Open Access

Carolin Müller-Spitzer

• Electronic corpora play an ever growing role in lexicography. On the one hand, new access to linguistic usage is made possible through the use of text corpora and intelligent corpus-based query tools; however, the final results are still interpreted and described by lexicographers. In this case corpora are used for data acquisition. On the other hand, there are also projects that provide purely automatically acquired data in the form of "dictionaries". Lexicographers play only a minor role here. This latter type of corpus use creates a completely new kind of electronic dictionary. This article addresses the questions as to what extent these dictionaries differ from lexicographic tradition and whether they must be considered in metalexicography. Starting from previously compiled electronic dictionary typologies, we try to supplement the formulation of lexicographic data as a distinguishing feature. Finally, based on the findings of the project elexiko (Institute for the German Language - IDS), we demonstrate that the distinction between electronic versus man-made lexicographic data is also relevant to lexicographical practice.