Dictionaries are structured databases, and they are linear only because of the inflexible paper medium of earlier times. Like linear phonebooks, linear timetable books, or antiquarian book catalogs, they are bound to disappear, but the process seems to be much … Continue reading →
A blog post by Martin Haspelmath about the future of dictionary formatting and an interesting-looking new project:
To look up a word in a linear dictionary, you typically need to browse to an alphabetic list of possible initial letters, and then browse to the right word, as in a paper dictionary (this is so in the Maa and Archi dictionaries, for example). Other dictionaries try to approximate the familiar Google search line and present users with a search box (e.g. the Yurok dictionary), but this creates the problem that one doesn’t know what to look for – many searches will lead nowhere. Dictionaria combines searching and browsing in an optimal way: Each page shows up to 100 entries (words), with one entry per line (e.g. in the Daakaka dictionary). Each column has a search field on top of it (as in other CLLD applications, such as APiCS), thus allowing searching and filtering by different criteria: not only by headword (as in many dictionaries), but also by part of speech, meaning description and semantic domain, and potentially more. In addition to searching, you can also sort by any field in ascending or descending order.
Many linguists like leafing through dictionaries in order to get a sense of what’s in them, and for a first rough impression, this may work. But have you ever tried to leaf through a dictionary to find out how much it says about adjectives or prepositions? In the Daakaka dictionary, select PREP in the part-of-speech column, and you’ll see all 15 prepositions of the language right away. Similarly, select “color” in the semantic-domain column, and you’ll see all six color terms in the dictionary. You can of course also select two columns at the same time, e.g. “verb” and “food”, to see all 41 food-related verbs of Daakaka. [...]
Does linearity serve a useful purpose? It seems clear to me that it does not serve a practical purpose, but maybe one should not disregard one important social function of dictionaries, especially of smaller languages: The existence of a dictionary in book form gives a language prestige and may instil pride in speakers. Such social prestige functions are often detached from practical concerns, and they can be fulfilled also by items with completely outdated technology. Thus, for prestige reasons (and perhaps for a few older users who are unfamiliar with modern technology), it may still be useful to put together a linear dictionary on paper.
You can click around the entries in Dictionaria so far here.
