Lexical studies

Many words to do with everyday life are not in general use throughout a complete language area and indeed many words of a language are known only to speakers within fairly confined regions. This realization and the related observation that common words often have· a distinct pronunciation in local speech as well as meanings which differ regionally, gave rise to the study of what words are to be found in a locality and what meanings are given to them. Of these studies the impetus to compile glossaries has been the most prevalent. These vary in coverage, some confining themselves to the uncommon words of a village or parish, and are little more than a chapter in a history of a dialect. Others aim at a complete collection of all the words in a defined locality. The value of these compilations is that they give precise information on the vocabulary used in one area at a particular time. More ambitious projects exist in some countries. In Finland, for example, collecting dialect words and phrases systematically in a number of determined locations covering the whole country in order to compile a Finnish dialect dictionary has been in progress for some years. Such glossaries and dictionaries should show with phonetic accuracy the form of a word as used by local speakers as well as defining fully its different meanings, giving examples of its usage in the various contexts where it is to be found.