This book collects and introduces some of the best and most useful work in practical lexicography. It has been designed as a resource for students and scholars of lexicography and lexicology and to be an essential reference for professional lexicographers. It focusses on central issues in the field and covers topics hotly debated in lexicography circles. After a full contextual introduction Thierry Fontenelle divides the book into twelve parts - theoretical perspectives, corpus design, lexicographical evidence, word senses and polysemy, collocations and idioms, definitions, examples, grammar and usage, bilingual lexicography, tools and methods, semantic networks, and how dictionaries are used. The book is fully referenced and indexed. The reader may be used independently for reference or as reading material for a course of study. It will also be an essential companion for The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography by Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell, to be published by OUP in 2008.

1. Editor's Introduction Part I Metalexicography, Macrostructure, Microstructure, and the Contribution of Linguistic Theory 2. The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson (edited by Jack Lynch) 3. Theoretical Lexicography and its Relation to Dictionary-Making, Sue Atkins 4. Principles of Systematic Lexicography, Juri Apresjan Part II On Corpus Design 5. Representativeness in Corpus Design, Douglas Biber 6. Introduction to the Special Issue on the Web as Corpus, Gregory Grefenstette and Adam Kilgarriff Part III On Lexicographical Evidence 7. 'Corpus Linguistics' or 'Computer-Aided Armchair Linguistics', Charles J. Fillmore Part IV On Word Senses and Polysemy 8. Do Word Meanings Exist?, Patrick Hanks 9. I Don't Believe in Word Senses, Adam Kilgarriff 10. Polysemy, Penny Stock part V On Collocations, Idioms, and Dictionaries 11. Phraseology, Anthony P. Cowie 12. Using a Bilingual Dictionary to Create Semantic Networks, Thierry Fontenelle Part VI On Definitions 13. Defining the Indefinable, Dwight Bolinger 14. More Than One Way to Skin A Cat: Why Full-Sentence Definitions Have Not Been Universally Adopted, Michael Rundell Part VII On Examples 15. Corpus-Based Versus Lexicographer Examples in Comprehension and Production of New Words, Batia Laufer Part VIII On Grammar and Usage in Dictionaries 16. Recent Trends in English Pedagogical Lexicography, Michael Rundell Part IX On Bilingual Lexicography 17. Then and Now: Competence and Performance in 35 Years of Lexicography, Sue Atkins 18. Equivalence in Bilingual Dictionaries, Alain Duval Part X On Tools for Lexicographers 19. Word Association Norms, Mutual Information, and Lexicography, Ken W. Church and Patrick Hanks 20. The Sketch Engine, Adam Kilgarriff, Pavel Rychly, Pavel Smrz, and David Tugwell 21. The Future of Linguistics and Lexicographers: Will There be Lexicographers in the Year 3000?, Gregory Grefenstette Part XI On Semantic Networks and Wordnets 22. Introduction to WordNet: An On-line Lexical Database, George Miller, Richard Beckwith, Christiane Fellbaum, Derek Goss, and Katherine J. Miller Part XII On Dictionary Use 23. Monitoring Dictionary Use, Sue Atkins and Krista Varantola References Index