Erschliessung und Vernetzung lexikographischen Wissens über das Luxemburgische - LEXICOLUX

Coordinating Institution: Université du Luxembourg
Contracting Partner(s): University of Trier (Dept. of Philology)
From: 15/04/2007
To: 31/10/2010
Budget: 420,000.00€
Contact(s): Gilles Peter , Moulin Claudine

Summary

General description: The project aims at making accessible the three major printed dictionaries of Luxembourgish (published in 1847, 1906 and 1950-1977) in digitalized form according to lexicographic and meta lexicographic methods, applying on-line applications for scientists and laypersons through a uniform web interface, connecting their data with other language sources of Luxemburgish and the regional languages around.

Results obtained in 2009

Within the reporting period further improvements in the XML data have been made according to differentiated testing. Additionally the web interface has been restructured to conform to the emerging new possibilities of our highly annotated linguistic data. By now the dictionaries are accessible to the public via individual user interfaces. Within the LexicoLux graphical user interface it is possible to search for headwords, through plain text, to read full articles or to follow hyperlinks to related articles. Supplemental to a quick search a new expert’s query platform has been worked out, allowing the user to formulate complex linguistic queries such as combining a specific word ending with a selected grammatical category or others.

Due to the fact that all three historical dictionaries follow their own orthographic system, none of which representing the latest Luxembourgish rules, a mapping routine to support the query has been developed. For each of the dictionaries, a set of up to 30 linguistic transformation rules has been established, generating a second instance of each headword which is very close or identical to the actual Luxembourgish spelling. This artificial headword is then used both as a query extension and to create hyperlinks between matching articles, substantially facilitating the tracing and comparing of historical variants.

Furthermore other databases have been integrated into the query system, such as the LuxoGramm, an online database to Luxembourgish verb paradigms; a database for Luxembourgish phraseology is being built at the moment and first steps to its integration to the collaborative query have already been undertaken. A routine to mark beginnings and endings of all listed phraseological units in the dictionaries has been developed. Thus it will possible to locate phraseologisms in an online regional dictionary for the first time. Additionally a new pilot project investigating the phraseological units in Luxemburgish lexicography and in modern Luxembourgish children’s books has been established as a joint venture of Ane Kleine and Natalia Filatkina at the “Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliches Forschungszentrum, Trier” and cooperating with the prestigious project “Historische Formelhafte Sprache und Traditionen des Formulierens, HiFoS” at the University of Trier.

The database system used by the HiFoS project to annotate occurrences of phraseologies in historical German texts was adopted and reengineered to meet the demands of the Luxemburgish phraseology within the lexicographical data of LexicoLux. The architecture is based on the open source database management system MySQL. Entering and modifying data can be done by means of dynamically generated websites. A public web interface granting access for scientists as well as for interested laypersons is currently being developed. In the future this interface shall also link results to the databases of the cooperating projects.

Besides these applications for an exclusive research on Luxembourgish language phenomena, the embedding into a network of dictionaries of the Greater Region has been promoted and established in collaboration with the “Kompetenzzentrum für elektronische Erschließungs- und Publikationsverfahren” at the University of Trier.

To present the innovative computational linguistic methods deriving from the project and bring them forward a workshop, supported by the FNR, was organized by Ane Kleine together with Andrea Rapp from the “Kompetenzzentrum für elektronische Erschließungs- und Publikationsverfahren” at the University of Trier and held at the University of Luxembourg in December. International known scientists as well as young academics were invited for presentations and discussions.

Refereed Scientific Publications
  • Gilles, Peter together with Melanie Wagner (Hgg.) (comming soon): Aktuelle Forschungsfragen in der Luxemburgistik. Mikroglottika – Kleine Sprachen. Containing papers presenting the research done in LexicoLux. -
  • Moulin, Claudine (coming soon): Dialect dictionaries: traditional and modern, in: Language and Space. An International Handbook of Linguistic Variation, Volume I. Theories and Methods. Edited by Peter Auer and Jürgen Erich Schmidt, Berlin - New York.
  • Kleine, Ane (comming soon): „fannen as wannen“. Das Phraseologiemodul in LexicoLux. In: Gilles, Peter und Melanie Wagner (Hgg.): Aktuelle Forschungsfragen in der Luxemburgistik. Mikroglottika – Kleine Sprachen (ca. 23 Seiten).
  • Kleine, Ane together with Natalia Filatkina and Birgit U. Münch (comming soon): Verbale und visuelle Formelhaftigkeit: Zwischen Tradition und Innovation. In: Ptashnyk, Stefaniya und Erla Hallsteinsdóttir, Noah Bubenhofer (Hgg.): Computergestützte und korpusbasierte Methoden in der Phraseologie, Phraseographie und der Lexikografie.
  • Büdenbender, Stefan und Hans-Werner Bartz (coming soon): EDV-philologische Perspektiven bei der Erstellung eines Wörterbuch­netz der Großregion. In: Gilles, Peter und Melanie Wagner (Hgg.): Aktuelle Forschungsfragen in der Luxemburgistik. Mikroglottika – Kleine Sprachen (ca. 16 Seiten).
Other Publications
  • Kleine, Ane LuxPhras – Darstellung der luxemburgischen Phraseologie in der Lexikographie und darüber hinaus. Wissensräume zwischen Regionalität und Mehrsprachigkeit. In: Bulletin 2009 der Europäischen Gesellschaft für Phraseologie. S. 29-30. (www.europhras.org/bulletin/Europhras_Bulletin_Gesamt_2009.pdf).
Project Website:

Figure 1 : Screenshot of the online version of the ‘Wörterbuchnetz’ (LLU = Lexicon der Luxemburger Umgangssprache, WLM = Wörterbuch der luxemburgischen Mundart, LWB = Luxemburger Wörterbuch, RheinWB = Rheinisches Wörterbuch, PfWB = Pfälzisches Wörterbuch, LothrWB = Wörterbuch der deutsch-lothringischen Mundart, RheinWB = Rheinisches Wörterbuch)

Figure 2: Screenshot of the online version of the “Wörterbuch der luxemburgischen Mundart” following the link “Hond” offered above, with further interlinked online dictionaries (here: EWB = Wörterbuch der elsässischen Mundarten”)