Linguistic professionals have many tools that let them work more precisely, be better documented and translate faster, among other desirable parameters. One of the most common resources they use are dictionaries, which are extensive collections used to make queries of all kinds. The most well-known types are dictionaries with definitions, or those with synonyms and antonyms, thematic dictionaries and bilingual dictionaries. These need no presentation because they are very common and have been used for decades in many professions in the human sciences.
However, the arrival of technology, the documentation of extensive corpora in electronic formats and the inclusion of digital tools in linguistic research processes have caused new types of dictionaries to be developed, which not only help their readers become interested in topics, but also end up being extremely necessary for specific tasks. Today we will show you three of the most common kinds:
COMBINATORIAL DICTIONARIES
These dictionaries contain words and expressions that frequently appear next to a word that we will consider as the search criteria. Thus, we can write texts with richer vocabulary without resorting to generic words or unnecessary words imported from other languages. For example, in English we use the verb “to shoot” in reference to taking pictures, but in Spanish the use of the literal translation “disparar una fotografía” would be incorrect.
A combinatorial dictionary would tell us that it is much better to use “hacer/sacar/tomar una fotografía”, which sounds more natural in Spanish. For tools in English, check out www.freecollocations.com or www.ozdic.com.
CONCEPTUAL DICTIONARIES
These are dictionaries that enable searches to be made by words as well as showing their semantic fields and related subjects. They are very interesting when we want to compare the ideological associations of one language with another. The oldest one in Spanish was published by Julio Casares in 1942. If you want another online search engine, go to www.zirano.com.
HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES
These dictionaries let us look up words that were part of a dictionary at some point but have become out of date or they show us the date since the commonly used words were part of the dictionary. Not only do they offer incredible discoveries for language lovers, but they are also a very useful tool when doing research to analyze or create texts set in the past. In other words, could someone from the 8th century, the era of Alfonso X the Wise, compare a person with a tortoise if they drive slowly? Probably not, since this accepted use appeared in writing for the first time in 1645 in a text by Quevedo Villegas, as we can see in the Nuevo Diccionario Histórico del Español (Spanish New Historical Dictionary) from the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy). In other words, could someone from the 8th century, the era of Alfonso X the Wise, compare a person with a tortoise if they drive slowly? Probably not, since this accepted use appeared in writing for the first time in 1645 in a text by Quevedo Villegas, as we can see in the Nuevo Diccionario Histórico del Español (Spanish New Historical Dictionary) from the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy).
Without a doubt, we need to make sure we continue to use dictionaries to do our job better and keep discovering interesting information about our linguistic culture.
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