An inventory of European scholarly dictionaries

A short term scientific mission

Gerbrich de Jong30 september 2014

Content

• Introduction• Method• Results• Discussion

IntroductionShort term scientific mission• Goal: to make an inventory of European scholarly dictionaries • Main result: detailed overview of online available (scholarly) dictionaries and

their features• Focuses on goal 1 of WG1 (set up a European dictionary portal)• Focuses on goal 1 of WG2 (provide an overview of dictionaries that should be

retrodigitised)

Supervisors:Dr Vera Hildenbrandt (WG2), Universität Trier (Germany)Dr Anne Dykstra (WG1), Fryske Akademy (The Netherlands)

Duration: 1-25 September (17 working days)

Trier Center for digital humanities

Center for Digital Humanities

Method1. List all European languages in an Excel sheet 2. Look for an online scholarly dictionary for each language3. Check if there are other high-qualitative (‚nearly scholarly‘) online

dictionaries for this language4. Describe the internal structure of the dictionary5. If no online dictionary is available, look up the title of a printed

scholarly dictionary (for potential retrodigitizing, WG2)6. Extra: collect the title (and URLS, if available) of an etymological

dictionary and, if possible, describe its internal structure (to meet the goals of WG4)

Scholarly dictionary: definition

Working definition:

‚A scholarly dictionary is a dictionary that has authentic illustrations, with exact references to their sources. Such a dictionary is by definition descriptive and it explicitly strives to be an extensive and detailed synchronic inventory of a particular language.’

New definition:

‘A scholarly dictionary is a dictionary that has authentic illustrations, with exact references to their sources. Such a dictionary is in principle descriptive.’

Results• An excel-sheet with 83 languages• 125 dictionaries, of which…• 23 are etymological dictionaries• 21 are only available in printed version

A Language

• Pan, Christoph and Pfeil, Sibylle (2000). Die Volksgruppen in Europa. Ein Handbuch. Braumüller: Wien.

• europa.eu• auswaertigesamt.de

• 83 languages • 25 languages remain empty• Exclusive national languages, national languages with extraterritorial spread,

stateless languages

B Country

C Original Title

D Translated Title

E Abbreviation

F URL

G Organization/Publisher

H Editor

I Accessibility

Online

Partly online, work in progress

Behind paywall, partly accessible

Behind paywall, not accessible

Printed only

J Digitization

K Search on

L Form

M Grammatical characterization

N Meaning#1 synonyms

#2 paraphrases

#3 translations

#4 images

O Etymological information

P Examples

Q Usage information

R Cross-references

Medieaval Greek

Modern Greek

S Dictionary portalWhat is a dictionary portal?

A data structure(i) that is presented as a page or set of interlinked pages on a computer screen and(ii) provides access to a set of electronic dictionaries,(iii) where these dictionaries can also be consulted as standalone products.

Müller-Spitzer & Engelberg

Quotation from: Carolin Müller-Spitzer and Stefan Engelberg (2009). Dictionary Portals. In: Rufus H. Gouws e.o. (eds.): Dictionaries. An international encyclopedia of lexicography. Supplementary volume: Recent developments with special focus on computational lexicography. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.

T Metalanguage

In general

Everyone who uses my inventory should realize that it is made by someone who is not a speaker of these languages. Mostly I managed to find things out by using Google Translate, but what if…

• A language is not on Google Translate?• Text can not be copied to Google Translate?

In general

Therefore …the MC members of this COST Action will check whether the dictionaries in the list are the best ones available and whether the internal structure of the dictionary is described correctly

…the editors of online dictionaries should be encouraged to provide detailed information on their dictionary in English.

Discussion• What is a scholarly dictionary?

• Which languages should be included in the portal? On which authority or on what source should this be based?

• What should the dictionary portal look like? Is it a collection of scholarly dictionaries or is it a service which offers at least one dictionary for each language (scholarly or not)?

• Should there be non-scholarly dictionaries in the portal? If yes, on which criteria do we select them?

• Should dialect dictionaries be part of the dictionary portal?

• Do dictionaries need to meet special requirements to be part of the dictionary portal, apart from being scholarly? (For example: add only dictionaries with full text search abilities?)

Thank you!