| Abstract |
In this paper, we want to investigate the subset of the vocabulary of a given language or dialectal variant which is in actual use in the discourse of a linguistic community in order to set up a synchronic dictionary. The aim of this article is, thus, to develop a methodology for acquiring the nomenclature of synchronic dictionaries in a systematic way. To do this, we consider two kinds of operations: addition of entries –the birth of words, or Neology- and removal -the death of words, Desuetude, as we call it here. The methodology consists in contrasting dictionaries of a language (or dialectal variant) to find the intersection of the vocabulary, and to compare the vocabulary of the dictionaries with the vocabulary of a diachronic corpus. Such a methodology enables us to answer the following research questions: 1) what proportion of the vocabulary is shared by most dictionaries, 2) what proportion of units of each dictionary is no longer in use and 3) what proportion of the vocabulary units in use today is still not registered in the dictionaries. These three questions are central to the definition of the ideal headword. In a pilot experiment in Peninsular Spanish, we combine the study of the main dictionaries of this language variant with diachronic studies using corpus statistics on Spanish newspaper archives. |
| BibTex |
@InProceedings{ELX10-043,
author = {Rogelio Nazar, Jenny Azarian},
title = {The Living Lexicon: Methodology to set up Synchronic Dictionaries},
pages = {527-538},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th EURALEX International Congress},
year = {2010},
month = {jul},
date = {6-10},
address = {Leeuwarden/Ljouwert, The Netherlands},
editor = {Anne Dykstra and Tanneke Schoonheim},
publisher = {Fryske Akademy},
isbn = {978-90-6273-850-3},
} |
