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This paper presents the results of a survey on dictionary use in Europe, the largest survey of dictionary use to date with nearly 10,000 participants in nearly thirty countries. The paper focuses on the comparison of the results of the Slovenian participants with the results of the participants from other European countries. The comparisons are made both with the European averages, and with the results from individual countries, in order to determine in which aspects Slovenian participants share similarities with other dictionary users (and non-users) around Europe, and in which aspects they differ. The findings show that in many ways the Slovenian users are similar to their European counterparts, with some noticeable exceptions, including (much) stronger preference for digital dictionaries over print ones, above-average reliance on other people when dictionary does not contain the relevant information, and the largest difference between the price of a dictionary and the amount willing to spend on it.
Das Thema genderinklusive Sprache ist mittlerweile nicht nur Gegenstand regelmäßiger Umfragen, Presseartikel oder Talksendungen, sondern auch von Volksinitiativen. In Baden-Württemberg beispielsweise veranstaltet Klaus Hekking, Initiator des Volksbegehrens Stoppt Gendern in Baden-Württemberg, eine Radtour gegen Gendern, um Unterschriften zu sammeln (die Initiative wurde allerdings vom Innenministerium gestoppt). Auch in Hamburg lief 2023 eine Volksinitiative namens „Schluss mit Gendersprache in Verwaltung und Bildung“, die vom „Verein Deutsche Sprache“ initiiert und von der Hamburger CDU unterstützt wurde. Die Initiative hat fast 17.000 Unterschriften gesammelt und überregionale mediale Aufmerksamkeit bekommen.
Wie nun bereits seit einigen Jahren üblich, wurde die IDS-Jahrestagung auch dieses Jahr wieder von einer Methodenmesse begleitet, auf der sich passend zum Tagungsthema anwendungsorientierte Projekte mit Bezug zur Lexikonforschung präsentierten. Die Bandbreite der dargebotenen Themen war sehr groß: innovative methodische Ansätze im Bereich der Translationswissenschaft, Tools zur Analyse und Beschreibung lexikalischer Muster oder zur Detektion von Neologismen, neue lexikografische Ressourcen bis hin zu Infrastrukturaktivitäten und einem Kooperationsprojekt zwischen Schüler/innen und Wissenschaftler/innen zur Wortschatzanalyse. Im Folgenden sollen die einzelnen Projekte, die sich auf der Messe präsentiert haben, auf der Basis der eingereichten Abstracts der Messeteilnehmer/innen kurz vorgestellt werden.
Der Anlass dieser Untersuchung war zunächst anekdotische Evidenz: Eines der Kinder der Autor*innen macht 2022 Abitur und las in ihrer gesamten gymnasialen Laufbahn genau eine ›Ganzschrift‹ einer Autorin: Die Judenbuche von Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Zweifellos ein lesenswerter Text, aber konnte es wirklich sein, dass man in Deutschland 2022 Abitur macht, sogar Deutsch-Leistungskurs gewählt hat und sonst kein Buch einer Autorin im Deutschunterricht liest? Auch in den Pflichtlektüren für das Deutschabitur ist im entsprechenden Bundesland bei den empfohlenen Texten kein Roman und kein Drama einer Verfasserin verzeichnet. Neugierig geworden, recherchierten wir nach einer Liste, welche Literatur für den Deutschunterricht an Gymnasien in Baden-Württemberg (wo die Anekdote sich ereignete) insgesamt empfohlen wurde, und fanden auf den Seiten des Kultusministeriums eine umfangreiche Liste, auf der 298 Werke verzeichnet sind. Eine Auswertung nach dem Geschlecht der Verfasser*innen ergab, dass von den Einträgen auf dieser Liste 31 Titel bzw. Autor*innen (von) Frauen sind, d.h. rund 10 %.
Many studies on dictionary use presuppose that users do indeed consult lexicographic resources. However, little is known about what users actually do when they try to solve language problems on their own. We present an observation study where learners of German were allowed to browse the web freely while correcting erroneous German sentences. In this paper, we are focusing on the multi-methodological approach of the study, especially the interplay between quantitative and qualitative approaches. In one example study, we will show how the analysis of verbal protocols, the correction task and the screen recordings can reveal the effects of intuition, language (learning) awareness, and determination on the accuracy of the corrections. In another example study, we will show how preconceived hypotheses about the problem at hand might hinder participants from arriving at the correct solution.
In the past two decades, more and more dictionary usage studies have been published, but most of them deal with questions related to what users appreciate about dictionaries, which dictionaries they use and what type of information they need in specific situations — presupposing that users actually consult lexicographic resources. However, language teachers and lecturers in linguistics often have the impression that students do not use enough high-quality dictionaries in their everyday work. With this in mind, we launched an international cooperation project to collect empirical data to evaluate what it is that students actually do while attempting to solve language problems. To this end, we applied a new methodological setting: screen recording in conjunction with a thinking-aloud task. The collected empirical data offers a broad insight into what users really do while they attempt to solve language-related tasks online.
cOWIDplus
(2020)
Die Corona-Krise hat Einfluss auf die Sprache in deutschsprachigen Online-Medien. Wir haben die Hypothese, dass sich die Vielfältigkeit des verwendeten Vokabulars einschränkt. Wir glauben zudem, dass sich die Diversität des Vokabulars nach "überstandener" Krise wieder auf ein "Prä-Pandemie-Niveau" einpendeln wird. Diese zweite Hypothese lässt sich erst im Laufe der Zeit überprüfen.
cOWIDplus Analyse ist eine kontinuierlich aktualisierte Ressource zu der Frage, ob und wie stark sich der Wortschatz ausgewählter deutscher Online-Pressemeldungen während der Corona-Pandemie systematisch einschränkt und ob bzw. wann sich das Vokabular nach der Krise wieder ausweitet. In diesem Artikel erläutern die Autor*innen die hinter der Ressource stehende Forschungsfrage, die zugrunde gelegten Daten, die Methode sowie die bisherigen Ergebnisse.
cOWIDplus Viewer
(2020)
Das elexiko-Portal: Ein neuer Zugang zu lexikografischen Arbeiten am Institut für Deutsche Sprache
(2007)
Das elexiko-Portal soll verschiedene lexikografische Projekte des IDS in einem Verbund zusammenführen und - soweit das die Inhalte zulassen - gemeinsame Recherchemöglichkeiten über verschiedene lexikografische Produkte hinweg bieten. In diesem Aufsatz geht es v. a. darum zu zeigen, wie die XML-basierte Modellierung für das Portal aufgebaut ist, um zum einen die Basis für diese flexiblen Zugriffsstrukturen zu legen und zum anderen der Verschiedenheit der beteiligten Projekte Rechnung zu tragen. Gleichzeitig werden Perspektiven für eine flexiblere Darstellung der Daten und für die zukünftige Weiterentwicklung von Recherchemöglichkeiten aufgezeigt.
Der Beitrag behandelt konzeptionelle und methodische Fragen aus einem Projekt, in dem eine neue Referenzausgabe des Thomas Mannschen Gesamtwerks für die Publikation in zwei Medien aufbereitet wird: als Buch und als elektronische Ausgabe. Die Basis dafür bildet ein Informationspool, in dem die Texte SGML/XML-basiert vorgehalten und durch eine Topic Map verknüpft werden. Der Beitrag skizziert die Architektur des Systems sowie die dahinter stehenden technischen und konzeptionellen Überlegungen. Es wird gezeigt, wie gerade die elektronische Version neue Wege beschreitet, damit ein Arbeitswerkzeug für Literaturwissenschaftler entsteht, das völlig neuartige Zugriffsmöglichkeiten auf das Werk Thomas Manns bietet.
Der Einsatz einer maßgeschneiderten, feingranularen XML-Modellierung im lexikografischen Prozess
(2011)
In this paper, the authors use the 2012 log files of two German online dictionaries (Digital Dictionary of the German Language and the German Version of Wiktionary) and the 100,000 most frequent words in the Mannheim German Reference Corpus from 2009 to answer the question of whether dictionary users really do look up frequent words, first asked by de Schryver et al. (2006). By using an approach to the comparison of log files and corpus data which is completely different from that of the aforementioned authors, we provide empirical evidence that indicates - contrary to the results of de Schryver et al. and Verlinde/Binon (2010) - that the corpus frequency of a word can indeed be an important factor in determining what online dictionary users look up. Finally, we incorporate word class Information readily available in Wiktionary into our analysis to improve our results considerably.
Das Online-Wortschatz-Informationssystem Deutsch (OWID) ist ein digitales Wörterbuchportal des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache. Alle darin zusammengeführten lexikografischen Daten sind auf XML-Basis feingranular strukturiert. Speicherung, Verwaltung und Retrieval dieser Daten übernimmt das Orade-basierte Electronic Dictionary Administration System (EDAS). Der vorliegende Beitrag erläutert die XML-basierte Modellierung der Daten, XML-spezifische Fragen der Speicherung, sowie das Retrieval mit XPath und SQL/XML.
Eine europaweite Umfrage zu Wörterbuchbenutzung und -kultur. Ergebnisse der deutschen Teilnehmenden
(2018)
Gebrauchsgegenstand, Streitschlichter, Spielzeug, Nationalsymbol, Arbeitshilfe oder doch nur etwas, für das sich hauptsächlich Akademikerinnen und Akademiker interessieren? Welche Rolle spielen einsprachige Wörterbücher heute? Um unter anderen diesen Fragen nachzugehen, koordinierten wir gemeinsam mit Iztok Kosem (Universität Ljubljana) und Robert Lew (Adam-Mickiewicz Universität Poznań) die bis dato größte europaweite Umfrage zur Wörterbuchbenutzung und -kultur. Gemeinsam mit 26 ‚lokalen‘ Partnerinnen und Partnern aus ganz Europa führten wir im Rahmen des European Network of e-Lexicography (ENeL) diese Umfrage durch. Die Ergebnisse der Studie versprechen neue Einsichten in den gesellschaftlichen Status von Wörterbüchern in vielen europäischen Ländern. Durch die möglichst parallele Erhebung der Daten in den teilnehmenden Ländern werden außerdem interessante Vergleiche der lokalen ‚Wörterbuchkulturen‘ möglich sein. Im Fokus der Befragung standen allgemeine einsprachige Wörterbücher in der oder den jeweiligen Landessprache(n).
Das Kommunizieren in Sozialen Medien und der Umgang mit Hypertexten ist im Jahr 2020 kein Randphänomen mehr. Die sprachlichen Besonderheiten internetbasierter Kommunikation und Sozialer Medien sind mittlerweile auch gut erforscht und beschrieben, allerdings werden diese bislang in deutschen Grammatiken, mit Ausnahme von Hoffmann (2014), allenfalls am Rande behandelt. Selbst neuere Ansätze zur Textanalyse, z. B. Ágel (2017), konzentrieren sich auf gestaltstabile, linear organisierte Schrifttexte. Dasselbe gilt für Ansätze, die primär für die Bewertung von Schreibprodukten in Bildungskontexten entwickelt wurden.
Der Artikel stellt die Projekte vor, die sich im Rahmen der Projektmesse zur „Elektronischen Lexikografie“ präsentiert haben. Diese Messe wurde begleitend zur 46. Jahrestagung des Instituts für Deutsche Sprache veranstaltet. Es wird in diesem Beitrag auf der Basis der Messepräsentationen dargelegt, inwiefern Entwicklungen der Korpuslexikografie und der Internetlexikografie die lexikografische Erfassung syntagmatischer Aspekte des deutschen Wortschatzes befördern und welche lexikografischen Internetressourcen dazu verfügbar sind.
To design effective electronic dictionaries, reliable empirical information on how dictionaries are actually being used is of great value for lexicographers. To my knowledge, no existing empirical research addresses the context of dictionary use, or, in other words, the extra-lexicographic situations in which a dictionary consultation is embedded. This is mainly due to the fact that data about these contexts are difficult to obtain. To take a first step in closing this research gap, we incorporated an open-ended question (“In which contexts or situations would you use a dictionary?”) into our first online survey (N = 684). Instead of presenting well-known facts about standardized types of usage situation, this chapter will focus on the more offbeat circumstances of dictionary use and aims of users, as they are reflected in the responses. Overall, my results indicate that there is a community whose work is closely linked with dictionaries. Dictionaries are also seen as a linguistic treasure trove for games or crossword puzzles, and as a standard which can be referred to as an authority. While it is important to emphasize that my results are only preliminary, they do indicate the potential of empirical research in this area.
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.
The main aim of the study presented in this chapter was to try out eyetracking as form to collect data about dictionary use as it is – for research into dictionary use – a new and not widely used technology. As the topic of research, we decided to evaluate the new web design of the IDS dictionary portal OWID. In the mid of 2011 where the study was conducted, the relaunch of the web design was internally finished but externally not released yet. In this regard, it was a good time to see whether users get along well with the new design decisions. 38 persons participated in our study, all of them students aged 20-30 years. Besides the results the chapter also includes critical comments on methodological aspects of our study.
In many countries of the world, perspectives on gender equality and racism have changed in recent decades. One result has been more attention being devoted to traces of androcentric and racist language in society. This also affects dictionaries. In lexicography there are discussions about whether or to what extent social asymmetries are inscribed in dictionaries and if this is still acceptable. The issue of the nature of description plays an important role in this discussion. If sexist usages are often found in language use, i.e. in the corpus data on which the dictionary is based, does the dictionary also have to show them? How is this, in turn, compatible with the normative power of dictionaries? Do dictionaries contribute to the perpetuation of gender stereotypes by showcasing them under the banner of descriptive principles? And what roles do lexicographers play in this process? The article deals with these questions on the basis of individual lexicographical examples and current discussions in the lexicographic and public community.
The first international study (N=684) we conducted within our research project on online dictionary use included very general questions on that topic. In this chapter, we present the corresponding results on questions like the use of both printed and online dictionaries as well as on the types of dictionaries used, devices used to access online dictionaries and some information regarding the willingness to pay for premium content. The data collected by us, show that our respondents both use printed and online dictionaries and, according to their self-report, many different kinds of dictionaries. In this context, our results revealed some clear cultural differences: in German-speaking areas spelling dictionaries are more common than in other linguistic areas, where thesauruses are widespread. Only a minority of our respondents is willing to pay for premium content, but most of the respondents are prepared to accept advertising. Our results also demonstrate that our respondents mainly tend to use dictionaries on big-screen devices, e.g. desktop computers or laptops.
Wiktionary is increasingly gaining influence in a wide variety of linguistic fields such as NLP and lexicography, and has great potential to become a serious competitor for publisher-based and academic dictionaries. However, little is known about the "crowd" that is responsible for the content of Wiktionary. In this article, we want to shed some light on selected questions concerning large-scale cooperative work in online dictionaries. To this end, we use quantitative analyses of the complete edit history files of the English and German Wiktionary language editions. Concerning the distribution of revisions over users, we show that — compared to the overall user base — only very few authors are responsible for the vast majority of revisions in the two Wiktionary editions. In the next step, we compare this distribution to the distribution of revisions over all the articles. The articles are subsequently analysed in terms of rigour and diversity, typical revision patterns through time, and novelty (the time since the last revision). We close with an examination of the relationship between corpus frequencies of headwords in articles, the number of article visits, and the number of revisions made to articles.
We introduce DeReKoGram, a novel frequency dataset containing lemma and part-of-speech (POS) information for 1-, 2-, and 3-grams from the German Reference Corpus. The dataset contains information based on a corpus of 43.2 billion tokens and is divided into 16 parts based on 16 corpus folds. We describe how the dataset was created and structured. By evaluating the distribution over the 16 folds, we show that it is possible to work with a subset of the folds in many use cases (e.g., to save computational resources). In a case study, we investigate the growth of vocabulary (as well as the number of hapax legomena) as an increasing number of folds are included in the analysis. We cross-combine this with the various cleaning stages of the dataset. We also give some guidance in the form of Python, R, and Stata markdown scripts on how to work with the resource.
Introduction
(2015)
Dictionary usage research is a topic of increasing importance within the field of lexicography. At the beginning of the new millennium, the dictionary user was still relatively unknown. However, in the last ten years, more and more user studies have been published. Consequently, methods, data and the conclusions which can be drawn were successively refined. Also, new possibilities of web-based data collection, e.g., the analysis of log files, enriched this field of research. This contribution aims to describe the state of the art in dictionary usage research in the digital era. I begin by providing a short overview of methodological and terminological basics and then place a special focus on three different methods of collecting empirical data on dictionary use: online questionnaires, eye tracking and the analysis of log-files. All these methods are illustrated on user studies conducted at the Institute for the German Language in Mannheim.
Wissenschaftlich basierte allgemeine Wörterbücher des Deutschen werden heute meist korpusbasiert erarbeitet, d. h. die in ihnen beschriebene Sprache wird vor der lexikografischen Beschreibung empirisch erforscht. Diese Korpora sind allerdings, wie die großen linguistischen Textsammlungen zum Deutschen allgemein, durch Zeitungstexte dominiert. Daher beruhen die in Wörterbüchern beschriebenen Kollokationen und typischen Verwendungskontexte zumindest teilweise auf dieser Textsorte. Wir untersuchen in unserem Beitrag anhand einer Fallstudie zu Mann und Frau, wie stark sich die Beschreibung solcher Kollokationssets ändern würde, wenn als Korpusgrundlage nicht Zeitungen, sondern Publikumszeitschriften oder belletristische Texte herangezogen würden und wie unterschiedlich demnach Geschlechterstereotype dargestellt würden. Damit diskutieren wir auch die Frage, ob Zeitungstexte in diesem Fall ein adäquates und vielseitiges Abbild des Gebrauchsstandards zeigen. Auf einer allgemeineren Ebene wird dadurch ein grundlegendes Problem korpuslinguistischer Forschungsarbeiten tangiert, nämlich die Frage, inwieweit durch Korpora überhaupt ein ‚objektives‘ Bild der sprachlichen Wirklichkeit gezeichnet werden kann.
Less than one percent of words would be affected by gender-inclusive language in German press texts
(2024)
Research on gender and language is tightly knitted to social debates on gender equality and non-discriminatory language use. Psycholinguistic scholars have made significant contributions in this field. However, corpus-based studies that investigate these matters within the context of language use are still rare. In our study, we address the question of how much textual material would actually have to be changed if non-gender-inclusive texts were rewritten to be gender-inclusive. This quantitative measure is an important empirical insight, as a recurring argument against the use of gender-inclusive German is that it supposedly makes written texts too long and complicated. It is also argued that gender-inclusive language has negative effects on language learners. However, such effects are only likely if gender-inclusive texts are very different from those that are not gender-inclusive. In our corpus-linguistic study, we manually annotated German press texts to identify the parts that would have to be changed. Our results show that, on average, less than 1% of all tokens would be affected by gender-inclusive language. This small proportion calls into question whether gender-inclusive German presents a substantial barrier to understanding and learning the language, particularly when we take into account the potential complexities of interpreting masculine generics.
The methods utilized in the area of research into dictionary use are established research methods in the social sciences. After explicating the different steps of a typical empirical investigation, this article provides examples of how these different methods are used in various user studies conducted in the field of using online dictionaries. Thereby, different kinds of data collection (surveys as online questionnaires, log files and eye tracking) as well as different research design structures (for instance, ex-post-facto design or experimental design) are discussed.
Im vorliegenden Beitrag gehen wir von der Prämisse aus, dass die Angemessenheit sprachlicher Formen nicht pauschal, sondern anhand des jeweiligen Kontexts zu beurteilen ist. Anhand einer Online-Fragebogenstudie mit durch weil eingeleiteten Nebensätzen untersuchen wir die Hypothese, dass Varianten, die nicht dem Schriftstandard entsprechen, in Kommunikationsformen, die sich weniger an standard- und schriftsprachlichen Normen orientieren, als (mindestens) ebenso angemessen oder zumindest unterschiedlich wahrgenommen werden wie eine schriftstandardsprachliche Variante. Wir untersuchen dies anhand von drei Aufgaben: Rezeption, Produktion und Assoziation zu bestimmten Medien und Textsorten. Wir können zeigen, dass die schriftnormgerechte Variante durchweg als am akzeptabelsten eingeschätzt wird. In allen drei Aufgaben finden sich aber auch eindeutige und übereinstimmende Effekte, die nahelegen, dass die verschiedenen Varianten in Abhängigkeit der Textsorte doch unterschiedlich eingeschätzt, produziert und assoziiert werden.
We present studies using the 2013 log files from the German version of Wiktionary. We investigate several lexicographically relevant variables and their effect on look-up frequency: Corpus frequency of the headword seems to have a strong effect on the number of visits to a Wiktionary entry. We then consider the question of whether polysemic words are looked up more often than monosemic ones. Here, we also have to take into account that polysemic words are more frequent in most languages. Finally, we present a technique to investigate the time-course of look-up behaviour for specific entries. We exemplify the method by investigating influences of (temporary) social relevance of specific headwords.
Olaf Scholz gendert. Eine Analyse von Personenbezeichnungen in Weihnachts- und Neujahrsansprachen
(2022)
Schlagzeilen wie die in unserer Überschrift blieben im Januar 2022 aus. Dabei enthielt die erste Neujahrsansprache von Olaf Scholz kein einziges generisches Maskulinum, sondern Doppelformen (Mitbürgerinnen und Mitbürger, Expertinnen und Experten), geschlechtsabstrahierende Ausdrücke (Eltern, Familien, Geimpfte, Menschen) und Personalisierungen bzw. Umschreibungen wie uns allen, es haben sich 60 Millionen […] impfen lassen, oder ich möchte allen danken. Die Rede nutzt somit durchgängig verschiedene Formen geschlechtergerechter Sprache, wohl aber so unauffällige Formen, dass dies keine mediale Aufmerksamkeit auf sich gezogen hat. Nebenbei: Dies zeigt, dass es bei den hitzigen öffentlichen Diskussionen rund um das Thema nicht um alle Formen geschlechtergerechter Sprache geht, sondern eigentlich nur um bestimmte Formen, wie z.B. die Verwendung des Gendersterns. Wir stellen hier einige Beobachtungen basierend auf einem annotierten Korpus von Ansprachen vor, die Sie selbst anhand einer Online-App nachvollziehen können.
This chapter presents empirical findings on the question which criteria are making a good online dictionary using data on expectations and demands collected in the first study (N=684), completed with additional results from the second study (N=390) which examined more closely whether the respondents had differentiated views on individual aspects of the criteria rated in the first study. Our results show that the classical criteria of reference books (e.g. reliability, clarity) were rated highest by our participants, whereas the unique characteristics of online dictionaries (e.g. multimedia, adaptability) were rated and ranked as (partly) unimportant. To verify whether or not the poor rating of these innovative features was a result of the fact that the subjects are not used to online dictionaries incorporating those features, we integrated an experiment into the second study. Our results revealed a learning effect: Participants in the learning-effect condition, i. e. respondents who were first presented with examples of possible innovative features of online dictionaries,judged adaptability and multimedia to be more useful than participants who did not have this information. Thus, our data point to the conclusion that developing innovative features is worthwhile but that it is necessary to be aware of the fact that users can only be convinced of its benefits gradually.
The Online-Wortschatz-Informationssystem Deutsch (OWID Online German Lexical Information System) is a lexicographic Internet portal for various electronic dictionary resources that are being compiled at the Institute for the German Language (Institut für Deutsche Sprache, IDS). The main emphasis of OWID is on academic lexicographic resources of contemporary German. Presently, the following dictionaries are included in OWID: a dictionary of contemporary German called elexiko, a dictionary of neologisms, a small dictionary of collocations, and a discourse dictionary covering the lexemes that establish the discourse about “guilt” in the early post-war era 1945-1955. In the near future (2010/2011), several additional dictionaries will be published in OWID: a Textbook of German Communication Verbs, a Valency Dictionary of German Verbs, two further discourse dictionaries – one about the “democracy” discourse around 1968, the other covering the keywords of the German reunification 1989/1990. Moreover, 300 entries from a corpus-based project on proverbs will be integrated into OWID. Thereby, OWID is a constantly growing resource for academic lexicographic work of the German language.
Altogether, OWID is a special kind of dictionary portal owing to its content and its design, namely the integration of the various dictionaries, the access possibilities and the presentation features. With OWID, we try to establish a dictionary net where the different resources are jointly accessible not only by headwords, but also on the microstructural level. Prerequisite for these common access- and navigation-possibilities across the various dictionaries is the same concept for the lexicographic data model which we put into practice in OWID. Data from all dictionaries in OWID are structured according to a tailor-made, fine-granular, XML-based data model. In this data model, similar content is modelled similarly, dictionary related differences are preserved.
The main tasks for the future are to enhance OWID with further dictionary resources, to improve the inner access structures so that they exhaust the possibilities of the data model, and to customize the layout of the dictionaries as well as the search options according to the user’s needs
In order to demonstrate why it is important to correctly account for the (serial dependent) structure of temporal data, we document an apparently spectacular relationship between population size and lexical diversity: for five out of seven investigated languages, there is a strong relationship between population size and lexical diversity of the primary language in this country. We show that this relationship is the result of a misspecified model that does not consider the temporal aspect of the data by presenting a similar but nonsensical relationship between the global annual mean sea level and lexical diversity. Given the fact that in the recent past, several studies were published that present surprising links between different economic, cultural, political and (socio-)demographical variables on the one hand and cultural or linguistic characteristics on the other hand, but seem to suffer from exactly this problem, we explain the cause of the misspecification and show that it has profound consequences. We demonstrate how simple transformation of the time series can often solve problems of this type and argue that the evaluation of the plausibility of a relationship is important in this context. We hope that our paper will help both researchers and reviewers to understand why it is important to use special models for the analysis of data with a natural temporal ordering.
Quantitativ ausgerichtete empirische Linguistik hat in der Regel das Ziel, grose Mengen sprachlichen Materials auf einmal in den Blick zu nehmen und durch geeignete Analysemethoden sowohl neue Phanomene zu entdecken als auch bekannte Phanomene systematischer zu erforschen. Das Ziel unseres Beitrags ist es, anhand zweier exemplarischer Forschungsfragen methodisch zu reflektieren, wo der quantitativ-empirische Ansatz fur die Analyse lexikalischer Daten wirklich so funktioniert wie erhofft und wo vielleicht sogar systembedingte Grenzen liegen. Wir greifen zu diesem Zweck zwei sehr unterschiedliche Forschungsfragen heraus: zum einen die zeitnahe Analyse von produktiven Wortschatzwandelprozessen und zum anderen die Ausgleichsbeziehung von Wortstellungsvs. Wortstrukturregularitat in den Sprachen der Welt. Diese beiden Forschungsfragen liegen auf sehr unterschiedlichen Abstraktionsebenen. Wir hoffen aber, dass wir mit ihnen in groser Bandbreite zeigen konnen, auf welchen Ebenen die quantitative Analyse lexikalischer Daten stattfinden kann. Daruber hinaus mochten wir anhand dieser sehr unterschiedlichen Analysen die Moglichkeiten und Grenzen des quantitativen Ansatzes reflektieren und damit die Interpretationskraft der Verfahren verdeutlichen.
Questions of design
(2014)
All lexicographers working on online dictionary projects that do not wish to use an established form of design for their online dictionary, or simply have new kinds of lexicographic data to present, face the problem of what kind of arrangement is best suited for the intended users of the dictionary. In this chapter, we present data about questions relating to the design of online dictionaries. This will provide projects that use these or similar ways of presenting their lexicographic data with valuable information about how potential dictionary users assess and evaluate them. In addition, the answers to corresponding open-ended questions show, detached from concrete design models, which criteria potential users value in a good online representation. Clarity and an uncluttered look seem to dominate in many answers, as well as the possibility of customization, if the latter is not connected with a too complex usability model.
This article presents empirical findings about what criteria make for a good online dictionary, using data on expectations and demands collected in an online questionnaire (N~684), complemented by additional results from a second questionnaire (N-390) which looked more closely at whether respondents had differentiated views on individual aspects of the criteria rated in the first study. Our results show that the classical criteria of reference books (such as reliability and clarity) were rated highest by our participants, whereas the unique characteristics of online dictionaries (such as multimedia and adaptability) were rated and ranked as (partly) unimportant. To verify whether or not the poor ratings of these innovative features were a result of the fact that our subjects are unfamiliar with online dictionaries incorporating such features, we incorporated an experiment into the second study. Our results revealed a learning effect: participants in the learning-effect condition, i.e. respondents who were first presented with examples of possible innovative features of online dictionaries, judged adaptability and multimedia to be more useful than participants who were not given that information. Thus, our data point to the conclusion that developing innovative features is worthwhile but that it should be borne in mind that users can only be persuaded of their benefits gradually. In addition, we present data about questions relating to the design of online dictionaries.