Re: What exactly IS a dictionary anyway?

Gary Shannon skrev:
 > 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. Thus the need to "look things up." But the
 > thing you need to look up is not always as simple as some
 > single word. More often it is a meaning, usually a word in
 > a particular context: not "house" but "court house" or
 > "chart house", "house fly", or "housing boom".
 >
 > 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/
 >

Yeah, that is a great dictionary, and it illustrates the
reason's why digital dictionaries are superior to print
ones. I work as a translator, and I hardly ever use a print
dictionary anymore, except for specialized vocabulary. I
would even go so far as to say that a computer program for
creating a print-style dictionary is a waste of time and
computer power, print dictionaries already being yesterday's
technology. Needless to say the beaty of a relational
database based dictionary is that you can search on
different criteria other than the canonical spelling of the
word, e.g.:

  + shared substrings, especially shared morphology
  + shared syntactical constructions and idioms
  + shared grammatical class
  + shared partial translations

Also you can get:

  + simultaneous view of related words that would not stand
    next to each other in a traditional a-z dictionary,

  + optional choice which type of information to view in any
    given search
         - pronunciation,
         - word class,
         - constructions, etymology,
         - synonyms,
         - antonyms,
         - translations into one or more other languages,
      	- cognates in other languages,
      	- etc., etc.

IMO the best setup would be to have several monolingual
dictionary databases, each organized as a thesaurus, and
then bind the different monolingual thesauri together by way
of id-codes for individual thesaurus entries and sub-
entries.

taliesin the storyteller skrev:

 > 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

Of course I live by etymological dictionaries. There are
even some appearing online, e.g.
<http://www.indoeuropean.nl>

 > - wordlists, to check spelling/find word class

Or as we spoke of the other day: reverse word lists to find
words that share the same suffixes.

 > - dictionary stories, which can be read in any order and
 >   where the definitions+headwords make up the tale
 > - etc. etc.

Cool. Can you recommend any?

 > 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

Svensén has written a "Handbok i lexikografi" which has
recently come in a new edition
<http://tinyurl.com/ueovd>, and so probably containing
something on electronic dictionaries. Forbiddingly
expensive for my budget ATM, though...

 > 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. :(

There are quite a few search engines for antiquarian books
these days, although there *is* better coverage for English
and German books than for Scandinavian languages. I've found
quite a few old goodies I deemed unobtainable for around SEK
100 at <bookfinder.com>. There is unfortunately nothing
comparable covering Scandinavian books yet.

 >> 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,

Amen. See above!
--


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot

                                 (Max Weinreich)

--


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot

                                 (Max Weinreich)

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