Maltese dictionaries for the future in Bari

Photo: Dwayne Ellul (left) and Joseph Buttigieg (right) in Bari

Joseph Buttigieg and Dwayne Ellul from the Department of Maltese within the Faculty of Arts have recently attended an intensive training course in lexicography and corpus linguistics organised by the leading company Lexical Computing in Bari, Italy.

One of the main speakers during the course was the well-known linguist and lexicographer Michael Rundell, who for many years served as Managing Editor of the Longman Dictionaries and as Editor-in-Chief of macmillandictionary.com. He is now Chief Lexicographic Officer at Lexical Computing Ltd. Rundell addressed, among other topics, the state of the art in lexicography, word sense disambiguation and induction, selecting suitable examples, the advantages of online dictionaries over printed ones, and how language cannot be constrained within rigid frameworks.

Julie Moore, who has worked on several leading dictionaries, led a session on practical lexicography. The course included training on the Sketch Engine platform and on Lexonomy, a dictionary compilation software. Special attention was given to the use of corpora as the foundation of modern lexicography. The issue of Artificial Intelligence in this field was also raised, particularly in relation to how it can be best used to speed up mechanical tasks and improve efficiency.

The themes discussed are fundamental for the development of much-needed resources for the Maltese language, such as the creation of new corpora and the compilation of dictionaries, including specialised ones. Mr Dwayne Ellul is a resident academic in the Department of Maltese specialising in lexicography, while Mr Joseph Buttigieg teaches corpus linguistics within the Department.