lexicography
Enable an agent to recognise lexicography as a field and practice, assess how lexical reference resources are designed and evaluated, and identify justified improvements.
Research draft, second pass
A second pass drafted this model: the structure a model of this thing needs, and what is known about it in the world. The line under this one says how the second half was obtained - researched against sources, or recalled without web access, in which case nothing here was read anywhere and every claim is a lead to verify. Unreviewed either way.
recalled by Codex without web access - no source was read
Researched by: Codex
Purpose and description
Enable an agent to recognise lexicography as a field and practice, assess how lexical reference resources are designed and evaluated, and identify justified improvements.
Lexicography is the practice of designing, compiling and revising dictionaries and related lexical reference resources, together with the scholarly study of their principles, structures, uses and evaluation.
It can be Determine whether a research activity or production workflow has a substantive lexicographic purpose.; Translate a dictionary's intended users and consultation tasks into explicit editorial requirements.; Audit how evidence supports headword selection, sense distinctions, definitions and equivalents.; Compare lexicographic approaches while preserving differences in resource remit and editorial stance.; Identify evaluation methods and revision priorities appropriate to a lexical reference resource.; Locate unresolved disciplinary boundaries and request sources before assigning institutional or classification claims..
Distinguishing features
A lexicographic activity connects lexical description to the design, production, use or evaluation of a reference resource; studying vocabulary alone does not establish that connection.
Its editorial methods must account for intended users and consultation tasks, rather than only explain the structure of a language's lexicon.
It addresses decisions such as entry selection, sense organisation, definitions, equivalents and access routes; collecting word occurrences alone is insufficient.
The field includes inquiry into dictionary methods and use, so membership does not require producing a dictionary.
A dictionary is an output or object of lexicographic work; its existence does not make the publication itself a discipline.
Scope
+ Relationships between practical dictionary making and theoretical lexicography
+ Dictionary purposes, intended users and consultation situations
+ Lexical evidence selection, interpretation and editorial decision methods
+ Headword selection, sense treatment and lexical information organisation
+ Dictionary access, usability, evaluation and revision methods
+ Disciplinary boundaries, institutional recognition and classification conventions
- Individual dictionaries as publications, products or maintained datasets
- Lexicographers as people, occupations or organisational roles
- Lexicology and lexical semantics where no dictionary-related purpose is established
- Corpus construction and general natural language processing infrastructure
- Terminology management and ontology engineering beyond their intersection with lexical reference work
- Language teaching and language policy as independent activities
Characteristics
- Lexicographic orientation
- practical; theoretical; combined; disputed Distinguishes resource production from research about lexicographic principles, processes and use.
- Reference-resource remit
- general-language; learner; historical; bilingual or multilingual; specialised; other explicitly defined remit Different remits require different evidence, entry treatments and evaluation criteria.
- User and consultation alignment
- links among user groups, consultation situations, information needs and editorial requirements Makes it possible to judge whether lexicographic choices serve an identified purpose.
- Lexical evidence basis
- corpora; citation collections; elicitation; existing reference works; expert judgement; documented combinations Exposes the basis and limitations of selection and description methods.
- Editorial stance
- descriptive; prescriptive; explicitly mixed; unspecified Separates observations about usage from recommendations about usage.
- Method validation state
- proposed; documented; empirically evaluated; contested; superseded, with evidence and scope Prevents an agent from treating an editorial convention as a universally validated method.
- Institutional and classification placement
- named societies, journals, programmes and classification entries, each with source and applicable date or edition Records how the field is recognised without assuming that disciplinary placement is uniform.
Also called
Where this came from
wikidata · CC0 1.0
Drafted structure
Bundle to layer to finding to question, as the second pass will find it: 6 bundles · 11 layers · 17 findings · 27 questions.
Field and boundaries The scope of lexicography and the conventions used to distinguish it from adjacent fields.
An agent must recognise the field without conflating it with vocabulary research, its practitioners or its outputs.
Practice and theory
Relationships between dictionary making and research on lexicographic methods and resources.
Lexicographic purpose
Record the connection between an activity and lexical reference design, production, consultation or evaluation.
- Which dictionary-related activity or problem makes this work lexicographic? definition
- Does the work produce a resource, investigate lexicographic principles, or explicitly combine both? boundary
Disciplinary placement
Documented boundaries and institutional conventions for locating lexicography.
Recognition and neighbours
Record sourced relationships to lexicology, linguistics, terminology and information-oriented approaches, alongside institutional markers.
- Which named scholarly convention explains the adopted boundary with lexicology and terminology? boundary
- Which verified societies, journals, programmes or classification entries recognise this scope, and under which dates or editions? provenance
Users and reference functions How lexicographic methods connect user needs to the remit of a reference resource.
Lexicographic adequacy depends on who consults a resource, for what purpose and under what conditions.
Consultation needs
Intended users, their capabilities and their reasons for consulting lexical information.
User-task fit
Record how user knowledge and tasks constrain the amount, language and presentation of lexical information.
- Are users trying to understand, produce or translate text, or investigate lexical knowledge? definition
- What evidence supports assumptions about users' language proficiency, subject knowledge and consultation difficulties? provenance
Resource remit
The lexical coverage and editorial commitments appropriate to the intended reference function.
Coverage contract
Record the languages, varieties, periods and specialist domains that editorial methods are expected to cover.
- Which languages, varieties, periods and domains are included, and what exclusions follow from the stated purpose? boundary
- How should the intended use determine descriptive or prescriptive treatment and the required depth of entries? action
Evidence and editorial judgement Methods for obtaining lexical evidence and turning it into accountable editorial decisions.
Dictionary treatments require an auditable relationship between observed usage, interpretation and editorial policy.
Evidence selection
The suitability and limitations of corpora, citations, elicitation and other lexical evidence.
