Article,
Researching the Beginnings of Bilingual Polish-English and English-Polish Lexicography: An Introduction
International Journal of Lexicography, (2013)
Abstract
This paper, which complements a larger project in the history of Polish-English and English-Polish lexicography, rests on the assumption that sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century polyglot dictionaries in which Polish was paired with English can be treated as historical antecedents of bilingual dictionaries. The basic argument for such an integrated approach is that the polyglots provide the earliest documentation material, that is, contrastive lists of Polish and English vocabulary items. Notwithstanding the potential of the bilingual data, much of which remains largely unexplored, describing the dictionaries has turned out to be more complex than it seemed at first sight. Therefore, by situating the polyglots in the historical context and outlining the problems that need to be dealt with, this paper is only an introduction to the research area.A
