The immediate impression of The Cambridge Dictionary of Linguistics is of a genuine dictionary, not an encyclopedia or a collection of essays. This view is confirmed by a closer examination: the book consists of an alphabetical list of words and phrases with simple definitions. Some definitions consist of a single sentence, others are longer with examples or explanations, but the core structure is that of a straightforward, traditional dictionary.
The introduction states that the primary audience is “undergraduate students and MA students whose curriculum includes a linguistics module”, but the entries also include items which relate to basic grammatical structure, as well as more esoteric linguistic vocabulary. The selection of terms by two eminent linguistic lecturers no doubt reflects their own teaching experience. They state that they were guided by the topics covered in linguistics courses at British universities focussing on terms used by introductory textbooks. Librarians outside the UK may, therefore, wish to check that the work serves their users’ needs, but there is no obvious UK bias.
The inclusion of words such as autobiography, cliché, dementia and fieldwork does raise questions about the education level of UK undergraduates, but the majority of entries are for very specific terms used in particular linguistic schools and range from ancient to modern. Almost all aspects of linguistics are covered, so there are elements relating to phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, syntax, morphology, semantics and pragmatics.
Key individuals in linguistics have brief biographies with ample references to terms relating to their work. There are also entries for 246 languages, including “major languages” and “languages regularly mentioned in research papers and textbooks”. Information is provided on language family and number of speakers. Although referencing of terms within entries is generous, a few more cross-references in header terms would be useful here – there is no entry for Gaelic although Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic both appear, and nothing for Flemish or Walloon. Writing systems are not covered: there is nothing for Cyrillic, Chinese characters or Romanisation. This exclusion of writing is exemplified by the fact that the word script is defined thus: “scripts were originally developed to enable computers to understand text such as stories and conversations”.
But these are minor issues in what is an impressive work which could become the first port of call for any beginning linguistics student. An e-book is available with clickable cross-referencing, but this was not available to the reviewer. This volume’s advantage over a general Internet search is consistency of approach and authority. However, this authority comes at a price. The book is attractive, easy to use and well made, but a price of £75 will put it beyond the reach of many for whom it could be useful.
