The Lexicographic and Lexicological Aspects of a Web-Based Chrestomathy of Gothic and Anglo-Saxon Written Records

Abstract

There is a general lack of web-based tools for morphologically complex dead/old languages. Reading texts in such languages even with dictionaries is quite challenging. It is difficult to identify the lemma of a word form occurring in texts, which one could look up in a dictionary. The need for additional grammatical information about a word (classes of declension, conjugation, etc.) poses another problem. The Lexicographic Centre at Ivanè Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) has embarked on creating a fully digitalized, web-based chrestomathy of Gothic and Anglo-Saxon texts with dictionaries and grammatical paradigms integrated in it, which would facilitate the study of these linguistically important languages. Each word of the digital versions of Gothic and Anglo-Saxon texts is hyperlinked to the corresponding headword from the dictionary. The dictionary entry itself, in addition to the meaning of the word, provides via another hyperlink all necessary information concerning the morphological class and inflectional patterns of the word in question. The paper describes the structure of the Chrestomathy and its modus operandi; analyses the dictionary component of the online resource and some lexicographic solutions; discusses lexicological and technical aspects of the online resource, etc. The method applied in the Chrestomathy can be successfully used in developing similar resources for extant, morphologically complex languages characterized with the abundance of inflectional and suppletive forms, such as Hungarian, Turkish, Russian, German, Georgian and many others.