New words in old sources: Additions to the lemma list of a historical scholarly dictionary

Page 635-642
Author Ellert Thor Johannsson, Simonetta Battista
Title New words in old sources: Additions to the lemma list of a historical scholarly dictionary
Abstract This paper accounts for recent additions to the lemma list of A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose (ONP), which is a historical dictionary describing the medieval language of Iceland and Norway. The dictionary was established in 1939 and has throughout the years built up a large database containing about 800.000 example citations illustrating the vocabulary of all prose genres. The lemma list consists of about 65000 words with accompanying citations, but is continuously being revised. After giving a brief account of the history of this project we give an overview of the editorial principles, the criteria used for defining a lemma and discuss different types of lemmas found in the dictionary. We describe the characteristics of entries in ONP and mention different types of entries found in the online version. We then focus on the period from 2010-2019 and present a study into new additions to the lemma list during those years. We analyze these more recent words, divide them into eight groups and give some examples that illustrate the processes involved when new headwords are established. The results of the study show that most of the later additions to the lemma list come about in relation to editorial work on other words. A significant proportion of new words are established when new compounds are identified while editing uncompounded, simplex words, but other factors are in play as well.
Session Historical and Scholarly Lexicography and Etymology
Keywords historical lexicography; morphology; lexicology
BibTex 
@inproceedings{ELX2020_2021-066,
address = {Alexandroupolis},
title = {New words in old sources: {Additions} to the lemma list of a historical scholarly dictionary},
isbn = {978-618-85138-2-2},
url = {https://www.euralex.org/elx_proceedings/Euralex2020-2021/EURALEX2020-2021_Vol2-p635-642.pdf},
language = {en},
booktitle = {Lexicography for {Inclusion}: {Proceedings} of the 19th {EURALEX} {International} {Congress}, 7-9 {September} 2021, {Alexandroupolis}, {Vol}. 2},
publisher = {Democritus University of Thrace},
author = {Johannsson, Ellert Thor and Battista, Simonetta},
editor = {Mitits, Lydia and Kiosses, Sypros},
year = {2021},
pages = {635--642},}
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