Computational lexicography. Electronic dictionaries

1. Corpus linguistics and computational linguistics

Modern trends in English lexicography are connected with the appearance and rapid development of such branches of linguistics as corpus (or corpus-based) linguistics and computational linguistics.

Corpus (or corpus-based) linguistics deals mainly with compiling various electronic corpora for conducting investigations in different linguistic fields such as phonetics, phonology, grammar, stylistics, graphology, discourse, lexicon and many others. Corpora are large and systematic enterprises: whole texts or whole sections of text are included, such as conversations, magazine articles, brochures, newspapers, lectures, sermons, broadcasts, chapters of novels, etc. A well-constructed general corpus enables investigators to make more objective and confident descriptions of usage of words, to make statements about frequency of usage in the language as a whole, as well as comparative statements about usage in different varieties, permits them to arrive at a total account of the linguistic features in any of the texts contained in the corpus; provides investigators with a source of hypotheses about the way the language works.

Computational linguistics is the branch of linguistics in which the techniques of computer science are applied to the analysis and synthesis of language and speech.

The use of language corpora and the application of modern computational techniques in various lexicographical researches and in dictionary-making in particular, have stipulated the appearance of corpus (or corpus-based) lexicography and computational lexicography.

Corpora occupy a special place in the study of language. The importance of corpora for language researches is aligned to the importance of empirical data. Empirical data enable the linguist to make objective statements, rather than those which are subjective, or based upon the individual’s own internalized cognitive perception of language. A large and well-constructed corpus gives excellent information about frequency, distribution, and typicality of linguistic features – such as words, collocations, spellings, pronunciations, and grammatical constructions.