One of the main application areas which is currently driving the development of lexicography is the hyperlexicon. A hyperlexicon is minimally defined as a lexicon whose macrostructure is represented as a navigable hypergraph of cross-linked lexical objects, typically as a tree hierarchy, and implemented electronically with navigation (browser) software. Additionally, the microstructure may also be hierarchically organised and seamlessly integrated into the macrostructure so that the distinction between microstructure and macrostructure becomes fuzzy.
During the past four years or so, a number of specific projects with similar names have sprung up: the author's HyprLex database (1995) within the VERBMOBIL speech-to-speech translation project; the Hyperlex concept (1996) of Steven Bird, University of Pennsylvania, for integrating written and spoken data in a linguistic fieldwork context (check Web sources for these).
On the above definition, there are in practice many lexica which may count as hyperlexica; even a traditional hierarchically organised lexicon such as a thesaurus may be described as a virtual hyperlexicon. But the common manifest hyperlexicon types are the following:
There is a danger, of course, in including so many kinds of product within the scope of the notion of hyperlexicon: the term appears to lose much of its descriptive value. But the apparent heterogeneity of this list is deceptive: with modern text technologies, it is possible to define reference databases and knowledge bases from which any of the lexicon types listed above may be derived automatically -- thus confirming the integrative value of a general term like `hyperlexicon'.