Thesaurus: what is it? The dictionary-thesaurus, which is more than a dictionary

More and more often in numerous projects, books, brochures, Internet resources one can find the concept of "thesaurus". Like a mysterious phenomenon, it frightens with its unknownness, because it's much easier to say "dictionary", rather than use a strange definition.

Thesaurus: what is it? How does it differ from a conventional dictionary? We will try to study these issues in more detail and accessible.

Interpretation of the term

Originally the concept of the thesaurus was considered from the point of view of the dictionary, which represented the vocabulary of the language with examples of use in the text.

Ozhegov interprets the thesaurus as a dictionary of a specific language, which reflects the vocabulary in full, while Efremova considers this phenomenon from the point of view of a systematized data set in a certain field of knowledge.

The most specific definition is used in philology, where the thesaurus is understood as a component of the dictionary type, where all the meanings of words are related by semantic relations and reflect key relationships of concepts in a particular subject area.

As we see, it is rather difficult to answer the question: "Thesaurus: what is this?" Uniquely. For a more narrow study of the term, we consider the history of the appearance, types and ratios of lexical units in a dictionary of a similar type.

History of occurrence

The founding father of the thesauri is the English physicist Roger, who in 1852 systematized the vocabulary of the English language, distributing it into groups. At the same time, each group was represented by the name of the concept, and later its synonyms for certain parts of speech, lists of related names, as well as references to names of other categories. The idea of such a classification was very valuable, since the dictionary was considered the most natural, described the vocabulary of the language in the fullest measure. In doing so, it could be applied as a quick search for important concepts. Since the time of the first thesaurus, and so far, there has been a regular transformation of this type of vocabulary, which is used in many fields of knowledge and is widely used throughout the world. At the same time, the study of the topic: "Thesaurus: what is this?" Is relevant in many educational institutions.

To this day, thesauruses remain the most popular way of describing knowledge in any field necessary for effective human perception.

The relationship of words in the thesaurus

The most common relations in the classical thesaurus are:

1. Synonymy - a phenomenon in which the words of one part of speech are related, similar in lexical meaning. For example: the state-fatherland, brigade-detachment, scarlet-red , etc.
2. Anthony is the connection of the words of one part of speech having the opposite lexical meaning. For example: silence - rumbling, affectionate - rude .
3. Hyperonimia (hyponymy) are key relationships for the purpose of describing nouns. Hyperonym has a wide lexical meaning, it expresses the generic, general name of a class (set) of objects, objects, namely its properties and attributes. The hyponym has a narrow meaning, it calls an object (attribute, property) as an element of a particular set or class. In order for these relations to become clear, let's give a simple example. The words beast and tiger are related, while the common name - the beast - is a hyperonym in relation to the hypogonous tiger.
4. Meronemia (partonomy) - relations for nouns, are formed on the principle of "part-whole". As an example, consider the words plane, chassis , porthole . In this case, the general name of the transport is holonomic (integer, name), and its constituent parts are meronyms.
5. Consequence (the relationship between verbs). For example, the words go and come are related by the process and its consequence (result).
6. Reason (also valid only for verbs). Let's consider an example of such relations, we shall take words: to hurt - to pass . In this case, the reason is to be traced - to miss, because there were health problems.

What the thesaurus is, we will see from the following example.

Bed - a device for sleep.

[Hyperonim]: furniture
[MERO]: House
[Synonym]: stove, floor.

This is only a classic example of the thesaurus of the Russian language, but all dictionaries of this type are built precisely on this principle.

Thesaurus Functions

The dictionary-thesaurus carries important social, communication, scientific and other functions.

He is:

• Source of special knowledge in a broad or narrow subject area, a way of ordering, description of terms of the subject area ;
• A search tool in the information flow;
• Tool for manual analysis of documentation in search engines;
• Tool for automatic indexing of complex texts.

Types of thesauri

The variety of dictionaries requires considering not only the question: "Thesaurus: what is this?", But also pay attention to species. This will help us to better understand the peculiarities of this type of dictionaries.

1. Dictionaries for individual branches of knowledge - philological, pedagogical, philosophical, etc. thesauri. Present a list of special terms with an indication of all possible links between them.
2. Information retrieval (IPT) - used as a tool for automatic or manual information retrieval. In the institutes there are about a hundred branch thesauruses that correspond to state standards. Of the possible semantic links between concepts, they use three: generic, synonymous, and associative (all others).
3. Thesauri of a specific language. For example, WordNet - the famous thesaurus of the English language, is created for detailed characteristics of vocabulary and conceptual apparatus.
4. Multilingual (universal) - allow you to find words related to each other, from different languages.
5. There are also non-standard thesauri that set the task of selectively systematizing terms in a certain area of knowledge, which is most acceptable for the newest subject areas.

Conclusion

We hope that we could explain in an accessible language what a thesaurus is. Thanks to the examples, it's easy to understand how it differs from other dictionaries. We also highlighted the issue of information retrieval thesauri, which are widely used by the information system for the rapid search and systematization of millions of titles.