Word banks, dictionaries and research results by the roadside

Abstract

Many European languages have undergone considerable changes in orthography over the last 150 years. This hampers the application of modern computer-based analysers to older text, and hence computer-based annotation and studies of text collections spanning a long period. As a step towards a functional analyser for Norwegian texts (Nynorsk standard) from the 19th century, funding was granted in 2020 for creating a full form generator for all inflected forms of headwords found in Ivar Aasen’s dictionary published in 1873 (Aasen 1873) and his grammar from 1864 (Aasen 1864). Creating this word bank led to new insight in Aasen (1873), its structure, internal organisation, and ambition level as well as its link to Aasen (1864). As a test, the full form list generated from this new word bank was used to analyse the word inventory of texts by Aa. O. Vinje, written in the period 1850–1870. The Vinje texts were also analysed using a full form list of modern standard Norwegian, to study the differences in applicability and see how Vinje’s language relates to the written standard of modern Norwegian.