Lexicography

The lexicography lexicography or ( ancient Greek λεξικόν βιβλίον BIBLION lexicon, the word book in question ' and γραφειν, write ', see - graphy ) deals with creating dictionaries. Creating a dictionary is a complex and often lengthy process. For all major projects, the work is carried out by several persons. It leads to a printed dictionary, electronic dictionary or a lexical database, which can be the basis for both.

Stages during the creation of a dictionary

• In the planning phase of the dictionary object (eg, the language of Goethe ) and the dictionary basis set ( a corpus of written texts by Goethe, for example ). The necessary working material - body, more literature, computers, software, etc. - is provided. In the planning phase also sample articles are created and a guide to its specifications have to keep all lexicographers involved. The Manual defines inter alia the information program should be established for each type of unit description.
• In the next phase, the units are selected, which should be processed as lemmas (such as the 100 000 most frequent words of the German language ).
• In the main phase for the dictionary items are created. Description of item are the previously selected lemmas. The agents concerned, based on the materials of the dictionary basis, ie documents and on their own knowledge.
• The finished products are usually revised in several cycles and corrected until each item is approved by the project management.
• The last step is the treatment of the material for printing or for access via the interface of an electronic dictionary.
• After her appearance on the market many words Bucher will be revised again and again, updated and reissued. So the spelling dictionary Duden published in 2009 already in the 25th edition and contains about 5000 new entries.

Not every project covers all phases and in this order. Many phases overlap in time in a specific project. In particular, a prior selection of units is often just not the case with long-term projects.

The lexicography has developed in its history, its own workshop language that may not be understandable for laymen.

The lexicographic process, its products, the dictionaries, its history, structure and use are articles of Metalexikografie ( dictionary research ). Occasionally, however, the scientific study of dictionaries is also called lexicography.

Related disciplines

The lexicography is closely related, but not identical with the linguistic discipline of lexicology. The lexicology systematically investigated parts of the vocabulary of a language, without wanting it completely encode though.

The Enzyklopädik or Enzyklopädistik deals with creating encyclopedic reference works.