Katrien Depuydt (/instituut voor de Nederlandse taal/)
DiaMaNT, a diachronic semantic lexicon of Dutch. From historical dictionary to computational lexicon
The diachronic semantic lexicon DiaMaNT aims to enhance text accessibility and to foster research in the development of concepts, by interrelating attested word forms and semantic units (concepts), and tracing semantic developments through time. In the lexicon, the diachronic onomasiology, i.e. the change in naming of concepts and the diachronic semasiology, i.e. the change in meaning of words, will be recorded in a way suitable for use by humans and computers. The onomasiological part of the lexicon is meant to enhance recall in text retrieval by providing different verbal expressions of a concept or related concepts. The diachronic semasiological component (which charts semantic change), aims to enhance precision by enabling the user to take semantic change into account; the oldest meaning of appel is ‘a fruit’. Potential applications benefiting digital humanities include enhancing retrieval by using semantic relations in search, and word sense disambiguation in historical text.
You can watch an online transmission here: