The Accademia della Crusca: New perspectives in lexicography

Abstract

Ahstraet: The Accademia della Crusca is involved in historical, philological and lexicographical research into the Italian language. First, we provide some background information on the Accademia. Second, we discuss the problems of selectivity and inertia of nineteenth century lexicography, and define modern day requirements. We then consider the contribution of the computer to modern lexicography, and some computer-based dictionary projects, including those undertaken specifically at the Accademia.

Electronic lexicography

“…Computers were also being used during this time on the European dictionaries, such as the French Tr~sor de la langue franqaise, a massive historical dictionary dealing with the period from 1789 to 1960, with a computerized file of 90 million occurrences (Frautschi, 1973 p. 370). and the Italian Dizionario storico integrale delle lingua italiana undertaken by the Accademia della Crusca in 1964 (Duro, 1968;Zampolli, 1973;Nencioni, 1990). During the 1970s, the Old Spanish Dictionary became computerized in 1971 (Nitti, 1978;Burrus, 1983), and the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) was conceived at the beginning of the decade as a fully computerized dictionary (Bessinger, 1968;Leyerle, 1971;Bratley and Lusignan, 1976;Healey, 1985).…”