Wortgeschichte digital: A Historical Dictionary of German on the Internet

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article presents a new historical online dictionary of German: Wortgeschichte digital ('digital word history'). WGd focuses on New High German, the most recent period of German ranging from 1600 to the present, for which no specific historical dictionary is available so far. WGd differs from current historical lexicography most notably in three respects: first, its entirely digital nature; second, its onomasiological approach to lemma selection; and, third, its "narrative" style. Because WGd does not derive from a printed dictionary, it is in a position to make extensive use of all the instruments provided by digital humanities. For WGd, this results in a densely interconnected dictionary architecture with internal and external links and visual presentations of lexical structures. In contrast to many other historical dictionaries, WGd pursues an onomasiological approach to lemma selection, concentrating on those lexical domains that have appeared to be highly dynamic in recent language history, such as the vocabularies of society and politics, economy, traffic, natural science, everyday culture, and so forth. These fields are dealt with in separate work units of several years each, allowing for a consistent lexicographical description. The most significant feature of WGd, however, is its style of presentation: Instead of providing a traditional entry structure consisting of definitions and quotations, the entries of WGd are written as continuous texts charting the semantic evolution of a word within its intra- and extra-linguistic context.