The contribution of corpus linguistics to lexicography and the future of Tibetan dictionaries

Main author: Garrett, Edward
Other authors: Hill, Nathan W.
Kilgarriff, Adam
Vadlapudi, Ravikiran
Zadoks, Abel
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-19777
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
topic PI Oriental languages and literatures
PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
description The first alphabetized dictionary of Tibetan appeared in 1829 (cf. Bray 2008) and the intervening 184 years have witnessed the publication of scores of other Tibetan dictionaries (cf. Simon 1964). Hundreds of Tibetan dictionaries are now available; these include bilin gual dictionaries, both to and from such languages as English, French, German, Latin, Japanese, etc. and specialized dictionaries focusing on medicine, plants, dialects, archaic terms, neologisms, etc. (cf. Walter 2006, McGrath 2008). However, if one classifies Tibetan dictionaries by the methods of their compilation the accomplishments of Tibetan lexicography are less impressive. Methodologies of dictionary compilation divide heuristically into three types. First, some dictionaries lack explicit methodology; these works assemble words in an ad hoc manner and illustrate them with invented examples. Second, there are dictionaries that are compiled over very long periods of time on the basis of collections of slips recording attestations of words as used in context. Third, more recent dictionaries are compiled on the basis of electronic text corpora, which are processed computationally to aid in the precision, consistency and speed of dictionary compilation. These methods may be called respectively the 'informal method', the 'traditional method', and the 'modern method'. The overwhelming majority of Tibetan dictionaries were compiled with the informal method. Only five Tibetan dictionaries use the traditional methodology. No Tibetan dictionary yet compiled makes use of the modern method.
format Journal Article
author Garrett, Edward
author_facet Garrett, Edward
Hill, Nathan W.
Kilgarriff, Adam
Vadlapudi, Ravikiran
Zadoks, Abel
authorStr Garrett, Edward
author_letter Garrett, Edward
author2 Hill, Nathan W.
Kilgarriff, Adam
Vadlapudi, Ravikiran
Zadoks, Abel
author2Str Hill, Nathan W.
Kilgarriff, Adam
Vadlapudi, Ravikiran
Zadoks, Abel
title The contribution of corpus linguistics to lexicography and the future of Tibetan dictionaries
publisher CNRS
publishDate 2015
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/19777/