Lexical Searches for the Arts and Humanities

Jeremy Smith, Christian Kay, Simon Horobin

Department of English Language

University of Glasgow

Project Aims

database of search words

dates of use

semantic categories

style

Historical Thesaurus of English

• Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition

• Old English dictionaries

• 650,000 meanings

• detailed semantic taxonomy

http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/

sesll/englang/thesaur/homepage.htm

Musical Instruments• piano 1803

• pianoforte 1767

• forte-piano 1769

• joanna 1846

Interdisciplinarity

Art Clothing Drink Food

Health Kinship Law Music

Navigation Plants Weather

Thesaurus of Old English

Thesaurus of Old English

• 50,000 meanings

• MySQL database

• British Academy funding

http://libra.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/oethesaurus/

http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/reports.php

Complex Searches• find all words meaning ‘trumpet’• find all words meaning ‘trumpet’ recorded

between 1400 and 1850• find all words meaning ‘trumpet’ recorded

after 1700 in the USA

Significance

• interdisciplinarity

• research enhancement

• fully electronic Historical Thesaurus

Issues

Spelling

• piano* > pianoe, pianos, pianoes• OED ‘Trumpet’, also 4-6 trompette,- et,

trumpette, 5 trompett, troumpette,

6-7 trumpett; Sc. 5 trompat, troumpat(e, trumpate, 5-6 trumpat,

6 –ait