Lemmatization in the collaborative editorial workflow of a medieval French text: The digital edition of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César

Abstract

This article demonstrates how lemmatization has been integrated into the workflow of the digital edition of the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César, the earliest universal chronicle in French, involving specialists in the fields of medieval French literature, lexicography, and digital humanities. After presenting the dynamic and collaborative editorial workflow, we discuss how the project's lemmatizer, Lemming, has helped the team to improve the accuracy and quality of the edition and offered an opportunity to reflect on the language and lexis of the text. The results of lemmatization are integrated into the edition's faceted search page, which functions as a tool for linguistic research, a lexical support for readers, and an alternative to an index of names.