Johnson's and Webster's Verbal Examples

Download or read book Johnson's and Webster's Verbal Examples written by Kusujiro Miyoshi and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-12-19 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses Noah Webster's and Samuel Johnson's use of verbal examples in their dictionaries as a means of giving guidance on word usage. The author's major interest lies in elucidating how uniquely Webster, who was originally a grammarian, made use of verbal examples. In order to achieve this purpose, the author provides chapters based on types of entry words in their functional contexts. Johnson's selection of sources of citations and the frequency of his quoting citations tended to vary strongly according to the type of entry word; he also supplied invented examples rather than citations when he thought it especially necessary to clarify the use of a word. By contrast, with the exception of biblical ones, almost all of Webster's citations were taken from Johnson's »Dictionary«. However, Webster significantly made full use of such citations to express his view on word usage, which differs essentially from Johnson's. Besides, Webster had a strong tendency to quote phrases and sentences from the Bible for the same purpose.