Getting the Most out of the Dictionary by ALBERT H

Getting the Most Out of the Dictionary BY ALBERT H. MARCKWARDT This article was first published in Volume 12, No. 2 (1974). “Ah, take one consideration with another, the teacher’s the various connectives employed with the word different lot is not a happy one.” Slightly garbled out of The Pirates of (from, to, than); the acceptability of graduated from in the ac- Penzance, this quotation is of course an overstatement. But tive voice; a possible justification for the split infinitive; the certainly there is one consideration that makes teachers of pronunciation of the word falcon. English less than sublimely contented with their lot: the Those making the inquiries included both native and never-ending barrage of questions about the language to foreign speakers of English, all of whom were teaching which they are subjected, inside the classroom and out. English in a foreign country. The fact that they asked such Some of my recent letters from teachers of English in questions at all indicates a considerable degree of uncer- various parts of the world illustrate the kinds of questions tainty on the part of a fair number in the profession. Let us I am talking about. Here are samples of inquiries I have re- consi der first why this is so. ceived over the past year: One reason for the uncertainty of teachers of English 1. � A recent article in a magazine has a sentence that suggests itself at once: the lack of uniformity in the lan- speaks of the people being “tired of the effort of sup- guage itself. It takes only a glance at certain factual data to porting the program.” Is effort of supporting correct, or unders tand this lack of uniformity. At a conservative esti- should it be effort to support? mate, there are some 275 million speakers of English as a 2. � In the sentence He sank into contemplation with his arms first, or native, language. It would be surprising indeed to across, is the phrase with his arms across idiomatic? find these vast numbers speaking the language in identical 3. � Which is preferable, “not warm or cold” or “not warm fashion. Moreover, these speakers of English are scattered nor cold”? over five continents. They live in widely differing circum- 4. � Suppose someone asks, “When Bill dialed 3056, did it stances. They are subject to varying conditions of education get connected at once, or not?” Should the answer be and transmission of their cultural heritage. In situations of “It got connected at once,” or “Yes, it got connected”? Is this kind, obviously certain tendencies make for unifor- yes in this sentence necessary? mity and others encourage diversity. It is beside the point, 5. � In the clause the fields changed from green to brown, the theref ore, to insist that the question Had you a good time at blossoms to fruit, what does the word brown mean? the cinema? is either more or less acceptable than Did you have a good time at the movies? They are simply expressions These are all authentic questions to which I made a re- that are likely to occur in different geographical contexts. sponse that I hope was reasonably helpful. But I must con- Consequentl y, the assumption of a single, rigid, monolithic fess that for three of the five I felt the necessity of securing standard for the entire language is as dubious as the notion some kind of data-based support for the answer I gave. And that there is a single, unqualified “correct” answer to many my natural curiosity led me to see what in the way of firm of the questions I cited earlier. information I could find for the other two. These are a mere At this point one may well ask, “But why should ques- five out of dozens. tions such as these create any difficulty for the teacher? Other queries I received asked about the propriety of Can’t he get the answers out of the textbook he uses?” the use of a singular verb or pronoun of reference with data; Unfortuna tely, the answer to this has to be “No!” or at the E NGLISH T EACHING F ORUM | N UMBER 4 2 0 1 2 39 very least, “Not in a satisfactory manner.” There are several One must concede that, for a variety of reasons, the reasons for this. English lexicographers have come closer to dealing with Textbooks are prone to oversimplify complex linguis- the English language in its totality than have the grammar- tic issues in the interest of what their authors conceive to ians. It is true that the dictionary organizes and presents its be pedagogical effectiveness. And there is surely some justi- informa tion in a quite different manner—necessarily so, of fication for that. At other times the linguistic descriptions course. But nevertheless it is a constant source of surprise and judgments in the textbooks reflect information that is to find out how much information about the language is neither wholly correct nor accurate. My favorite illustra- available to the person who is thoroughly at home in this tion of this point is a sentence I once found in an English linguistic resource, is experienced in searching out the infor- textbook published in a non-English-speaking country: mation he needs, and is knowledgeable and sophisticated in He was riding on his automobile through a country road. I can interpreting what he finds. To go back to the five questions readily understand why and how these errors in the use of reported earlier, dictionaries contain relevant information words were made. But this scarcely condones the misinfor- on four of them. Grammars, even the most inclusive, dealt mation this sentence must have conveyed to several thou- adequately with one and somewhat less so with a second. sand students. The usefulness of the dictionary as a reliable source of As a consequence of all this, the conscientious and pro- information for word meanings, spelling, and pronuncia- fessionally motivated teacher will often feel impelled to go tion is widely recognized. But even in these obvious matters, behind the textbook and attempt to search out on his own the information that the dictionary has to offer is not always the kind of primary information about the language on accurately interpreted. With respect to pronunciation there which he can base a reasoned judgment. seem to be two general pitfalls: the interpretation of what- But suppose the teacher tries to do just this. Where will ever pronouncing key the dictionary employs, and the sup- he look? Presumably he would think first of the scholarly posed superior credibility of the “first” pronunciation. grammars of English—the works not intended as teaching texts but on which the textbooks are presumably based. Determining the pronunciation He might find answers to some of the questions like those In general, those few dictionaries that use a phonetic quoted at the outset of this discussion. But the chances are alphabet to indicate pronunciation pose no problem. But equally good that he might not. This assumes, of course, unfortunately they constitute a minority, especially in the that he has at his disposal the works of Otto Jespersen, Hen- United States. It is the varying systems of indicating the drik Poutsma, George Curme, Archibald Hill, Robert Lees, pronuncia tion, and especially the treatment of variant pro- Charles Fillmore—to run the gamut of the 20th century, nunciations, that is likely to confuse many users of the dic- from the historical-philological school, through the struc- tionary. The word falcon, which I referred to earlier, offers turalists, to the generative-transformationalists and the an excellent illustration of the difficulties that can arise. case grammarians. A search of eight dictionaries produces three broad va- Moreover, despite the extensive—almost gargantuan— rieties of pronunciation: (1) a pronunciation similar to that nature of some of these treatments (witness the seven vol- of talcum, with the vowel sound of fat and the l sounded; umes of Jespersen’s Modern English Grammar), it is a truism (2) a pronunciation with the vowel sound of offer, also with that no single grammar covers the entire structure of the the l sounded; and (3) a pronunciation with the vowel English language in every conceivable contingency. Some- sound of hawk, with the l silent. As far as interpreting the one pointed out not long ago that neither the structuralists pronuncia tion symbols goes, the American dictionaries nor the transformationalists have covered the English sub- pose no problem for anyone who has mastered the simple junctive at all adequately. We might say the same for such technique of equating the diacritical symbols with their a cause célèbre as the split infinitive, where there has been values in the key words given as illustrations. (This is not to only counting on the fingers and no real analysis. say that such a practice has my entire approval, but that is a But lest I seem to be preaching a sermon of despair and matter I shall not discuss here.) wanhope (to use a good Middle English term, which I do The British dictionaries do present a difficulty for intentionally), let me hasten to say that there is one use- persons whose basic orientation toward pronunciation is ful source of information about the English language that American. (And the reverse is also true.) No British dic- English teachers often fail to use to its fullest potential— tionary records the first of the pronunciations mentioned namely, the dictionary. I shall explain shortly the kind of above. And the British transcription of the other two pro- dictionary I have in mind.

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