tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post6192754458215898690..comments2024-03-14T10:31:26.918+00:00Comments on DCblog: On bard-induced bloglessnessDChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10192779827863835310noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-77062749850701251462015-04-24T22:19:46.662+00:002015-04-24T22:19:46.662+00:00Yesterday I received my copy of The Oxford Illustr...Yesterday I received my copy of The Oxford Illustrated Shakespeare Dictionary. Beautiful illustrations, clear definitions with examples, stunning "thematic spreads" (e.g. Armour or Clothes), and informative panels. Thank you very much, Professor Crystal - and your son Ben - for such a beautiful and informative book!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341330140084823857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-49124511318163634492015-04-03T09:42:09.475+00:002015-04-03T09:42:09.475+00:00Dear Professor Crystal, I can remember attending a...Dear Professor Crystal, I can remember attending a lecture you gave for a bunch of foreign Summer School students at Keble College in the summer of 1987, how illuminating it was, and I am very grateful for all the hard work you are putting into this. Really looking forward to that moment when you can recall it as "a lot of fun" and I can enjoy the results. Thank you!meherio68https://www.blogger.com/profile/03705914760374560271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-48581395049282116052015-03-20T21:53:23.134+00:002015-03-20T21:53:23.134+00:00I agree totally with the first paragraph. So the c...I agree totally with the first paragraph. So the challenge is: how to turn a dictionary into something that avoids the traditional problem. It doesn't have to be the way you describe. Dictionaries can be exciting, especially when brilliantly illustrated, That's what Ben and I have tried to do, anyway. If you have a better idea, why not tell us what it is, instead of just being negative? Your comment is no solution, as it stands.DChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10192779827863835310noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-7672906651045510932015-03-20T20:09:37.858+00:002015-03-20T20:09:37.858+00:00I think of Shakespeare and his acting troop as a m...I think of Shakespeare and his acting troop as a minter of words: concepts. In order to speak about his time and about the people of his time and their lives he needed to forge them in heat, and smash and chime them into shape in the anvil of his mind. These words were not museum pieces. <br /><br />And in an age where it is the corporations and the military and the bureaucrats and media who manufacture and authorise the use of language for their purposes, shouldn't we be teaching these young people to forge their own concepts and call the shots, and teach them call a spade a spade?<br /><br />A dictionary ossifies the language of Shakespeare. It cures Shakespeare's language like ham and serves it upPhilip Hallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04651875715129829182noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-45264367546500534992015-03-15T17:17:03.020+00:002015-03-15T17:17:03.020+00:00Please keep us posted, Professor Crystal. I'm ...Please keep us posted, Professor Crystal. I'm looking forward to reading these new publications.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02341330140084823857noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-70995934241858419562015-03-01T00:28:54.057+00:002015-03-01T00:28:54.057+00:00It's straightforward enough (though laborious)...It's straightforward enough (though laborious) to eyeball them; I was actually talking about automated lexeme assignment. "I marry" will usually be "Aye, marry", but in "I wil marrie you, if euer I marrie Woman" (AYL V:ii) it isn't. Getting that right requires EModE tagging, which as you say doesn't exist yet.John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-47947661557459833022015-02-24T18:23:22.168+00:002015-02-24T18:23:22.168+00:00That example isn't so tricky, actually. All on...That example isn't so tricky, actually. All one has to do is check out each instance, and it turns out that the various senses of 'I' are clearly distinguishable in context. The problems chiefly arise over word-class assignment, such as whether an item is adjectival or verb participial, and whether it's important to distinguish them, or whether a particular verb plus particle sequence is to be taken as a phrasal verb or not.<br /><br />This isn't the kind of thing that can be done automatically - at least, not until the Early Modern English Dictionary, with everything grammatically tagged, is completed. It's very much a manual task at the moment - which of course is why it took so long.DChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10192779827863835310noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-60778651941777813352015-02-24T02:27:53.603+00:002015-02-24T02:27:53.603+00:00Sorting forms into lexemes is certainly tricky: wh...Sorting forms into lexemes is certainly tricky: when is "I" a token of <i>I</i>, when of <i>aye</i> 'yes', and when (if ever) of <i>ay(e)</i> 'ever', for example?John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-80588457045329344112015-02-23T11:59:24.774+00:002015-02-23T11:59:24.774+00:00'Shakespeare made me do it.'
A likely stor...'Shakespeare made me do it.'<br />A likely story! ;-)NPnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-1104004347229454492015-02-22T07:47:27.252+00:002015-02-22T07:47:27.252+00:00Just me. With some help from Hilary, as we reach t...Just me. With some help from Hilary, as we reach the copy-editing stage. It's been a long haul, all right. I downloaded an e-version of the FF on 12 December 2004 and had a programmer do an alphabetical word-sort. The spelling task has been to analyse the variants into lexemes, which will incidentally allow a precise lexeme-count rather than the less interesting word-count which - depending on what words are counted and what is considered to be a word - ends up in the high 20 thousands, as you say. A lexeme count will be well below 20K. (Actually, my final total will be a bit of an underestimate, as I won't have time, if I'm to meet my deadline, to go through looking for phrasal verbs, which would be a tricky study in itself.) I do however give frequencies for all variants.<br /><br />But the primary aim of the exercise wasn't to arrive at a total, interesting though that is, but to provide the evidence for OP that comes from the spellings. A lot of the time the counts aren't illuminating, from an OP point of view, but I did them anyway, as I think they will be of interest in their own right, for reasons nothing to do with OP. People often ask me frequency questions that I've been unable to answer until now. But the spelling exercise has been invaluable in helping me sharpen OP. I'd no idea exactly how much evidence spelling would provide for OP until I did the survey. I know now.DChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10192779827863835310noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8377709913595182916.post-17637988169866294532015-02-22T03:48:52.177+00:002015-02-22T03:48:52.177+00:00Looking at Project Gutenberg's First Folio, I ...Looking at Project Gutenberg's First Folio, I count almost 27,000 distinct words. Of course, some of them are just variant spellings. That's a huge job: how many of you are working on it?John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.com