A6. Best Practices for Lexicography - SIL

This lesson provides a comprehensive guide to best practices for lexicography, specifically within the context of a language project. The best practices are organized in a way that they build upon one another as a lexicographic project progresses, ensuring a structured, efficient, and community-oriented approach to dictionary creation.

Here’s a quick recap of the key best practices:

1. Language Community Ownership: The language community should take ownership of the project. The linguist serves as a consultant and facilitator.

2. Research User Needs: Understand the needs of the users, which helps in deciding what content and format the dictionary should take.

3. Define Constraints: Clearly outline project constraints (e.g., deadlines, languages/scripts, team size) to guide the process.

4. Intellectual Property Agreement: Ensure that intellectual property agreements are signed by all significant contributors.

5. Database Software: Use FLEx for storing and manipulating lexical data, as it supports various tools and data-sharing capabilities.

6. Record Sources: Keep track of the sources for each lexical entry to ensure the credibility and traceability of the data.

7. Archive the Database: Regularly back up the data off-site for safekeeping and future access.

8. Rapid Word Collection Workshop: Hold workshops early to quickly populate the lexical database.

9. Separate Entries: Ensure that words with predictable inflection patterns are not redundantly listed as separate entries.

10. Citation Form: Choose the most appropriate lemma (citation form) to be consistent and helpful to users.

11. Text-Corpus Analysis: Use natural texts alongside native-speaker intuition to identify vocabulary and usages.

12. Semantic Domains: Organize words according to semantic domains to improve thesaurus development.

13. Well-Formed Entries: Include a part of speech, definition, and illustrative sentence for each entry to make them clear to users.

14. Well-Formed Definitions: Provide precise definitions that disambiguate headwords from other related terms.

15. Well-Formed Illustrative Sentences: Ensure sentences are constructed to demonstrate proper usage, ideally in collaboration with native speakers.

16. Lexical Relations: Illustrate connections between words (e.g., antonyms, synonyms) to enrich the dictionary.

17. Etymology: Document the origins and dialectal variations of words.

18. Computer Tools: Use computer tools to identify and correct inconsistencies in the lexicon.

19. Publish Early and Often: Make the dictionary available online early and update it regularly for feedback.

20. Dictionary App: Create a dictionary app for wider accessibility, particularly in regions where mobile technology is more prevalent.

This systematic approach ensures the dictionary is not only accurate and comprehensive but also aligned with the needs of its users and the realities of technology today.

OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT [Large language model]. https://chatgpt.com