Technologies in computerized lexicography

Since the early eighties, computer technology has become increasingly relevant to lexicography. Computer science will probably not be the only technological discipline which may have implications for future computerized lexicography. Some developments in the fields of language technology, information technology and knowledge engineering, may support lexicographical practice and enhance the quality of the resulting dictionary. The present paper discusses how the analysis and interpretation of electronic corpus data by the lexicographer may be improved by automatic linguistic analysis, by better access to the corpus, and by a more flexible communication with the computer system. As a frame of reference, first an indication of the state of the art in computerized lexicography will be given, by a concise discussion of three projects at the Institute for Dutch Lexicology INL considered in an international context: the conversion of the Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal WNT (Dictionary of the Dutch Language Based on Historical Principles) to electronic form, the compilation of the Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek (Dictionary of Early Middle Dutch) in a computerized lexicographer's workbench, and the INL Taalbank (INL Language Database). Although the topic of this paper is technology, focus is on functional rather than technical aspects of computerized lexicography.Keywords: computerized lexicography, electronic dictionary, electronic text corpus, lexicographer's workbench, integrated language database, automatic linguistic analysis, information retrieval, user interfac

Thermophysical property data and safety information

Precision measurements of the properties of oxygen over a wide range of temperature and pressure are complete. The primary remaining effort, which is in progress, is the representation of these data in the most usable format such as tables, equations, diagrams, and computer programs. In addition, safety data are essential to proper design, operation, and failure analysis. All of the available information on oxygen safety is being reviewed, evaluated and indexed for quick retrieval through the NASA Aerospace Safety Research and Data Institute program. The availability of data, where the major gaps in data occur, and retrieval of bibliographic information are discussed

Natural language processing

Beginning with the basic issues of NLP, this chapter aims to chart the major research activities in this area since the last ARIST Chapter in 1996 (Haas, 1996), including: (i) natural language text processing systems - text summarization, information extraction, information retrieval, etc., including domain-specific applications; (ii) natural language interfaces; (iii) NLP in the context of www and digital libraries ; and (iv) evaluation of NLP systems

Current Trends of Computing in the Humanities in England

Computerizing the materials used by humanistic scholars requires sophisticated and innovative use of the latest of new technologies as these are areas which pose particularly complex problems of mixed media data handling. The popular view of humanists is that they are either non-technological or that their needs are extremely simple, far simpler than those of scientists; perhaps limited to the use of word-processors and a little e-mail. This is far from being the truth: the key limiting factor on the use of computers in the humanities in the past has been the inability of the technology to handle many of the highly technical and abstruse problems of data handing which are dealt with daily in humanities scholarship. Now, however, the technology is rapidly catching up with the disciplines in its ability to handle the varieties of media: text, images, graphics, sound, and video. Computers are now used by humanists around the world for many different applications in a large number of subject areas, for quantitative analysis of those topics which are amenable to numerical study, such as the analysis of datasets for historians, for the study of paintings and artefacts by art historians and archaeologists, for the sophisticated study of textuality by literary critics and textual editors, for the study of the moving image by film theorists, and many, many more. The topics which I should like to consider in this paper are: electronic publishing and the changes which are being wrought in the publishing industry; the uses of networks; image digitization; hypermedia and multimedia; and finally the uses of computers in humanities teaching. In particular, I will be looking at the current state of these in Britain