International Summer School on
Language Documentation and Description

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden

5 July - 17 July 2010

A Practical Course in Dictionary Making

This course provides a brief introduction to the art of dictionary making. The emphasis will be on obtaining practical skills needed to produce a (small) dictionary for a minority language. The following topics will be covered:

• types of dictionaries, audiences and purposes;
• organisation of data (root-based versus lexeme-based);
• homonymy and polysemy;
• dealing with compounds, phrases, and idioms;
• dealing with dialects, bound forms, inflection and irregular forms;
• example sentences;
• various elicitation techniques;
• improving userfriendliness;
• adding sounds and pictures.

The theory will be mostly illustrated with data from languages of Europe, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, but the underlying principles have universal application. There will be various exercises, but students are also encouraged to work on their own data (if they have any).

NB. It is assumed that a basic knowledge of Toolbox and/or WeSay is in place, and the course Software Tools for Linguistics (Week 1, Session 3) is therefore a prerequisite for this course. Students are expected to bring their own laptop computers.