The Acorn of the Oak: A Stylistic Approach to Lexicographical Method in Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall [1994, rptd. 1995, 1996, 2008]

Abstract

Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall is often seen as the first English monolingual dictionary and has been traditionally viewed as an amalgam of previously existing word lists, glosses, didactic works, and bilingual dictionaries. There are elements within Cawdrey's work, however, which are unique unto him, and the foremost of these is found in that part of the Table which reflects the process by which he assembled his entries: the style of his definitions. This paper, which represents work in progress, seeks to explore Cawdrey's compilation process and, ultimately, to define the predominant syntactic structures which govern Cawdrey's work.