Vittorio Dell'Aquila, Johannes Mücke, Forskningscentrum för Europeisk Flerspråkighet (27/06/2024)

Short Review of: Dizionari de Lenghe Furlane, realizât dal CLAAP soc. coop. par cure di Sandri Carrozzo, online at: https://dizionarifurlan.eu/

The Dizionari de Lenghe Furlane (https://dizionarifurlan.eu/) is a comprehensive monolingual online dictionary for the Friulian language. It offers detailed descriptions of word meanings and example sentences, most of which come from written sources of the Friulian language. The project is managed by the Centri di Linguistiche Aplicade Agnul Pitane (CLAAP) and partially financed by the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region / Agjenzie Regjonâl pe Lenghe Furlane (ARLEF). Operational work on the online Dizionari de Lenghe Furlane commenced in April 2019, and progress has been steady since then. The dictionary is edited by Alessandro (Sandri) Carozzo, an accomplished expert on the Friulian language.

The Dizionari de Lenghe Furlane is essentially a corpus-based dictionary. The development of this dictionary involved the preparation of an annotated corpus of Friulian texts and extensive planning. The current online version contains over 6,900 lemmas, more than 4,400 multi-word expressions, a total of over 36,000 meanings, and an extensive collection of example sentences numbering over 51,000. What sets this dictionary apart, particularly in terms of examples and meaning identification, is its reliance on multiple labelled corpora, comprising over 11 million words, incorporating digitised texts and also non-digitised archival materials. This corpus includes contributions from over 1,000 authors and spans more than 6,000 titles.

The approach to selecting examples for inclusion into the dictionary diverges significantly from the practices prevalent in many dictionaries established in the latter half of the 20th century. Here, an effort has been made to draw examples from authentic texts rather than fabricated ones, thereby showcasing the breadth of written production in Friulian. However, this approach may introduce some inconsistencies, as texts from various sources with different characteristics are integrated. The authors therefore also ask for information and assistance if users notice such errors or inconsistencies. In maintaining transparency, the dictionary provides detailed information about the sources of examples, including author names and titles of works. A provisional list of cited authors and titles is included, with a promise of a comprehensive and detailed bibliography accompanying the final lexical work. Special acknowledgment is due to the numerous contributors who generously provided access to their works in digital format. The dictionary integrates both traditional and modern texts to ensure comprehensive coverage of the Friulian language. The sources include a wide range of literary works, covering both historical and contemporary texts.

One notable aspect of this dictionary regarding user interface and accessibility, is its exclusive focus on and use of Friulian. Unlike many other prominent dictionaries of minority languages, which are bilingual, translating between minority and majority language, this dictionary is entirely Friulian in its entries, definitions, examples, and also its online user interface. This is a commendable approach and certainly serves to support and promote the Friulian language, the sole availability of the user interface in Friulian also might restrict the target audience. But there are two important reasons for that. The first is that the dictionary is addressed to people who can speak or at least understand Friulian. The second and more important is that the dictionary is a very significant tool of language/corpus planning.

A single lemma is structured as in a typical monolingual dictionary. It contains information on the domain of use and the grammatical properties of the lemma as well as a definition and an example sentence with a source reference. In addition, there is information on synonyms and references to related or further entries and, in the case of polyrhematic expressions, grammatical information on the individual lexical components. As the editors state, the reproduction criteria applied in the dictionary ensure that the examples are generally transcribed in the official orthography of the Friulian language, while preserving the linguistic features that characterise the text. It is important to notice that there is no information on pronunciation because the basic idea that underlies the Friulian orthography is that to cover and to protect all the spoken varieties. For example, the lemma ‘house’ is written <cjase> and it represents different spoken forms like [ˈcaˑzɛ], [ˈʧaˑzɛ], [ˈcaˑza], and so on. Moreover, the digraph <cj> is a flag character indicating a Friualian identity (phonological graphical system).

In comparison with other lexicographic resources, the Dizionari de Lenghe Furlane is in a good position. While the Grant Dizionari Bilengâl talian-furlan (CFL 2000 [2011]) contains more than 46,500 lemmas and 15,500 expressions, the monolingual Vocabolari furlan (Vicario 2009), comprises 7,500 headwords, including variants (cf. Turello 2015, for a historical overview on grammaticography and lexicography of the Friulian language cf. Frau 2015). The question whether the dictionary is truly comprehensive, i.e. representative of the Friulian language, cannot be answered. The question is, if this representativity in terms of comprehensiveness can be reached in theory. Yet, what can be accomplished is coextensivity. Mosel (2012: 237) wishes to restrict “the notion of coextensivity to the relationship between the description and the selected text collection on which the description is based” and distinguishes it “from the notion of representativeness which in corpus linguistics refers to the relationship between corpora and language varieties”. Following this approach, an entry in the dictionary is adequate in terms of coextensivity, “if it accounts for all its occurrences in the selected text collection, irrespective of the size and the kind of the collected texts”. Certainly, this goal can be reached within the broad and extensive corpus the Dizionari de Lenghe Furlane is based on. Moreover, the dictionary goes beyond coextensivity to reach a certain degree of comprehensiveness, because the authors continuously check their corpus with their personal knowledge and the comments of the readers. The dictionary does not target only the literary language, but aims to include all spoken varieties of Friulian.

To conclude, the importance of codified dictionaries for the status and use of lesser-used language has been emphasised time and again. Be it as Sprachausbau as early as Kloss (1978), be it in the discussions of what constitutes a standard language (or better, standard variety) by Ammon (1986) or Auer (2005). The Friulian language as codified in the Dizionari de Lenghe Furlane represents the standard variety of Friulian. An easily accessible, freely available monolingual online dictionary therefore is a huge step towards the standardisation process of the Friulian language. This online dictionary has the potential to become a standard reference for all people who deal with Friulian - whether they are speakers, interested academics, writers or journalists. It is to be hoped that initiatives such as this will provide practical support for Friulian and also increase its use in everyday life.

References

  • Ammon, Ulrich (1986): Explikation der Begriffe 'Standardvarietät' und 'Standardsprache' auf normtheoretischer Grundlage. In: Günter Holtus, Edgar Radtke (eds.): Sprachlicher Substandard. I. 3 Bände. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1–64. Online https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110935882.1
  • Auer, Peter (2005): Europe's sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations. In: Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera, Dirk Geeraerts (eds.): Perspectives on Variation. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 7–42.
  • Frau, Giovanni (2015): Grammaticografia e lessicografia (dal XVII agli inizi del XX secolo). In: Sabine Heinemann, Luca Melchior (eds.): Manuale di linguistica friulana. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 94-114.
  • CFL 2000 (2011): Grant Dizionari Bilengâl talian-furlan. Udin: ARLeF/Regjon Autonome Friûl-Vignesie Julie.
  • Kloss, Heinz (1978): Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen seit 1800. Düsseldorf: Pädag. Verl. Schwann (Sprache der Gegenwart, 37).
  • Mosel, Ulrike (2012): Advances in the accountability of grammatical analysis and description by using regular expressions. In: Sebastian Nordoff (ed.): Electronic Grammaticography. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 4 (October 2012). Hawai'i: University of Hawai'i Press, 235–250. Online: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/4537
  • Turello, Davide (2015): Normalizzazione: grafia, grammaticografia e lessicografia. In: Sabine Heinemann, Luca Melchior (eds.): Manuale di linguistica friulana. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 511-532.
  • Vicario, Federico (2009): Vocabolari furlan. Udin: Societât Filologjiche Furlane/Provincie di Udin.