Evidence fitness
Record how evidence sources represent the usage that a lexicographic project intends to describe.
- Which evidence sources were consulted, and how do their dates, genres, varieties and collection methods match the remit? provenance
- How are frequency, dispersion and attestation assessed without treating absence from the evidence as proof of nonexistence? measurement
Decision traceability
Policies for moving from evidence to inclusion, labelling and revision decisions.
Editorial warrant
Record the evidence, policy and uncertainty behind lexical treatments, including contested or sensitive usage.
- What evidence and editorial rule justify inclusion, exclusion or a usage label? provenance
- How should editors resolve conflicting attestations or distinguish an observed usage pattern from a usage recommendation? action
Lexical analysis and entry design Methods for organising lexical units and representing their meanings and uses.
Entry construction is a defining lexicographic problem that cannot be reduced to collecting words and definitions.
Entry and sense organisation
Headword selection, lemmatisation, multiword treatment and sense grouping.
Lexical unit decisions
Record how a method determines entry boundaries and distinguishes or groups meanings.
- What rules place inflected forms, spelling variants and multiword expressions under separate entries or shared headwords? definition
- What evidence and user needs justify splitting or combining senses and separating homonyms? boundary
Meaning and use representation
Definitions, translation equivalents, examples and supporting lexical information.
Explanatory treatment
Record how entry components jointly explain meaning, grammatical behaviour and appropriate use.
- How are definitions or translation equivalents checked against sense evidence and the intended users' knowledge? measurement
- Which examples, collocations, grammatical patterns, pronunciation information and usage labels are needed for the stated consultation task? action
Access, evaluation and revision Methods for making lexical information findable, assessing its usefulness and maintaining its reliability.
Accurate entries still require usable access, and both lexical descriptions and consultation methods need evaluation over time.
Retrieval and consultation
Access structures and evidence that users can find and interpret relevant lexical information.
Consultation performance
Record evaluation methods for headword lookup, search, cross-references and navigation within entries.
- How can users reach the relevant entry or sense when they know only an inflected form, a phrase or a meaning? action
- Which task-success, interpretation-error or lookup-time measures demonstrate useful access for the intended users? measurement
Quality and maintenance
Review and revision methods for lexical treatments and the processes that produce them.
Revision warrant
Record criteria for correction and updating, including review of automated editorial assistance.
- What new usage evidence, user feedback or inconsistency should trigger a revision, and who reviews the decision? action
- How are automatically proposed entries, senses, definitions or examples checked for unsupported claims and misleading treatments? measurement
Evidence and external alignment What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.
A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.
Reported evidence
Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.
Check these first
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- This description covers both dictionary-making and its scholarly study; disciplinary traditions differ over the field's relationship to applied linguistics.
- The listed kinds overlap: a dictionary project can be practical, bilingual, historical and specialized at once.
- LMF and TEI concern representation and encoding, not universal editorial requirements; applicable editions and profiles require checking.
- Which of these check these first hold for the sense of lexicography this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Kinds and varieties
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Practical lexicography
- Theoretical lexicography (metalexicography)
- Monolingual lexicography
- Bilingual and multilingual lexicography
- Historical lexicography
- Specialized lexicography
- Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of lexicography this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Standards and regulation
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- ISO 24613, Lexical Markup Framework (LMF), issued by ISO, provides a framework for representing lexical resources.
- The Text Encoding Initiative Consortium's TEI Guidelines include guidance for encoding dictionaries.
- Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of lexicography this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Real-world use
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Producing general dictionaries that explain meanings, usage, pronunciation and grammatical behaviour.
- Developing bilingual dictionaries for translation and language learning.
- Documenting historical meanings, spellings and changes in vocabulary.
- Creating specialized dictionaries for professional and technical domains.
- Documenting endangered and under-resourced languages in collaboration with language communities.
- Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of lexicography this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Failure modes and hazards
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Unrepresentative evidence can distort accounts of usage across regions, registers and social groups.
- Circular, ambiguous or excessively technical definitions can fail to explain a word to the intended user.
- Poorly distinguished senses and misleading translation equivalents can cause misunderstanding.
- Outdated entries can misrepresent current meanings, terminology or usage labels.
- Editorial choices can reproduce social prejudice or present contested usage judgments as neutral facts.
- Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of lexicography this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Regional variation
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- National and regional dictionary traditions differ in the weight they give to describing usage and prescribing preferred forms.
- Dictionaries of pluricentric languages differ in their coverage and labelling of regional vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation.
- Writing systems and local conventions affect headword selection, sorting and lookup methods.
- Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of lexicography this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Lexicology - Lexicology studies vocabulary and lexical relationships generally; lexicography focuses on lexical reference resources and their creation, use and evaluation.
- Terminology - Terminology focuses on specialized concepts and their designations; lexicography organizes lexical information for reference, including but not limited to specialized vocabulary.
- Corpus linguistics - Corpus linguistics investigates language through collections of language data; lexicography uses such evidence to construct and evaluate reference entries.
- Semantics - Semantics studies meaning broadly; lexicography selects and presents meaning information within resources designed for particular users.
- Dictionary - A dictionary is a reference resource; lexicography is the practice and field concerned with making and studying such resources.
- Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of lexicography this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
What the second pass must settle
- Which defining handbooks or reviews should anchor this model's treatment of practical and theoretical lexicography and their relationship to linguistics?
- Which exact classification codes and editions place lexicography, and do they classify the field itself or dictionary publications?
- Which societies, journals and degree programmes provide verified institutional markers across different linguistic traditions?
- Where should this registry draw the boundary around terminography, encyclopedic dictionaries and lexical resources built primarily for machines?
- Which evaluation methods have empirical support for different dictionary purposes, particularly under automated compilation and updating?