionaries. Assessing the consequent challenges for managing and motivating people working in these two very different situations, what may be the most important factor in a project’s success, concludes the survey of dictionary editing.

In diachronic development and contemporary structure of Slavic lexicons, we see influences of universal semantic mechanisms and specific historical processes, of language development, and of language contact. Old Church Slavonic played a role in forming Slavic vocabulary, especially in Russian, where specific or colloquial synonyms contrast with abstract or formal (golova ‘head as body part’ vs. glava ‘head as top in a hierarchy’). Semantic divergence of Proto-Slavic roots creates inter-lingual enantiosemy (e.g., Rus. čerstvyj ‘stale’ vs. Cze. čerstvý ‘fresh’). To compare languages we use regular abstract semantic relations, e.g. synonymy, antonymy, or lexical functions Magn, Oper. Linguistic expressions may differ, but we find similar semantic oppositions and derivation mechanisms. The languages share the same types of antonymy, albeit using different prefixes. Semantic bleaching patterns also agree: adjectives meaning ‘scary’ develop to mean ‘high degree’. Motion verbs such as ‘go’ come to mean process or result. We give case studies of lexical relations: Polish synonyms honor vs. cześć, Russian pravda vs. istina.

After a discussion of best programming practices and a brief summary of basic features of the Python programming language, chapter 1 discusses several modern idioms. These include the use of list comprehensions, dictionaries, the for-else idiom, as well as other ways to iterate Pythonically. Throughout, the focus is on programming in a way which feels natural, i.e., working with the language (as opposed to working against the language). The chapter also includes basic information on how to make figures using Matplotlib, as well as advice on how to effectively use the NumPy library, with an emphasis on slicing, vectorization, and broadcasting. The chapter is rounded out by a physics project, which studies the visualization of electric fields, and a problem set.

This chapter consists of a lexicon of all Latin loanwords in Greek, as well as many of the codeswitches and words that have been claimed to be Latin borrowings but do not meet our criteria for loanwords (because they are very rare, unintegrated, marked as foreign, not necessarily ancient, not necessarily derived from Latin, semantic extensions, superseded readings, etc.). Evidence for (or against) considering the word a Latin loanword is provided, with references to further discussions (both elsewhere in this book and in other scholarship).

[32.1] The task of an interpreter is to determine the intention of Parliament ‘assisted by such aids to construction as can properly be utilised’.1 This chapter considers residual common law presumptions and aids that are potentially available.

This chapter turns to the second step of interpretation, namely content-determination. This exercise can be narrated in two ways: first, by reference to the formal rules of interpretation set forth in the VCLT; second, in light of the assumptions, predispositions, and standards of acceptability shared by the judicial community. The juxtaposition of these accounts highlights the interplay between freedom and constraint in international treaty interpretation. What guides the gaze of the interpreter? Where are the boundaries of their discretion? On the one hand, VCLT rules are powerless before the ontological indeterminacy of legal norms, and have therefore little cash value when it comes to derive exact meaning. On the other hand, the patterned practices and background knowledge of the community impose powerful limitations on the interpreter’s discretion.

This chapter considers the characteristics and contexts of three eighteenth-century encyclopaedic dictionaries: Cyclopaedia (1728) by Ephraim Chambers, A medicinal dictionary (1742–45) by Robert James, and The first part of a dictionary of chemistry (1789) by James Keir, especially in relation to their own comments on their intentions. Chambers’s is generalist, while the other two are specialist works on medicine and chemistry. The Cyclopaedia had a long and acclaimed afterlife, while James’s dictionary was translated into French and Italian, but did not reach a second edition in England. Keir’s remained unfinished. An attempt is made to position these works in their larger lexicographical and scientific context, primarily through their paratexts.

At a meeting in Alaska in 2000, when several indigenous speakers shared stories about the rapidly shifting climate, sea ice, and weather in their home areas. I was amazed by how thoroughly they analysed signals of change and how nuanced their observations were, compared to the crude models of prehistoric climate change available in the literature. For many people living in the more temperate mid-latitude areas, ‘climate change’ is about heat and warming. Not so in the Arctic, where the best summary of climate change is that “it’s not cold enough” (Krupnik et al. 2010c). Indigenous people in the North, particularly those living on the seacoast, depend on long cold winter to build solid offshore ice. They monitor the ice for six to ten months every year; they travel on ice, and hunt from it to catch the animals that sustain their life. The Eskimo explanation “it’s not cold enough” has perfect sense from the principles of sea ice geophysics. It requires long cold days to build solid ice. If the ice is weak and broken, comes late or leaves early, more heat is absorbed into the ocean producing thinner and weaker ice next winter. This is a synopsis of what scientists call ‘Arctic amplification’. Over the past 40 years of satellite observations, Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically – in its seasonal extent, overall volume, age, and duration. In the northern Bering Sea, sea ice distribution in winter has changed, in professional terms, from a predictable system of icescapes to a mixing bowl of drifting floes. Hunters in many communities report that they have not seen thick bluish multi-year ice of their youth in years. Arctic people have noticed this transformation very early and they have spoken about it loud and clear since the late 1990s. Yet they monitor the ice from their particular vision of users, not as scientists. This paper introduces the study of indigenous sea ice nomenclatures as a path to document, sustain, and ‘co-produce’ local knowledge about ice and Arctic change.

