Аннотация: А typology of explanatory (monolingual) dictionaries is specified such as would reflect the functional-communicative stratification of the total vocabulary of a language into the following three layers: (1) “kernel vocabulary” made up by the shared part of the individual active normative vocabularies of all native speakers; (2) “the total vocabulary of a period of time”, i.e. the sum total of these individual active vocabularies; (3) “the cumulative vocabulary of a people”, made up by all the active and passive vocabularies of the normal native speakers of the corresponding language.
The issues under consideration include the relation between dictionary sizes (as measured in entry words), the semantic volume of words common to different dictionaries, etc. A tendency is noted for words to shift to a new polysemantic field when presented in a medium sized dictionary as opposed to a small one.