Blog Posts

Post-dictionary lexicography. An overview Ilan Kernerman This is a succinct update of a talk given at eLex 2017 (https://youtu.be/yA3yg6wO5M8).   global digital data The major universal trends of the last generation could be crystalized in the advent of digitization and globalization. The consequences are reflected in practically every realm of life, be it society, economy, sciences, culture, sports, and so forth, including the world of dictionaries and lexicography – giving rise to bleak concerns about the future of dictionaries besides bright hopes to extend the reach of lexicography through enhanced multidisciplination and interoperability. Digital wise, contemporary dictionaries increasingly tend to be corpus-based, compiled using dedicated software, combining automatically generated raw entry components with refined post-editing, mobile and online, offering a choice of titles simultaneously, supported by extensions and add-ons, and fairly easy to customize and personalize to suit users’ needs and tastes. Lexicographic practice and resources are substantially reinforced and enriched by natural language processing and other computational methodologies, such as linked and big data...

Lexicography in the French Caribbean: An assessment of future opportunities Jason F. Siegel The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus E-mail: jason.siegel@cavehill.uwi.edu 1                   Introduction Overseas French (le français d’outre-mer) is a fairly important topic in French linguistics. But so far, the French varieties of the Antilles and French Guiana receive less attention than French-based Creoles spoken in the same region. However, it is important, especially during this UN Decade for People of African Descent, to report not only on varieties of French spoken in Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, St Barthelemy, St Martin and French Guiana, but to give a full account of the lexicographic work that remains to be done in these territories called the “French-official Caribbean” (Alleyne 1985). [1] Indeed, given a certain quantitative decreolization (Rickford 1987), a loss of creolophones (i.e. Creole-speakers) in the face of French glottophagy, it is important to know these varieties. In particular, there is much that remains to be done in the lexicographic field. While the Spanish-speaking...

History of the DSNA Newsletter Part 1. David Jost Now that we have posted a complete run of the DSNA Newsletter on our website https://dictionarysociety.com/?page_id=14, I am taking the opportunity to write an occasional series of articles, which will do double duty as articles about the DSNA and the history of lexicography. This first article is impressionistic based on a glance through all the Newsletters to determine the editors and their dates. Subsequent articles will be more detailed and based on a complete reading of all Newsletters. I also hope at some point to index them. David Jost, current editor, and Ed Gates, first editor The early years of the DSNA Newsletter have never been equaled even though of course all editors have done an excellent job of bringing out the publication on a regular basis from the first one in 1977 1977-1-1-1-DSNAN (1.1) and through 2018 Fall  (41.2--this issue). Forty-one volumes of Newsletters have been published, usually consisting of two issues a year. In...

Teaching Lexicography: “Walking Dictionaries,” a University at Buffalo first-year seminar Walter Hakala and Kerry Collins   In 2014, the University at Buffalo Faculty Senate voted to overhaul the university’s general education curriculum. Central to the proposed transformation of undergraduate education was the new requirement that all incoming and transfer students with less than 45 credits take what has come to be known as a “UB Seminar” during their first semester. At a university with nearly 20,000 undergraduate students, I was excited about being able to teach smaller groups of students in courses “designed around ‘big ideas’ and faculty passions”—my passion of course being for dictionaries. Shortly after the adoption of the proposed changes, I was selected for a two-year fellowship in our university’s Honors College. As fellows, we knew that we would be given the opportunity to teach Honors students who had been identified as holding extraordinary academic promise. What we did not realize, however, was that the faculty fellows in fall 2015...

Memories of Missouri & Collectors David Vancil Just recently, I moved from a home in which I’d lived with my family for more than 22 years to a new house. The new home is somewhat smaller, so I decided to take a close look at my library, which sprawled over several rooms. Did I really want to keep books I hadn’t even looked at for a dozen years or more? I want to admit that word books didn’t enter into my decision making. As a curator of the Cordell Collection, I had never collected in this field beyond a few modern books to help me ferret out a meaning in another language. I decided to donate many books to the public library, which conducts a monthly book sale and even posts a few books on Amazon.com and other sites. Given my experience working with other collectors, I realized I was doing my family a service, because I have known many collectors, including those...

In this section you will find an update on Globalex by Ed Finegan, an update of progress with the Middle English Dictionary by Paul Schaffner, and two notices of dictionary projects. Update on Globalex Ed Finegan In the Spring 2017 issue of the DSNA Newsletter, Ilan Kernerman provided a thorough introduction to Globalex, including descriptions of the five continental associations and eLex, the groups that played an active part over the past couple of years in preparation for launching an official alliance or “global constellation for lexicography” as Globalex. As Ilan wrote at the time, “The core idea of Globalex is to work on lexicography in global contexts and bring together different segments that operate on their own – on regional, topical or any other level – to cooperate.” You can read his report at https://dictionarysociety.com/?p=375 . As DSNA’s representative to the preparatory group that formed Globalex, I attended virtual meetings of the preparatory group each month and a couple of in-person meetings,...

In DSNA news, this fall we have an update from Ed Finegan about our journal, requests from Steve Kleinedler and Stefan Dollinger, a report on the most recent MetroLex, and an obituary for one of our earliest members. Update on Dictionaries Ed Finegan, Editor, Dictionaries In the Spring 2017 issue of the Society’s Newsletter, I reported that our journal would be moving to two issues a year in 2017, and we successfully did that, with the help of two associate editors (Orion Montoya and Sarah Ogilvie) and a new reviews editor (Traci Nagle). Volume 38 contained four articles (including the second installment of the history of the early years of the Society, written by Michael Adams), five Reference Works in Progress reports, and seven book reviews. The first issue of volume 39 will be mailed in August—a special issue treating problems of chronology in historical lexicography and lexicology (and with something of interest for all DSNA members in its ten articles—see the ToC...

DSNA 22 at Indiana University May 8–11, 2019 REGISTRATION IS OPEN We’re happy to report that registration for DSNA 22 (May 8-11, 2019, in Bloomington, Indiana) is open! Register at https://www.indiana.edu/~iucweb/dsna/ Attendance at DSNA 22 is open to members of the DSNA. If you aren’t sure about your membership status, contact the DSNA office at dsnaadmin@gmail.com. We encourage you to register early to guarantee your lodging preference. We look forward to seeing you in May! DSNA 22ND BIENNIAL DSNA returns to Bloomington, Indiana, and the campus of Indiana University for its 22nd Biennial Meeting, May 8–11, 2019, and so does Studies in the History of the English Language (SHEL), with which DSNA 20 collaborated in Vancouver in 2015. Abstracts of no more than 500 words for 20-minute papers about any aspect of lexicography or lexicology should be sent to adamsmp@indiana.edu by October 31, 2018. Participants will be notified of acceptance and a preliminary program posted on the conference website by the December holidays.  NB: Although DSNA is meeting with SHEL, DSNA papers will be...

On 20 July Peter Gilliver was awarded a PhD by the University of Cambridge for his work on the history of the OED. The body of published work submitted for consideration included principally his book The Making of the OED—which has just been issued in paperback—but also several papers given at DSNA conferences or published in Dictionaries. Brianne Hughes reports: the Bishop Fox Cybersecurity Style Guide was compiled over the last 2 years to help the technical editors and security researchers of Bishop Fox be technically accurate and internally consistent in their technical reports. Since its public release, groups like tech journalists, sci-fi writers, and non-security businesses have used it as a starting place for their own in-house style guides. The guide’s usage notes focus on how to capitalize terms in the middle of a sentence, how to pronounce them, and when to use monospace font. Most terms do not have a definition, but many make the user aware of potential...