Lexicography
Claire Bowern
Arienne Dwyer
https://web.archive.org/web/20150424032216/https://idrh.ku.edu/colang-workshops
Time: 10:15am – 11:45am
Week 1: 19 - 22 June 2012
Meeting Location: 455 Watson Library
This course is a practical introduction to dictionary making. We will follow the process of how to compile a dictionary, starting with wordlists from field notes to final publication. The four sessions will cover principles of what should go in a dictionary, how to target materials for different audiences, how to target elicitation at lexicographic topics, lexicography from a corpus, and software which assists in dictionary compilation, editing, and sharing. There will be opportunities for students to apply the principles learned in class to their own data. We will provide examples from dictionaries from Australian Aboriginal languages and Central Asian languages, based on published resources and our own work. The instructors are both fieldworkers with extensive experience in the ins and outs (and opportunities and pitfalls) of practical lexicography.
Presentations (pdf)
Resources for Lexicography
Bowern (2008) Linguistic Fieldwork has a short chapter on fieldwork for making dictionaries: BOWERN_Ch08 (PDF)
The Pama-Nyungan links from Yale might also be useful.
Frawley, Hill, and Munro (2002) Making Dictionaries (Frawley, William, Kenneth C. Hill and Pamela Munro. 2002. Making Dictionaries: preserving indigenous languages of the Americas. Berkeley: University of California Press) is a collection of articles on dictionary-making in languages of the Americas. It is aimed at academics but brings up a lot of the points we have been talking about in class.
Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell (2008) Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography is a very detailed guide about how to go about making a dictionary. It unfortunately makes a lot of assumptions about language structure, language materials (we all have multi-million word corpora, right?), and has less to say about multilingual dictionaries than monolingual English dictionaries, but it is still quite useful for things to think about in dictionary making.
Sidney Landau (1984/2001) Dictionaries: the art and craft of lexicography. (2nd ed., Oxford University Press.) Another introduction to lexicography, again heavily focused on English, but useful for issues to think about.
The web site of the TshwaneLex software has links to papers from the project staff which talk about lexicography, particular computer-based lexicography.
Bartholomew and Schoenhals (1983) Bilingual dictionaries for Indigenous Languages. Another classic publication (somewhat hard to use though).
a nice list of online dictionaries which are worth browsing.
Coward and Grimes, Making Dictionaries (PDF). (In SIL MDF formatting, but is also a very pain-free introduction to much of lexicography. Mostly useful if you are using SIL software such as Toolbox or FLEx.)
Green, Jonathon. 1996. Chasing the Sun - Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries They Made Henry Holt & Co [Also Pimlico edition 2002].
Hartmann, Reinhard. R. K. 2001 Teaching and Researching Lexicography. Palgrave. [not in KU Library]
Haviland, John. 2006. Documenting lexical knowledge. In Jost Gippert, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Ulrike Mosel (eds.) Essentials of Language Documentation, 129-162.
Jackson, Howard 2002 Lexicography: An Introduction. Routledge.
Mosel, Ulrike. 2004. Dictionary making in endangered speech communities. In: Peter K. Austin (ed.) Language documentation and description. Vol. 2, 39-54. London: SOAS.
Lexique Pro: available for free [pc, mac temperamentally with wine]
Toolbox: available for free [pc, or mac/linux with wine]
TshwaneLex: (€150 for educational license) [pc or mac]
KirrKirr: available for free [pc, mac, linux]
Wunderkammer: available for free [java program for converting Toolbox/Lexique dictionaries to mobile phone dictionaries]
WeSay: [pc, linux under ubuntu]
Flashcard programs: e.g. Anki: free [pc, mac, linux, phone]
AntConc (Mac-PC-Linux)
Matapuna: Free [server]; designed for multiple users. Requires some setup and knowledge of how servers work.
Miromaa: pc only: [pricing tiered based on type of license, from free to c. AU$500]
Example online dictionaries: