There is no clear-cut boundary between "normal" and "special" dictionaries; more and more publishers are active in developing and combining the features of usual dictionaries and those of more or less specialised repertories. The latter can be grouped into four main categories:

1. dictionaries that select one aspect and develop it in much greater detail: etymological dictionaries, pronunciation dictionaries, etc.;
2. dictionaries that rearrange vocabulary in alternative, non-alphabetical ways, in order to meet the needs of certain types of users: onomasiological repertories, dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms (thesauruses), etc.;
3. dictionaries that, beside dealing with the language proper, add information on the culture and civilisation: encyclopaedic dictionaries, dictionaries of quotations, etc.;
4. dictionaries that combine the role of common dictionaries with that of other reference books or study materials: such is the case of some "active dictionaries" for learners.

3.4.1 Pronunciation dictionaries and repertories of homophones

DANIEL JONES's English Pronouncing Dictionary (EPD) has a very special role in English culture. Its description of Received Pronunciation is so authoritative that "look it up in the Jones" has been a familiar expression in many English homes ever since the first edition (London, Dent, 1917). Fourteen more editions followed in 1924, 1926, 1937, 1940, 1944, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1956, 1963, 1967, 1977 and 1987, each of them with additions, revisions and several reprints. After D. Jones's death in 1967 his work was carried on by A.C. Gimson and, when he died in 1985, by S. Ramsaran. The 15th edition is edited by Peter Roach and James Hartman. The publisher has also changed: the 14th and 15th editions are published by Cambridge U.P.

The dictionary gives the pronunciation not only of common words but also of several proper nouns (place-names, famous people — from ancient times to current news —, frequent personal and family names, literary characters, etc.) and of technical terms in various fields, from science to law. Besides, it gives:

• clues to distinguish homographs that are not homophones, i.e. words with the same spelling but different pronunciations (words like bow or lead);
• the weak forms of all the function words that have weak pronunciations beside the strong form;
• all the most important derivatives and compounds.

The 14th edition included about 100,000 entries and over 135,000 pronunciations. In the 15th edition the entries have been selected and reduced to about 80,000 but the General American variants have been added wherever the US pronunciation is different from BBC English. In all the editions the introduction provides not just a guide to the use of the dictionary but also a good survey of English phonetics and phonology — mostly focusing on segmental sounds but including the features that influence segmentals, like syllables, stress, etc. These pages, therefore, are very good for a preliminary introduction to English pronunciation studies.

J.C. Wells, another pupil of D. Jones's, who succeeded him to the Chair of Phonetics at the University College, London, edited the Longman Pronouncing Dictionary in 1990. It was the first pronouncing dictionary to describe both varieties, British and American, systematically. The introductory note is very brief but several problems of phonetics and phonology are deal with in special "windows" or "boxes" placed in the body of the dictionary on the basis of the alphabetical order. The entries beginning with a include the boxes about Affricates, articulation, aspiration, assimilation; among the several others, diphthongs, phoneme and allophone, syllables, weak forms etc. are the most significant.

Among the odd publications in the field, there is the Dizionario degli Omofoni Inglesi (Ceschina, Milan, 1967). The author, Bruno Augusto Cerutti, introduces himself as "Dottore in Fisica"; indeed, the whole 1300-page volume appears to be the work of an amateur who does not know linguistic theory and whose knowledge of English is to be judged inadequate even considering the date of publication. After a half century since the first edition of the Jones (and ten more editions of the EPD in between), Englishwomen is represented as INGHLISC WIMIN; then we find — in round brackets — the "phonetic transcription" (‘ingliÔ wimin) with alveolar [n] instead of velar [4] before [g].

Italian homophones include pairs of the contante/con tante type; there is a hint at English homophones resulting from that fact that plural endings and possessive endings coincide phonologically: students/student's (however, the form *students's also appears at least four times!). These oddities are highlighted here only because this dictionary is not a cheap, small booklet: indeed it looks similar, at first sight, to the biggest works on the English language published in Italy in the second half of the 20th century. A careful look at the contents of all dictionaries is always essential.

3.4.2 Onomasiological dictionaries

This class of dictionaries moves in the opposite direction from usual dictionaries; that is, these repertories proceed from meanings and semantic areas to the words and phrases in the language.

