Re: What exactly IS a dictionary anyway?

* Gary Shannon said on 2006-11-01 07:56:25 +0100
> In the process of researching existing dictionaries with
> an eye toward wiriting a decent, flexible conlang
> dictionary generator of some sort has lead me to wonder
> exactly what it is I'm trying to accomplish. In the final
> analysis, a dictionary is tool used by someone wishing to
> translate something from one language to another, or by
> someone wishing to learn a second language by referencing
> concpets in his or her first language to the language
> being learned.
Or someone who wants to know more about a word in some
language, be it a second language or not. There are:

- abbreviation dictionaries
- pronunciation dictionaries
- dictionaries of dictionary terms
- technical/scientific dictionaries, at least one per
  science or craft
- etymological dictionaries, like the OED or the AHD's
  PIE-supplement and arabic supplement
- wordlists, to check spelling/find word class
- dictionary stories, which can be read in any order and
  where the definitions+headwords make up the tale
- etc. etc.

The science of dictionaries is called *lexicography* and it
is truly fascinating. I'm looking to buy the following
dictionary of lexicography:

"Nordisk leksikografisk ordbok" (1997), editors
Bergenholtz, Henning, Ilse Cantell, Ruth Vadtvedt Fjeld, Dag
Gundersen, Jón Hilmar Jónsson, Bo Svensén

I used it in my masters thesis to discuss/define how I was
using words etc. and how certain technical words are used in
lexicography, linguistics and computational linguistics.

It has lexicographic terms translated between the various
Scandinavian languages, but also in French, German and
English. The first part is more of a treatise on the art of
lexicography.

The problem with (paper)-books these days are that they go
out of print just a few years after they are first published
and then they are impossible to get hold of. :(

> I have more or less been guided by my own experience with
> print dictionaries, but I ran across this dictionary that
> I'm really excited about:
>
> http://dict.leo.org/
>
> This strikes me as a great deal more
> useful than the traditional print dictionary, and a great
> deal easier to implement since the database behind it
> would only need to have two fields; one for an English
> word, phrase, compound or idiom, and one for the
> equivalent in German.
Or you could use xml and have the multi word units in their
own tree hanging off the headword, as does the two-way
English-Norwegian dictionary I used in my Master thesis.


t.

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