1. Introduction
I am going to present a model of hypertextual database centred on early dictionaries, a model in
large part already realized and operating on PC under the text retrieval program WordCruncher
for Windows.1 The model is conceived in the first place to allow the
researcher to work either at home or in an institutional setting. The dictionaries and texts easily
fit on a hard disk. The ability to store images depends on their number, the degree of detail and
compression techniques, all limiting factors of decreasing importance with each new technological
advance.
My presentation is intended to be both technical, in order to explain the model, and philological,
to show the interest of the tool. And, beyond the language dictionary, I should like to suggest the
perspective of cultural knowledge databases that are increasingly the object of computer-driven
projects and products. The bases linked to the dictionaries are conceived as an enhancement and
an enriching of the latter. By itself the dictionary base gives access to all occurrences of a given
phenomenon, while the associated bases inform and complete the dictionary data.
The model comprises several components: 1) the dictionary base; 2)
the text base, containing texts chosen for having served as sources of the dictionaries: the captured
editions are therefore all 16th-century ones (princeps in the case of Du Fouilloux, Vigenere
and Vitruve-Martin, unique in that of the Triomphe de Henry); 3) the metalinguistic
keyword base, which I shall explain subsequently; 4) the bibliographical base, containing
information on the dictionaries, texts, quoted sources and commentators; and 5) image and note
files. The different components are associated to each other either by hypertextual links or by the
user's queries.
The early dictionary base contains the following works:
- Académie française. Dictionnaire de
l'Académie française, 1st-8th eds., 1694-1935: sample AME, DOU-, GAGNER, GRAS, GROS, LOIN- to LOIS-, QUE, QUEUE, TIG- to TIN-, VOLER;
- Cotgrave, R. A Dictionarie of the French and English
Tongues, 1611: complete text [base created by I. Lancashire, Toronto];
- Estienne, R. Latinae linguae Thesaurus, 1531, 1536:
Latin headwords, French sequences (+ a few thematic Latin sequences -- cf. acanthus);
- Estienne, R. Dictionarium latinogallicum, 3rd ed., 1552:
bilingual items;
- Grand dictionaire françois-latin: Stoer 1593, 1599,
1603, 1606; Baudoin 1607; Marquis 1609; Poille 1609; Voultier 1612; de Brosses 1614: additions;
- Ménage, G. Dictionnaire étymologique,
1694: thematic sampling [base created by I. Leroy-Turcan, Lyon];
- Nicot, J. Thresor de la langue françoyse, 1606:
complete text.
The source text base includes:
- Belleau, Remy, La Bergerie, Premiere journee
(1565) [base created by M.-L. Demonet, Clermont-Ferrand];
- Du Fouilloux, Jacques, La Venerie, 1561;
- Triomphe de Henry, 1551;
- Vigenere, Blaise de, Traicté des chiffres, ou secretes
manieres d'escrire, 1586;
- Vigenere, Blaise de, L'Histoire de la decadence de l'empire
grec, 1577;
- Vitruve [Marcus Vitruvius Pollio], Architecture, ou Art de
bien bastir, trad. Jean Martin, 1547.
I shall comment on the different elements using concrete examples. My paper includes, in its
electronic form, two components: a) a technical and philological commentary, with links to 2)
screen displays of elements of the different bases. Within the base context displays bolding is used
to mark occurrences of the requested phenomenon; hot links are explained at some point in the
commentary; the typographical distinction roman/italic is that of the quoted dictionary or text.
[Return to Table] -- [Continue]
Note 1. Johnston & Co., 1995.
