Lexicografie

Lexicography is the scholarly discipline involved in compiling, writing, and editing dictionaries. It describes a language's vocabulary, including headword selection, sense delineation, and the presentation of information such as pronunciation, etymology, usage notes, and example sentences. The field covers both descriptive work that reflects current usage and prescriptive aims that aid clear communication.

The field is typically divided into practical lexicography, which produces dictionaries, and theoretical lexicography, which studies underlying principles and methods. Dictionary types include monolingual dictionaries for explaining a language, bilingual dictionaries for translation, learner's dictionaries for non-native speakers, and specialized dictionaries for fields like law or medicine. Outputs range from historical and descriptive to prescriptive resources.

Historically, lexicography evolved from ancient glossaries to modern dictionaries. The rise of corpora and computational processing since the late 20th century gave birth to corpus-based lexicography and electronic access.

Core activities include corpus-based data collection, sense delimitation, sense ordering, etymology, pronunciation, usage examples, cross-references, and editorial review. Quality criteria emphasize coverage, accuracy, clarity, and usability. Lexicography informs and is informed by linguistics, semantics, and natural language processing.

Today the field addresses multilingual and underrepresented languages, new terminology, and changing online usage patterns, balancing traditional scholarship with new technology.