Declining dictionary

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A declining dictionary is a list of words and phrases that are sorted against the usual reading direction , i.e. backwards alphabetically . The alphabetical order is based on the final letters of the words, followed by the penultimate, etc.

Dictionaries of this kind are particularly needed by linguists to analyze the frequency of language components, especially endings; they support research work in phonetics , phonology , script linguistics , morphology and lexicography . Language educators can also benefit as declining dictionaries can be used profitably for vocabulary work in both native and foreign language teaching. While some editions only contain the basic forms of the keywords, other word lists are supplemented by inflected keywords for more extensive purposes. However, a declining dictionary is not a fully valid substitute for a rhyming lexicon , because it only contains endings that are spelled the same but not sound the same.

Example of a backward alphabetical sorting

As an example, the beginning of a declining list of part of speech adverb is quoted.

d a , great, extra, about, hina b , down, bal d , accordingly, fast, constant, constant, friend, straight e , nowadays, almost, never, meanwhile, in front, today, out f , on it

One can argue about whether the part-of-speech assignment is correct in all cases; but this is only a demonstration of the construction of a declining dictionary in which the order of the words is organized from the end of the word.

Application examples

Declining dictionaries are always important when it comes to working on tasks that concern the shape of the end of words. A few examples may explain this:

Word formation
For linguists and language lovers, it can be interesting to investigate the question of which word formation tools a language has and what role they play. The matter may be handled as if the word education programs -heit and -keit with the same word stems can be attached or whether they are mutually exclusive. A declining dictionary now offers the possibility of compiling corresponding documents without great effort, without having to rely on your current memory.
Flexion
Similar questions can be asked of inflection: Which inflection endings appear in a text, a text corpus or in a language? Since the same endings are directly below each other in a declining dictionary, it is easy to get an overview of the frequency of their occurrence. In some lexicons you also get information about the frequency with which the corresponding words appear in the text corpus.
Spelling , phonetics , phonology
A task can also be to find out which letters or groups of letters appear in a text, a text corpus or in a language. The same task can be of interest in relation to sounds or phonemes .
Poetry
Words that can rhyme with others are also easy to find, provided they are spelled the same.

literature

There are declining dictionaries for many languages; the following list contains such works on German. However, declining lists are also integrated into other works where one would not suspect them from the outset. This also applies to the following two frequency dictionaries, which contain several declining word lists.

Declining German dictionaries

  • Tobias Brückner, Christa Sauter: Declining word list compared to today's German. Institute for the German Language, Mannheim 1984ff, ISBN 3-922641-60-1
  • Duk Ho Lee: Declining dictionary of the German language. de Gruyter, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-11-018197-5
  • Erich Mater: Declining dictionary of contemporary German. Verlag Enzyklopädie , Leipzig 1967 (Edition updated and significantly expanded by the author on CD-ROM, Straelener Verlag, Straelen 2001, ISBN 3-89107-047-0 )
  • Gustav Muthmann: Declining German dictionary: Handbook of word exits in German, taking into account the word and sound structure. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988, ISBN 3-484-31078-2
  • Siegfried Theissen , Raymond Alexis, Michel Kefer, Gerd-Theo Tewilt: Declining dictionary of German (Série des langues germaniques; Part 2). CIPL, Liège 1992.

Works containing declining word lists

  • Inger Rosengren: A frequency dictionary of the German newspaper language . Vol. 1, 2. Gleerup, Lund 1972/77, ISBN 91-40-04470-X (Contains declining lists separately for “Die Welt” and “Süddeutsche Zeitung”).
  • Arne Ruoff: Frequency dictionary of spoken language . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1981. 2nd unchanged edition 1990, ISBN 3-484-24008-3 (Contains declining lists, separated according to parts of speech).
  • Otto Nüssler : "International Handbook of First Names", part: Backwardly sorted register, Verlag für Standesamtwesen 1st edition 1987 ISBN 978-3-8019-5630-1

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Arne Ruoff: Frequency dictionary of spoken language . Niemeyer, Tübingen 1981. 2nd unchanged edition 1990, p. 11.
  2. ↑ http://www.aurint.de/Artikel_Ruecklaeufiges_Woerterbuch_der_deutschen%20Ssprach.pdf
  3. ↑ Ruoff 1990, p. 345.
  4. ^ So in: Inger Rosengren: A frequency dictionary of the German newspaper language. Vol. 1, 2. Gleerup, Lund 1972/77.

Web links

Wiktionary: declining dictionary  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations