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To reach even language users not acquainted to the use of grammars the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim (Germany) looked for new ways to handle grammatical problems. Instead of confronting users with abstractions frequent difficulties of German grammar are introduced in form of exemplary questions like „Which form should be used or preferred: Anfang dieses Jahre or Anfang diesen Jahres? Looking through the long list of such questions even laymen may find solutions of grammatical problems they might not be able to formulate as such.
Grammars even trying to be as comprehensible as possible hardly avoid using technical terms unknown to novices. To overcome these inconveniencies, the grammatical information system grammis of the Institut für Deutsche Sprache incorporated a glossary specialized on terms used within the system. This glossary - actually named Grammatische Grundbegriffe (elementary terms of grammar) and tied by hyperlinks to technical terms in the core grammar' of grammis - offers short and simple explanations mainly by means of exemplification. The idea is to provide the users with provisional understanding to get along while following the main themes they are interested in. Explicitly, the glossary is not a stand-alone dictionary of grammatical terms, and it should not be regarded as one.
This article evaluates the terminological component (TC) of the grammis portal on German grammar developed by the Institut für Deutsche Sprache. The TC is included into grammis to facilitate nonlinguists‘ access to the main components of the portal: Grammar in questions and answers, and the Systematic Grammar. The TC thus has the potential to be an extremely useful and important grammis component. We discuss to what extend the TC achieves its goals, and make some suggestions how it could be improved. The most important aspects considered in the evaluation are: (a) TC completeness and consistency, (b) accessibility and usability of definitions and index, (c) integration of the TC with the overall system.