Department of Contemporary Lexicology and Lexicography

Contact:

Letenská 123/4

118 00 Praha 1

E-mail: lexikografie at ujc.cas.cz

About the Department of Department of Contemporary Lexicology and Lexicography:

The work of the Department of Contemporary Lexicology and Lexicography (formerly the Lexicography-Terminology Department) of the CLI of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic centres around research and lexicographic processing of contemporary standard Czech vocabulary. In its work the Department addresses theoretical issues in lexicology and lexicography, neology and lexical dynamics as well as practical issues relating to preparation of an upcoming explanatory dictionary of the Czech Language. Department staff manage extensive material collections.

In 1994–2004, lexicographic work focused on compilation of the most recent lexical material, which resulted in two dictionaries: New Words in the Czech Language: Dictionary of Neologisms 1 (1998) and New Words in the Czech Language: Dictionary of Neologisms 2 (2004), as well as a collection of papers titled Neologisms in the Contemporary Czech Language (2005). This period also saw the publication of the first edition of the Academic Dictionary of Foreign Words (1995) and the second, supplemented and partially revised edition titled the New Academic Dictionary of Foreign Words (2005; further editions with unmodified content were published in subsequent years). Further editions of the Dictionary of Standard Czech Language for Schools and the Public are intermittently published (second revised and supplemented edition 1994; third revised edition 2003; further editions with unmodified content were published in subsequent years). The publishing house LEDA, s. r. o. also produced electronic versions of this dictionary (1997, 2004, 2005) and of the Academic Dictionary of Foreign Words, which was titled the Large Dictionary of Foreign Words (1999). The new Academic Dictionary of Foreign Words was published electronically by the same publishing house as the Large Dictionary of Foreign Words (version 2.0 of the dictionary, 2005). A number of other collections of papers and studies were also published (see Institute-wide Publications).

During this period the Department also addressed valency theory and methodology and compiled valency dictionaries. The work to date has resulted in the dictionaries Verbs in Practice: A Valency Dictionary of the Most Common Czech Verbs (1997) and the Dictionary of Verb, Substantive and Adjective Constructions and Connections (2005).

In 2005–2011, the work of the Department focused on comprehensive preparation of the upcoming explanatory dictionary of the Czech language as part of the research aim Development of a lexical database of the Czech language in the early 21st century.

A new general explanatory dictionary titled the Academic Dictionary of Contemporary Czech has been under development since 2012. This project was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic from 2013 to 2016 through the applied research and development of national and cultural identity program (NAKI) – grant project A new path to a modern monolingual dictionary of contemporary Czech.

We use the NEWTON Media, a. s. database as a reference text source.

The Department staff members also take part in a number of long-term interdisciplinary and international projects.

Our current work:

Academic Dictionary of Contemporary Czech
The Department of Contemporary Lexicology and Lexicography of the CLI has been developing a new general explanatory dictionary of contemporary Czech since early 2012. It is intended as a mid-sized dictionary with anticipated 120,000-150,000 lexical entries. The aim is to capture the lexicon of contemporary Czech, including vocabulary used in general, official and semi-official and colloquial (i.e. non-public/ unofficial) communication. The dictionary will also contain a limited scope of professional and special interest vocabulary, where the given vocabulary is also used beyond its original environment. As regards dialect, only expressions that are used broadly in terms of territory, primarily in spoken communication, or in the literature as well, will be included.

The scope and methods of preparation of the upcoming dictionary classify it as an academic dictionary, i.e. a category type which includes dictionaries with sophisticated, standardised and structured explanations of word meanings, relatively rich sets of examples documenting typical usage of words, sufficiently elaborated description of basic semantic relationships, particularly synonyms and antonyms, and corresponding descriptions of the grammatical properties of words. The upcoming dictionary will include complex descriptions of lexical entries including stylistic characteristics, etymology and pronunciation. An integral part of the preparatory work is development and intensification of the conceptual principles underlying the dictionary.

Neomat electronic neology archive

The Neomat electronic neology archive comprises an important part of the Department of Contemporary Lexicology and Lexicography’s material collections. Since September 2015, the neology archive (Neomat database of excerpt material) has been fully accessible to the lay and professional public. For details, click here.

Lexicography-terminology research into contemporary Czech
In relation to lexicographical processing of contemporary Czech vocabulary, the Department staff conduct research into the lexicology and lexicography of contemporary Czech, which reflects elaboration and editing of dictionary entries and conceptual work. Staff members also address issues of neology and lexical dynamics. The results of their work are presented at Czech and international conferences, through academic lectures and by publication of monographs and articles in journals and collections of papers.

LEXIKO web node
The LEXIKO website helps users navigate the primary material collections of the Czech Language Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, v. v. i., including the Modern Czech Lexical Archive card file, the Neomat electronic lexical archive, selected dictionaries that have been digitalised, i.e. the Czech Language Handbook, the Dictionary of Standard Czech, and a unique Database of Keywords (lists of keywords from selected dictionaries). In addition, the website contains information about general and selected special synchronous Czech explanatory dictionaries developed by the CLI, the history of the institutionalisation of Czech lexicography in the 20th century and selected results of the Department of Contemporary Lexicology and Lexicography’s recent work.
For details, click here.

Collections and materials:

Modern Czech Lexical Archive card file (1911–1991)
The Modern Czech Lexical Archive card file contains excerpt material that served as the foundation for all the representative Czech explanatory dictionaries. The primary “first archive material” was the basis for the Czech Language Handbook (1935–1957) and further layers were used to compile the Dictionary of Standard Czech (1960–1971, 1989), the Dictionary of Standard Czech Language for Schools and the Public (first edition 1978) and other dictionaries, e.g. the Academic Dictionary of Foreign Words (1995). The language data was collected based on carefully conceived excerpt rules from 1911 and 1917. The card extracts were obtained primarily from arts literature, along with professional literature and in selected cases from newspapers, magazines and translation literature. The year 1770 was set as the bottom limit for excerpts, which enabled documentation of the Czech language of the national revival era as well. Up until the end of the 1980s the lexical material collections were gradually supplemented. Currently, the Archive is being converted to electronic form and made publicly accessible. The primary part of the archive (layers 1-6) with 8.7 million excerpts is connected to the electronic form of the Czech Language Handbook to enable comprehensive searches.

Electronic lexical archive
Development of the electronic neology archive began in the 1990s (the first record was entered into the new electronic database in November 1991) and continues to the present day. Its founding ushered in a new era of excerpt work that continued through the grant project Description of new vocabulary using computer technology (1994–1996) and the subsequent grant projects System-forming neologism processes in contemporary Czech language (1998–2000) and International terminology in new Czech vocabulary (2001–2003). Since then lexical material has been stored in a database using special excerpt programmes (WinHesla2). Thanks to development of the EDA excerpt programme, the Department was able to make the entire neology archive publicly accessible over the Internet (Neomat database). The academic public can access the full version of the Neomat database here.