The Dutch Language Institute (INT) develops and manages both historical and contemporary dictionaries. These were previously managed as separate projects with their own separate databases. Consistent with similar institutes abroad, the INT has more recently started working on integrating and linking lexical information across these separate databases. As a leading European lexicographic institute, the INT is one of the pioneers of this integrated approach.
In recent years, the institute has invested in a central lexicon, named GiGaNT, with information about spelling and morphology for words in the Dutch language, ranging from historical Dutch (historic lexicon Hilex) to contemporary Dutch (modern lexicon Molex). A sense inventory is currently being developed as a further addition to GiGaNT. In this inventory, different types of lexicographical information from the INT’s dictionaries are also linked at the sense level. Moreover, this information is also linked to corpus evidence from the historical and contemporary corpora. All of this results in a central database for the Dutch language that can function as an infrastructure for further lexical research aimed at the development of language materials and language software.
Further information and links:
- GiGaNT
- DiaMaNT
- Depuydt, Tiberius & Heylen (in press): Lexicography of the Dutch Language: from dictionaries to a lexicographical infrastructure [preprint]