Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Issues in English Lexicography
- Chapter 2 How a Word Gets into an English Dictionary
- Chapter 3 Technology and English Dictionaries
- Chapter 4 Diachronic and Synchronic English Dictionaries
- Chapter 5 Description and Prescription: The Roles of English Dictionaries
- Chapter 6 European Cross-Currents in English Lexicography
- Chapter 7 English Slang Dictionaries
- Part II English Dictionaries Throughout the Centuries
- Part III Dictionaries of English and Related Varieties
- Guide to Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Chapter 3 - Technology and English Dictionaries
from Part I - Issues in English Lexicography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Part I Issues in English Lexicography
- Chapter 2 How a Word Gets into an English Dictionary
- Chapter 3 Technology and English Dictionaries
- Chapter 4 Diachronic and Synchronic English Dictionaries
- Chapter 5 Description and Prescription: The Roles of English Dictionaries
- Chapter 6 European Cross-Currents in English Lexicography
- Chapter 7 English Slang Dictionaries
- Part II English Dictionaries Throughout the Centuries
- Part III Dictionaries of English and Related Varieties
- Guide to Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Summary
This chapter reviews the transformative effects of technology on dictionary-making, focusing on four main areas: the use of databases for storing and organising dictionary text; the creation and exploitation of corpora for use as the dictionary’s evidence base; the enhancement of the value and usability of corpus data through the application of software tools developed in the NLP (natural language processing) community; and the migration of dictionaries from print to online media. During the last half-century, activity in all these areas has brought fundamental changes to the way dictionaries are created and made available to their users. We trace the development of corpus-based lexicography in English, from the early work of John Sinclair and his colleagues in the 1980s to the present day. Lexicographers working in English and other widely used languages now have access to resources which would scarcely have been imaginable thirty years ago: very large corpora (measured in tens of billions of words) and sophisticated corpus-querying tools are routinely available. The move from print to digital publication is a more recent development, but no less significant. The far-reaching implications of these changes – for dictionary-makers and dictionary-users alike – are explored at every stage.
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- The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries , pp. 18 - 30Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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