An Overview of the Lexical Variation Between Arabic Lexicons and Natural Arabic Language (original) (raw)

Arabic Lexicology: Systematics of Compiling an Arabic Dictionary and Its lexicologists

2021

This article discusses the Arabic codification process, the systematic compilation of Arabic dictionaries, and the stories of Arabic lexicologists and their works from time to time. This study uses a library approach, with data collection techniques through reviewing and searching for library materials from books, journals, and other relevant sources. The data collected were analyzed by the text study method to describe the content in detail and aim to find out the contribution of dictionaries to the development of lexicology, how the process of compiling dictionaries was carried out by lexicologists, and the characteristics of dictionaries from time to time with their advantages and disadvantages. The results are: 1) The dictionary as a reference book in finding the meaning of words is certainly very helpful in the development of lexicology. 2) Lexicologists in producing dictionaries have struggled so hard, tirelessly, traveling from one corner of the village to another to get and understand the meaning of a word. 3) The works of lexicologists with various systematics of compiling dictionaries have characteristics with their respective advantages and disadvantages which are a major contribution to the development of lexicology as part of linguistics, especially Arabic linguistics, and literature.

Dictionary Definitions and Corpus-Based Evidence in Modern Standard Arabic

ACL 39th Annual Meeting, 2001

Traditional Arabic dictionaries are based on historical perspectives. They tend to include old meanings of little or no use to the language learner and lack modern typical usages. New dictionaries are needed that are based on an empirical approach where contextual analyses of language corpora determine typical central meaning. It is now possible to gather and access large quantities of electronic text and carry out fine analyses of linguistic data. Research has shown that linguistic analyses based on large corpora is of paramount importance to lexicographers, language teachers , machine translation and other NLP applications. Similarly, corpus-driven approaches are changing the way we understand the interaction between meaning and syntactic structure. These and other claims are discussed in this paper in the light of evidence from a limited corpus of Modern Standard Arabic.

Systematising the Microstructure of a Modern Dictionary of the Arabic Language

Space and Culture, India, 2018

This article is concerned with studying the influence of conservatism on the modern Arabic lexicography, namely the structure of its dictionary entries and interpretation methods. "The Large Arabic Dictionary" of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo has been chosen as the object of research since lexicographers regard it as the newest stage in the centuries-long evolution of the Arabic lexicography. Based on "The Large Arabic Dictionary", the comparative analysis touches upon the peculiarities of a modern general purpose dictionary of the Arabic language, definitions, methods of recording primary and derived verbs, and types of supporting data. The consistency between modern dictionaries of the Arabic language and their classical, medieval counterparts is analysed with regard to methods of organisation and interpretation. Omissions made by medieval lexicographers due to complex definitions and unsystematised dictionary entries are critically examined.

Approaches to Lexicography in English and Arabic

لارك, 2019

Lexicography, the art and craft of dictionary-making, is as old as writing. Since its very early stages several thousands of years ago, it has helped to serve basically the every-day needs of written communication among individuals in communities speaking different languages or different varieties of the same language. Two general approaches are distinguished in the craft of dictionary-making: the semasiological and the onomasiological. The former is represented by usually-alphabetical dictionaries as such, i.e. their being inventories of the lexicon, while the latter is manifested in thesauruses. English and Arabic have made use of both approaches in the preparation of their dictionaries, each having a distinct aim ahead. Within the confines of each language, an approach may yield various trends as to, for instance, the arrangement of entries within a dictionary. The present paper aims at distinguishing the various trends in writing dictionaries in both English and Arabic. By so do...

The Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ Dictionary - The Transition from Classical to Modern Arabic Lexicography

Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 2020

This article discusses the contribution of the Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ dictionary written by Buṭrus al-Bustānī, one of the leading figures of the Nahḍa, to the development of modern Arabic lexicography. This lexical endeavor is examined not only as part of a proto-national project, but as a pivotal moment in the development of modern Arabic lexical thought and in particular in al-Bustānī’s vision. Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ constituted an important pedagogical step in transforming classical Arabic into “a living” language adapted to the needs of the Arab nation. However, although Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ took the first crucial steps toward creating a modern Arabic lexical source, this dictionary mainly extends the age-old Arabic tradition of lexicography. It nevertheless paved the way to al-Bustānī’s final work, the encyclopedia Dāʾirat al-maʿārif, his most monumental effort and the cornerstone of al-Bustānī’s modern lexical vision.

A Framework for the Construction of a Historical Dictionary for Arabic

Research in Computing Science

Arabic is one of the oldest Semitic languages in the world. But despite its rich historical heritage, Arabic is still bereft of a historical dictionary which traces the first use of its words and the evolution of their meanings and structures. Therefore, creating such a dictionary is of a great importance for the Arab world as it bridges the gap between its present and its past. This task should undergo several stages and requires a lot of effort. In this paper, we present our framework to help the linguists create a historical dictionary for Arabic. For this aim, we propose a platform which helps to trace the evolution of the meanings of a given word throughout time. The developed system allows the user to extract the meaning of an Arabic word according to the historical period in which it appeared. It also provides information about the oldest date of use of the word with a textual example in which it first appeared, and the first place where the word was used.

The making of a large Arabic-English/English-Arabic dictionary: the Oxford Arabic Dictionary

In this presentation, we will illustrate the process of making our brand-new Arabic-English/English-Arabic dictionary, which is due for publication in print and online in August 2014. It is intended for speakers of both English and Arabic. It contains over 26,000 entries on each side, including many up-to-the-minute words and expressions. Collocations and examples are an important feature. The dictionary has been compiled using dictionary writing software that enables editors to work and communicate with one another regardless of their location. We show the entire process of making an Arabic dictionary, from finding a reliable framework in both languages, to developing a unique online functionality. We show the difficulties lexicographers face when compiling an Arabic dictionary, and the ways in which we dealt with those. In addition, the Oxford Arabic Dictionary has quite a few features that are entirely new to Arabic dictionaries, and we illustrate how we went about developing those.

The Design and the Construction of the Traditional Arabic Lexicons Corpus (The TAL-Corpus)

Modern Applied Science

Arabic lexicography is a well-established and deep-rooted art of Arabic literature. Computational lexicography, invests computational and storage powers of modern computers, to accelerate long-term efforts in lexicographic projects. A collection of 23 machine-readable dictionaries, which are freely available on the web, were used to build the Corpus of Traditional Arabic lexicons (the TAL-Corpus). The purpose for constructing the TAL-Corpus is to collect and organize well-established and long traditions of traditional Arabic lexicons which can also be used to create new corpus-based Arabic dictionaries. The compilation of the TAL-Corpus followed standard design and development criteria that informed major decisions for corpus creation. The corpus building process involved extracting information from disparate formats and merging traditional Arabic lexicons. As a result, the TAL-Corpus contains more than 14 million words and over 2 million word types (different words).  The TAL-...