A hub of lexicographical and textual resources on the French language: J. F. Féraud's new online Dictionaire de la langue française on the CNRTL

Conference item

Within the French tradition of freeware textual resources on line for all the francophones, a joint enterprise between the ATILF research team of Nancy (France) and the ARTFL project of Chicago (Ill. USA) has given birth to a large series of French historical dictionaries on line, 'dictionnaires d'autrefois'. That series gives a full-text access to the data which offers an historical and comparative overview of definitions and articles throughout the modern period of French (1550-1935). Nevertheless multi-criteria requests are not possible for the texts have not received any tagging system other than the page/column/article reference system. Among that list of machine-readable dictionaries figues Jean-François Féraud's remarkable Dictionnaire critique de la langue française (published in 1787, republished in 1994 by Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen, coll. Lexicographica series major n°53) which was launched in 2003, thanks to Mark Olsen's handy Phililogic text retrieving device. A new release of that dictionary is now available at the following address: www.cnrtl.fr/dictionnaires/anciens/feraud among another range of dictionaries which includes the finely-tagged TLFi (after Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé). That release includes a moderate and prudent XML tagging network that gives a substantial added value to the previous interface. Not only does it allow multi-criteria requests, it also displays Féraud's 700-page manuscript of his Supplement beautifully scanned and restored. Moreover, whatever the request Féraud's user on line is looking at, he/she may order a correlative request to the TLFi or the 1762 version of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française which is one of Feraud's main sources.

Authors: Caron, P

• Alternative title: Presented at French Lexicography session
• Publication status: Not published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Edition: Author's Original
• Language: English
• Subjects: Literature (non-English); Lexicography; French