Projects / Programmes
Historical Dictionary of 16th-Century Slovenian Literary Language - Volume 1
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.05.00 |
Humanities |
Linguistics |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H350 |
Humanities |
Linguistics |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 6.02 |
Humanities |
Languages and Literature |
lexicology, historical dictionary, 16th century, language technologies
Researchers (8)
Organisations (3)
Abstract
The Historical Dictionary of 16th-Century Slovenian Literary Language is currently the greatest lexicographic project in Slovenia. Given the fact that the language data material from the 17th and the 18th centuries is relatively scarce and that the material from the 19th century is relatively well described, this dictionary will be a fundamental historical dictionary of the Slovenian language. Only once it will be finished, it will be possible to compile dictionaries of the Slovenian language comparable to, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary. The research project will enable a final reflection upon the dictionary concept on the international level, a production of the final entries for the first volume of the dictionary, the studies related to this as well as the making of the Style Guide for future lexicographers. Since the dictionary will be produced using state-of-the-art computer technology, the project will propose solutions to many language technology problems that a compilation of such a comprehensive dictionary poses nowadays. In parallel with the first volume of the dictionary, online publication of the dictionary freely available in its entirety will be prepared. The online version of the dictionary will not strictly follow the alphabetic order of compilation as the print format requires, but will also include other entries on the basis of the information on the search queries and will be complemented with new entries every year. Within the framework of the project, we will also establish thematic and language technology bases for the preparation of the corpus of the 16th-century literary Slovenian, for which most transcriptions have already been prepared. The corpus will be freely accessible. Within the framework of this project, the dictionary will be launched in print and online form. After the publication of sample entries, many reviews publisehd in international journals assessed the dictionary as one of the most advanced European lexicographic projects in the making.
Significance for science
The influence of the project results will be enormous and it will extend over a very long period of time. Given comparable dictionaries for other languages, such dictionaries are used even for centuries after they have been created. The results of the project will attract considerable attention of Slovenian and international scientific communities. The dictionary will be useful for researchers from various disciplines: for linguists, lexicographers, lexicologists, etymologists, historians, cultural historians, theologians, researchers of literature and many others. The language data gathered in the Volume 1 and the first version of the online dictionary alone will enable many new studies in Slovenia and abroad. The dictionary will serve as a model for compilation of other historical dictionaries since historical dictionaries of other, mainly bigger nations were compiled quite some time ago and are now mostly just being updated. This dictionary will thus be, together with a digital corpus, one of the first historical dictionaries of Slavic languages to be created using modern lexicographic methods since the very beginning and without being based on previously compiled dictionaries.
Significance for the country
The project is important for the cultural development and for preserving cultural heritage and the national identity. Basic research of the 16th-century vocabulary will extend the knowledge about the Slovenian literary language. The publication of the Dictionary will fill the gap Slovenian linguistics has witnessed in this field. This will have a substantial impact on how Slovenian and international communities perceive the Slovenian language and linguistics. Since both the online dictionary and the corpus will be made available through open access in the long term, the project is of interest also to all those in the business sector who are interested in incorporating the data from the dictionary into their own databases. The corpus will also allow the business sector to publish books of Slovenian protestant writers more easily, which will substantially contribute to broadening the knowledge of this part of Slovenian national identity. The dictionary and the corpus indirectly represent considerable promotion of Slovenian on an international level and raise awareness of its rich history. They show that Slovenian was a fully developed language as early as in the 16th-century, which was not intended only for lower classes (which is what some researchers believe even today), but was in a position comparable to those of the most developed European languages of the time and it also completely fulfilled all the needs of Slovenian intellectuals in that period.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2014,
2015,
final report
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2014,
2015,
final report
