Monolingual dictionaries are further subdivided with regard to the time.

· Diachronic (historical) dictionaries, of which ‘The Oxford English Diction­ary’ is the main example, reflect the development of the English vocabulary by recording the history of form and meaning for every word registered. E.g. J. Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Lnd. 1882-98; H. Kurath, A. M. Kuhn, J. Reidy Middle English Dictionary. Michigan Univ.

· Synchronic (descriptive) dic­tionaries of current English concerned with present-day meaning and usage of words. E.g. the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English; the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.

The boundary between the two is, however, not very rigid, in many cases the two principles are blended as, for example in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. Some synchronic dictionaries are at the same time historical when they represent the state of vocabulary at some stage of its development.

5. According to the scope of their word-list linguistic dictionaries may be:

· general;

General dictionaries represent the vocabulary as a whole with a degree of completeness depending upon the scope and bulk of the book in question. Some general dictionaries may have very specific aims and still be con­sidered general due to their coverage. They include, for instance, fre­quency dictionaries (lists of words, each of which is followed by a record of its frequency of occurrence in one or several sets of reading matter). A rhyming dictionary is also a general dictionary, though ar­ranged in inverse order, and so is a thesaurus in spite of its unusual ar­rangement, e.g. the Collins COBUILD Thesaurus. General dictionaries are contrasted to special dictionaries which cover only a certain specific part of the vocabu­lary.

Restricted dictionaries are further subdivided depending on wheth­er the words are chosen according to the sphere of human activity in which they are used (1), the type of the units them­selves (2) or the relationships exist­ing between them (3).

· The first subgroup is represented by restricted dictionaries of limit­ed scope that register and explain technical termsfor various branches of knowledge,art and trade (medical, linguistic, technical, economic terms, etc). E.g. the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law. Monolingual dictionaries of this type are called glossaries.

The second subgroup deals with specific language units, i.e. with phraseological units, abbreviations, neologisms, borrowings, toponyms, dialectal words, proverbs and sayings:

o Dictionaries of foreign words; Carrol D. The Dictionary of Foreign Terms in the English Language NY Hawthorn, 1973;

o Phraseological dictionaries; the best bilingual phraseological dictionary is English-Russian Dictionary by A.V. Kunin. It is a real masterpiece, a monument to its compiler. The dictionary describes English phraseologisms fromCh. Dickens (1812-1870) up to Modern English. It was first published in 1955 and now we deal already with the IV-th edition containing about 30.000 phraseological units, the material for illustration includes the novels of our contemporaries.

o Dictionaries of quotations; A Dictionary of Humorous Quotations/ ed. by Ned Sherrin. – Oxford University Press, 1995; Instant Quotation Dictionary. – New York: Laurel, 1990; Stevenson B. Book of Quotations, Classical and Modern. Lnd., Cassel (70.000); The Oxford nirtjnnary of Quotations. 3rd ed. Oxford. 1979 (70.000); Bartlett J. Familiar Quotations. Lnd. Macmillan.; Cohen J. M. and M. J. Penguin Dictionary of Quotations; Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations; Tripp R.T. The International Thesaurus of Quotations. N.Y.

o Dictionaries of neologisms; 6000 Words. A Supplement to Webster’s Third New International Dictionary Mass. Merriam, 1976; Berg P.S. A Dictionary of New Words in English.; Barnhart C.I. Dictionary of New English;

o Dictionaries of abbreviations and signs; Patridge E.A. Dictionary of Abbreviations. Lnd. Constable; Allen E. Dictionary of Abbreviations and Symbols. Lnd.; Buttress F.A. World List of Abbreviations. 3rd ed. Lnd., Leonard Hill, 1966.

The third subgroup contains:

o Dictionaries of Synonyms; English-Russian Synonymic Dictionary (under the supervision of A.I. Rosenman and academician Yu. Der. Apresiayn); Webster’s New Dictionary of Synonyms. It is a dictionary of explanatory type. A lot of attention is paid to the depth of distinctions between synonyms. The best dictionary-inventory is Laird Ch. Webster’s New World Thesaurus. N.Y., New American Library, 1971. 30000 entries, each of which represents an exhaustive list of synonyms, practically, the dictionary reflects all the active vocabulary of modern English speakers. Very popular in Britain and USA is Soule R. A Dictionary of English Synonyms and Synonymous Expressions / Ed. by A.D. Sheffield. N.Y. Bantam Books.

o Dictionaries of Antonyms – they are very few as synonymic dictionaries give antonyms together with synonyms; e.g. Комиссаров В.И. Словарь антонимов современного английского языка. М., 1964.

6.According to the information they provide all linguistic dictionaries fall into two groups:

· explanatory;