Whys and Hows of Collecting for the Dictionary of Canadian English II. Excerption of Quotations

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique
• Main Author: Lovell, Charles J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1956
• Subjects: Linguistics and Language; Language and Linguistics; Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008413100000062; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0008413100000062

Having decided to lend a hand with the Dictionary of Canadian English, one’s first thought will be to read various items of Canadiana for the purpose of excerpting quotations. In his initial burst of enthusiasm, the volunteer is likely to tackle something on the order of the Publications of the Hudson’s Bay Record Society, Cartwright’s Labrador Journal (1792), Pennant’s Arctic Zoology , Isham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay (1743), Palliser’s Journals (1863), or files of such pioneer newspapers as the Loyalist (York), Qu’Appelle Vidette , or Bob Edwards’s Calgary Eye Opener . While works like these are ideal sources of citations for the dictionary we envisage their every importance renders them unwise choices for the neophyte. It is not enough to select works of historical value, for mere mechanical examination of the most promising sources cannot be expected to yield optimum results in the absence of a thorough knowledge of the field of inquiry. Not only is there the risk that the unskilled researcher will fail to notice some unfamillar words, illustrative of the life and thoughts of earlier periods, but he may also miss a few common ones. Then, too, he may waste time in collecting irrelevant material. Since the earlier examples of more settled words are ordinarily hardest to locate and, of course more prized, the consequences of an inexperienced researcher overlooking, say, an 1856 example of Confederation (for it was used anticipatively well before 1867) are rather more serious than would be the skipping of more recent words. The products of a disciplined understanding are superior to those of an uncultivated understanding, so it is to our helpers’ advantage to learn as much as possible of the basic principles of lexical research before delving into scarcer source materials.