David Trotter, Use of Corpora in Anglo-Norman Dictionary Compilation

PRINCIPAL MATERIALS AVAILABLE

AND1combings for AND2 by D.A. Trotter and W. Rothwell, 1989-continuing programme of combing new and especially newly-discovered textsCollas; Shanks

concordanced texts (“Concordance”): see <http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/>

online texts on <www.anglo-norman.net>

AND2, A–M online marked up in TEI-compliant XML and stored as canonical data, rendered on demand in HTML by server; all Open Source software, no proprietary software

Original 1940s slip

Collas slip (1960-1980?)

The world before the computer: LANGE, 1970s (W.R.)

SOFTWARE

Dictionary software is all open source or developed by Michael Beddow and in principle available to scholarly (non-commercial) projects

Editing software:

-- epcEdit (now freeware, at www.epcedit.com)

-- Concordance , see http://www.concordancesoftware.co.uk/

Dictionary is edited in a simplified version of XML, converted later into canonical XML data

A request to the Dictionary for an article or to perform a search is made via web interface; the request is handled on the server in XML and then delivered as HTML to the user

Appendix 1: Evolution and structure of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND)

c. 1947: “glossary committee”, founded in Oxford, under aegis of ANTSGeneral editor: †Lousie W. Stone; subsequently, William Rothwell; also involved: †T.B.W. Reid (to fascicle 3), †Dafydd Evans, Stewart Gregory, D.A. Trotter, †P.R. Staniforth (DMLBS)

Initial combing and creation of traditional slips (ANTS), cf. Publisher’s Foreword to AND1 (fasc. 7)W. Rothwell became involved in 1962 (and subsequently general editor)

1977-1992: publication of AND1 in seven fascicles (MHRA/ANTS)

from “P”onwards: incorporation of J.P. Collas fichier (? c. 1m slips) and Shanks Dictionary of Law French (CUL; unpublished, 800 pp. typescript, Selden Society)

1989: start of work on second edition (Stewart Gregory, D.A. Trotter)

1995- grants from British Academy and Humanities Research Board to support research assistant (Lisa Jefferson)

2002-2004: AHRB Resource Enhancement Grant (£109,000) to fund digitization of AND2, A–E (complete), and putting online of scholarly articles (republication), and source texts (“The Anglo-Norman Online Hub”, www.anglo-norman.net), based in Aberystwyth but work carried out in Swansea under direction of Andrew Rothwell (technical consultant: Michael Beddow)

2003-2007: AHRB Major Research Grant (£426,000), to fund revision of F–H; Virginie Derrien (Poitiers) and Geert De Wilde Belgium/Leeds) appointed as assistant editors (Aberystwyth) Oct. 2003; AHRB-funded Ph.D. studentship available but unfilled (no U.K. candidates)

2004-2007: AHRB Resource Enhancement Grant (£309,000) to fund continuation of digitization programme in Swansea

2007-2012: AHRC Major Research Grant (£870,000) to fund I-M; Heather Pagan (Toronto) replaced Virginie Derrien

2012-2016: AHRC Major Research Grant (£802,000) to fund N-Q; Kateriina Närä (Sheffield) joins project to add cross-references to other dictionaries and to revise semantic/domain labelling

SOME REFERENCES

BEDDOW, Michael, 2007, ‘L’Anglo-Norman On-line Hub: une présentation technique’, in: David Trotter (ed.), Actes du XXIVe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, Aberystwyth 2004 (Tübingen: Niemeyer), I, 305-310.

TROTTER, David, 2000, ‘L’avenir de la lexicographie anglo-normande: vers une refonte de l’Anglo-Norman Dictionary?’, Revue de Linguistique Romane 64, 391-407.

TROTTER, David, 2011, ‘Bytes, words, texts: the Anglo-Norman Dictionary and its text-base’, in Christine McWebb/Helen Swift (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the "Third International MARGOT Conference, The Digital Middle Ages: Teaching and Research, special issue of Digital Medievalist, summer 2011, at http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/7/trotter/.

Middle English Dictionary:Frances McSparran/Paul Schaffnerhttp://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/

English from 1100 to 1500lookup; search; search quotations, together with associated corpus at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/ allowing: simple, proximity, Boolean, citation, and browse searching

interface type: web pagefile format: html from underlying databasefree access

linking possibilities: hyperlink of type: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED30891

Dictionnaire du Moyen FrançaisRobert Martin/Gilles Souvaywww.atilf.fr/dmf

French, 1330-1500 (largely omitting Anglo-Norman)multiple searches

interface type: web pagefile format: xml, TEI, presented as html

license: free

linking possibilities (hyperlink to article) http://www.atilf.fr/dmf/definition/unicorne