Background to lexicography

Overview of examples and resources

Objective:

To provide examples of what can be done in computational lexicography using modern concepts, methods and media.

Types of modern lexicon

• Lexical database
• Conventional lemma list organisation
• Static and dynamic concordances
• Hierarchical lexica:
  • Thesauri
  • Hyperlexica with online help and multimedia elements

Check Charles Fillmore's introduction

The following resources illustrate a range of dictionary and resource types, as well as sources of further information:

Resources on the web

Modern lexicographic tools

• Database management systems (DBMS): Shoebox, Access, Oracle, ...
  • For management of speech and language corpora (e.g. EMU, or SIL's speech corpus manager)
  • For management of lexica and lexical access for linguistic analysis
• Corpus annotation tools:
  • Speech signal labelling (transcription and alignment tools)
  • Text annotation tools (taggers)
  • Combined: tools for signal labelling with annotated transcriptions
• Corpus normalisation tools (often `home made' using Perl)
• Vocabulary extraction tools (often `home made' using Perl)
• Tools for extraction of linguistic information (e.g. verb valency)
• Terminology extraction tools
• Concordance construction tools
• On-the-fly (dynamic) concordance builders
• Text search engines (e.g. on the web)
• Hyperdocuments servers (internet, intranet, help systems)
• Lexicon formatting and production tools (for paper, electronic, hypertext formats)
• Notation and formalism specification standards (e.g. TEI, IPA, SAMPA)