A work where this process is followed thoroughly is the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases usually referred to as "the Roget" after Peter Mark Roget, M.D., FRS its first author. Roget was a physician who also became the secretary of the Royal Society; as early as 1805 he had started compiling a "classed catalogue of words" for his own personal use. However, it was only at the end of his brilliant career as a scientist, in 1849, that he managed to devote himself to the Thesaurus, whose first edition was in 1852 (London, Longmans &Co.). It was immediately successful, with new editions in 1853, 1855 (twice) and 1857. Since then there have been innumerable issues, revisions, adaptations and reprints. After Dr Roget's death the editing work (updating, corrections, etc.) was carried on by his son, John Lewis Roget and later by his grandson Samuel Romilly Roget.

The starting point is the classification of words and phrases as follows:

To give you an example, let us see the sub-categories of the section Existence:

The main body of the Thesaurus consists of the numbered items (Existence, Inexistence, etc.), 1000 in all. Again by way of example, here is group no. 3, Substantiality that belongs to the second sub-category and is placed, together with no. 4, Unsubstantiality, under the title "Being, in the Concrete":

3. Substantiality. - N. substantiality, hypostasis; person, thing, object, article; something, a being, an existence; creature, body, substance, flesh and blood, stuff, substratum; matter &c. 316; physical nature.

[Totality of existences], world &c. 318; plenum.

Adj. substan-tive, -tial, concrete; hypostatic; personal, bodily; tangible &c. (material) 316; real, corporeal, evident.

Adv. substantially &c. adj.; bodily, essentially.

Please note:

- technical terms in italics;

- the listing of phrases and collocations ("a being", "flesh and blood", etc.) alongside with isolated words;

- cross-references to other items: 316 Materiality, 318 World;

- the listings of nouns, adjectives and adverbs — many other items also include verbs.

The final part of the Thesaurus consists of the alphabetical list of the words with the number(s) of the relevant item(s); here is an example:

heap - quantity 31 collection 72 store 636 too many 641

Roget points out that the labels are not meant to be definitions but are only intended to provide guidance in the search of the semantic field the user is interested in. Thanks to this index, the Thesaurus can also be used as a dictionary of synonyms; actually, it is much more: it is a systematic, highly-organised body of conceptual areas.

The analysis offered by the Thesaurus is strictly monolingual; the repertories of deceptive cognates — the so-called "false friends — instead, work on a cross-linguistic basis: they are pairs of words that look very similar in the two languages (usually because they share a common etymology) but whose meanings are totally or partly different in the two languages. In some cases the difference does not concern the meaning but the use (for instance, a frequently-used colloquial word in one language may correspond to a word in the other language that is only used in formal discourse or as a technical-scientific term).

A development of the Thesaurus concept is represented by the Word Routes series published by Cambridge; the English-Italian version was brought out in 1995. It contains 450 groups of words (from "Wild Animals" to "Angry" — the logic for the ordering of the classes, if there is one, is not clear at all: 198 Kill, 199 Sex, 200 Old…; 302 Careless, 303 Machinery…). The words are explained in Italian and the dictionary gives the Italian translation(s) for each English word. The final alphabetical lists of English words (with phonetic transcriptions) and Italian words allow users to search the dictionary very easily. Users are encouraged to look at all the words and phrases in a group — not just the ones they have in mind — in order to discover the differences in a given semantic area and find the most appropriate word.

As regards the comparison between English and Italian, these two books can also be useful:

A. D'EUGENIO, Falsi amici inglesi, Foggia, Atlantica, 1984;

V. BROWNE, Odd Pairs & False Friends, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1987.

The first is a monograph rather than a dictionary. It is very accurate in analysing the various degrees and forms of divergence and similarity. There are words that never correspond to the similar words in the other language: abusive, trivial, morbid, etc. never translate "abusivo, triviale, morbido", and so on. Other words show different levels of overlapping — sometimes limited to marginal uses, other times more conspicuous but not complete. The words are grouped according to the number of corresponding meanings and listed on the basis of English; the final alphabetical index allows users to retrieve each of the items (about 600) analysed.

The second is a dictionary collecting over 1000 pairs, listed in alphabetical order on the basis of English. It also includes some borrowings which, as it frequently happens, have acquired new and different meanings in our language, losing some of the others. The reverse (i.e. English-Italian) list at the end of the book is not very useful because the alphabetical order mostly coincides, with few exceptions like squisito vs. exquisite.