Roget's Thesaurus Of Words For Intellectuals: S...
The original edition had 15,000 words and each successive edition has been larger,[3] with the most recent edition (the eighth) containing 443,000 words.[6] The book is updated regularly and each edition is heralded as a gauge to contemporary terms; but each edition keeps true to the original classifications established by Roget.[2] The name "Roget" is trademarked in parts of the world, such as the United Kingdom.[7] By itself, it is not protected in the United States, where use of the name "Roget" in the title of a thesaurus does not necessarily indicate any relationship to Roget directly; it has come to be seen as a generic thesaurus name.[8]
Roget's Thesaurus of Words for Intellectuals: S...
In previous papers I have suggested that we might profitably consider the history of English lexicography from the perspective of bibliography; that is, that each discrete book bearing a unique title page should be seen as a single edition of but a single text, The English Dictionary. My argument proceeded from an analysis of John Wilkins' and William Lloyd's Alphabetical Dictionary, published in 1668 as part of a larger work, An Essay towards a real character and philosophical language. The Essay proposes a scheme for a universal language; it also contains a short history of English, a grammar in the tradition of Speculative and Philosophical Grammar, and a conceptually ordered list of words which could be called a lexicon, or more mundanely, a thesaurus. I would point out that just saying this much already indicates the range of questions that need to be addressed to adequately understand and appreciate this work. For instance, can the book be defined within a print tradition? Do the stated intentions of the author restrict our understanding of the text? Does the author propose a language theory by way of his method? Is this more a text of the state of the English language of the mid-seventeenth century, or more a text of the state of scientific knowledge of the same period?
Turning for a moment to the concept of electronic database, we can further confuse the issue of what constitutes a proper dictionary when we conflate all word-lists, concordances, glossaries, thesauruses, and dictionaries (not to mention all non-alphabetically-ordered wordlists: narrative or not) into machine-readable form. From this perspective, it would be absurd to exclude the Wilkins/Lloyd text; on the other hand, it would be wise to consider the bibliographical shape of the database. Thus, we cannot escape the underlying questions implied by the creation of an electronic database. This leads me to the next topic of discussion: the representation of meaning and knowledge. Representing meaning, by which in this discussion I mean recording definitions, depends on textual form. For the purpose of our discussion, definition also includes any classification schemes or semantic diagrams, no matter the larger context. For example, definitions appear not only in dictionaries but in linguistic treatises, glosses of texts, and narrative texts. Moreover, the form, or structure, of a vocabulary creates its own narrative, even if that narrative is limited to revealing the human agency that constructed the form. In other words, a lexicon, a database, a concordance, or a classification system either presents itself (inasmuch as it is the creation of human agency) as an unstated theory of knowledge, or as knowledge and artifact. If form determines meaning, or at least is partially constitutive of meaning, then the way we capture the data for construction of databases becomes crucial; I will discuss this point later in this essay.
In order to illuminate the general point concerning the structure of presentation and representation of meaning I shall use the specific case of the Wilkins text. Werner Hüllen pointedly argues for a differentiation between thesaurus (the Wilkins text) and dictionary. I do not intend to criticize Hüllen's work, but it does merit comment. We do not have the time to fully explore the claims concerning the difference between dictionaries and thesauruses made by him and others, but this statement is relevant to the point I am attempting to make: "[Wilkins'] book is the first collection of words that in our understanding deserves the name 'thesaurus'. However, Wilkins' thesaurus does not give definitions at all but simply lists words in a certain arrangement" (p. 117). Hüllen refers only to the hierarchically ordered compendium of concepts and does not mention the part of the book that has its own title page with the title Alphabetical Dictionary; to be sure the dictionary is also an index to the lexicon, but to a large extent it is self-contained. However, that point aside, if we look only at the so-called thesaurus portion of the book, we find lengthy discursive passages integrated within the classification tables.
The thesaurus-like nature of this passage is obvious; however, just as evident is the dictionary-like text. The word-list section follows a general pattern that Wilkins explains in a chapter on interpreting the text; usually, each separate item in lists as exemplified above is included within the Alphabetical Dictionary. The entries provide one-word paraphrases with appropriate grammatical and semantic markers that distinguish among words within and across semantic domains.[5] The preceding illustration from what are called 'Philosophical Tables' appears as an introduction to the concepts that appear within the category of 'VERTUE' (within the system, 'VERTUE' is formally considered a Radical or Integral, that is, an atomic or elementary semantic unit). Within the subcategories, we also can see dictionary-like text; for example, before the lexical items associated with the subcategory 'FORTITUDE,' Wilkins writes: "whereby we are made duly resolute against all such difficulties either of Fear or Discouragement as may hinder us in our duty". Unlike Roget's thesaurus, Wilkins gives discursive text introducing and connecting lists of semantically related items; these commentaries tell the reader how to understand the formal organization on the page (a guide to knowledge) and have the textual elements recognizable as a definition text-type.
The most compelling words are those that invoke the senses. And even the best writers can struggle sometimes to think of the right ones to use. Keep this thesaurus on your shelf to make those moments far less frequent.
Taxonomically organized concepts can be represented by semantic networks with a hierarchical tree structure (Collins & Quillian 1969). Alternative semantic networks can be constructed on thesauri such as Roget's, which includes over 29,000 words classified into 1000 semantic categories. Roget's thesaurus corresponds to a bipartite graph, illustrated in Figure... 041b061a72