A Study Of Noun"Usage Note"of The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language

Usage note refers to how people use the language component to express meaning such as the words' spelling,pronunciation,grammar,accent and so on.It is an important part in most foreign language dictionaries,especially in the English monolingual dictionaries.Usage note includes the semantic information,the principle of language application,and the comprehension of language expression.It is also important for foreign language learners,because it is the key norm and standard to direct the actual use of language.However,descriptivism and prescriptivism are two guiding principles in English dictionary compilation.They are opposite to each other in theory.Thus,different dictionaries following the different principles have distinctions from each other in some other fields of entry,definition,and usage note,etc.The two principles make a great significance in English lexicographical compilation.In order to get a full view of the compilation principle of usage note,this thesis takes the first edition(1969)of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language(AHD)and its fifth edition(2011)as examples and takes the single part of speech of noun usage note as the axis.It tries to compare and contrast the compiling mode and explore the rationale and motivation of the usage note.First,it sorts out the different definitions of usage note by scholars in various fields and makes a detailed explanation on terms like usage,usage note,and Usage Panel.Meanwhile,the thesis gives the whole development history of descriptivism and prescriptivism in lexicography.Then,it makes a contrastive analysis on treatment of single part of speech of noun usage note,and a detailed discussion on the categorization and the various changing of usage note so as to investigate the reason why the usage note changes in that way.Meanwhile,through analysis of the compilation of the single part of speech of noun usage note,it finds that in AHD1 and AHD5 some usage notes are still remained,some are changed and some are deleted.This thesis also analyzes the compilation of single part of speech of noun usage note aiming to find out the approaches of its usage note.The result of this study shows that the descriptive approach of the usage note takes the dominate place in AHD,However,the prescriptivism cannot be ignored in English lexicography.Neither absolute prescriptivism nor total descriptivism can be carried out in lexicographical practice.The two kinds of principles are complementary to each other and should be applied according to the purpose of the dictionary compilation and the need of the dictionary users.In AHD compilation,it combines the two principles well,which will promote the development of the English lexicography and should be the guiding principle of the English dictionary in the future.