lexical searches for the arts and humanities jeremy smith, christian kay, simon horobin department...
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Lexical Searches for the Arts and Humanities
Jeremy Smith, Christian Kay, Simon Horobin
Department of English Language
University of Glasgow
Project Aims
database of search words
dates of use
semantic categories
style
Historical Thesaurus of English
• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition
• Old English dictionaries
• 650,000 meanings
• detailed semantic taxonomy
http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/
sesll/englang/thesaur/homepage.htm
Musical Instruments• piano 1803
• pianoforte 1767
• forte-piano 1769
• joanna 1846
Interdisciplinarity
Art Clothing Drink Food
Health Kinship Law Music
Navigation Plants Weather
Thesaurus of Old English
Thesaurus of Old English
• 50,000 meanings
• MySQL database
• British Academy funding
http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/oethesaurus/
http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/reports.php
Complex Searches• find all words meaning ‘trumpet’• find all words meaning ‘trumpet’ recorded
between 1400 and 1850• find all words meaning ‘trumpet’ recorded
after 1700 in the USA
Significance
• interdisciplinarity
• research enhancement
• fully electronic Historical Thesaurus
Issues
Spelling
• piano* > pianoe, pianos, pianoes• OED ‘Trumpet’, also 4-6 trompette,- et,
trumpette, 5 trompett, troumpette,
6-7 trumpett; Sc. 5 trompat, troumpat(e, trumpate, 5-6 trumpat,
6 –ait