In the reading section of this chapter, we look at how much vocabulary is needed to gain meaning-focused input through reading material written for native speakers. We then look at what a well-balanced reading program for learners of English as a foreign language should contain to maximise vocabulary growth, stressing the need to use vocabulary graded material, particularly graded readers. Such a course should provide opportunities for extensive reading, a focus on language features through intensive reading, and the development of reading fluency though speed reading. Finally, we look at how learners can be supported to read ungraded texts, using techniques such as narrow reading, pre–teaching, intensive reading, and glossing. In order to gain 98 per cent coverage of unsimplified text, learners need to know most of the high-frequency and mid-frequency words, totalling around 8,000–9,000 word families. In the writing section of this chapter, we look at the effect of vocabulary use on the quality of writing, measuring written productive knowledge of vocabulary and how to improve learners’ vocabulary use in writing.

Incidental learning from guessing the meanings of words from context through listening and reading is the most important of all the sources of vocabulary learning. This is particularly true for native speakers learning their first language, but it should also be true for second language learners, but many do not experience the conditions that are needed for this kind of learning to occur. A major goal of this chapter is to look at these conditions and see how they can be established. We will look at how successful learners can be at guessing from context, how much and what kind of learning can occur from this guessing, and how learners can be helped to become skilful at guessing from context. The chapter includes a description of a guessing from context strategy which can be used for learner training. To become good at guessing from context, learners need to develop their reading skill, need to read material which as at the right level for them, and need to practice the guessing strategy.

Pidgins and creoles are typically depicted as involving an unusually high degree of variation. This is also often taken to be indicative of a lack of proper grammatical structuring and language-hood. Variation is presented as an obstacle to standardization and for exclusion from official domains, particularly formal education. For speakers, creoles represent the ‘voice of truth’, convey belonging and are often the main means of communication. Pidgins and creoles were eventually allowed into formal contexts due to pragmatic considerations such as for proselyting and for the mitigation of educational problems rather than identity-based considerations. This has acted as an important catalyst for their wider recognition. Discussions about how to deal with variation continue to hamper processes of standardization and implementation, however. This chapter reviews approaches to and issues in the standardization of creoles and discusses the ongoing standardization of Nenge(e) (Eastern Maroon Creoles) in French Guiana. It is argued that variation is integral to all languages and can be accommodated once pluricentric norms and wider notions of literacy are adopted. Careful attention to language ideologies, including views about variation, are crucial for successful acceptance and use of the outcomes of standardization.

Statutory interpretation is a core skill in the legal profession. At a basic level, it seems quite simple: statutory interpretation represents the art (or perhaps science) of reading legislation correctly. Unfortunately, beneath this simple description lies a much more complicated process. You see, words are almost always ambiguous. Words combined into sentences become more ambiguous. How many times in your daily life have you said something that you considered to be perfectly plain and simple, only to have others in the conversation completely misinterpret your meaning?

This chapter gives an overview of the traditions of English lexicography from the early modern period to the present day. Rather than presenting a linear story of evolutionary development, it surveys changes in the whole ecosystem of lexicographical publishing, from the most elementary spelling-books to the most scholarly multi-volume dictionaries, emphasising the books which came into the hands of the most readers: these were of course the smallest and cheapest. It is therefore attentive to changes in publishing technology (from handpress to machine press to digital) and to information about dictionaries as material books, such as physical size, number of editions, and size of print runs.

What words mean, Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty suggests, depends only on individuals’ asserting their authority to give them a particular meaning, but Alice and others question this claimed semantic authority. Dictionaries are often thought of as semantically authoritative, but most aim to describe actual usage, not to endorse ‘proper’ meanings. For words like tree names, semantic authority plausibly lies with those who know about trees. But even in sciences, semantic authority is disputable, as shown by debates over defining planet. Sometimes courts adjudicate conflicts over meanings, as illustrated by shifts in marriage and related words. Even then divergent interests can allow continuing disputes. Guidelines for ‘inclusive language’ sought to direct people to use words in certain ways. Their effective authority was tied to the issuing group’s status: government agencies, e.g, could better wield semantic authority than small interest groups. Policing others’ usage sometimes happens and is called ‘political correctness’ (PC); mocking others’ usage often accompanies charges of being PC. Claims of trans women that they themselves know best whether they are women are sometimes derided. But such first-person semantic authority gains its force from existence of communities recognizing the legitimacy of such gender claims. Ultimately, semantic authority resides in communities.

Electronic prescribing is becoming more common, and while it has many safety advantages, it also introduces new risks. The author describes some of the most common issues when using any e-prescribing software, including risks to the prescriber and patient, pitfalls of clinical decision support and how to navigate medical dictionaries and avoid common errors.