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Anglo-Norman Dictionary Project :
A revision of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary (London: MHRA, 1977-1992). The first part (A-E) is already revised for both a printed and an online version ( www.anglo-norman.net ) with full search facilities, and linked to an extensive database of related texts; the Dictionary and the texts have been digitised with AHRB Resource Enhancement funding.
In May 2003, this project was awarded a Major AHRB Research Grant of £.426,112 over four years (September 2003–), for the revision of the next section of the Dictionary (letters F-H). The project, in addition to the two Editors, Professors D.A. Trotter (Aberystwyth) and W. Rothwell (Manchester), now has two full-time researchers, Dr Virginie Derrien and Dr Geert De Wilde. In 2005 the printed version of AND2 was published (London: MHRA; xlix + 1107 pp.) and on 1 March 2006, all access restrictions on the online AND were lifted, making available (now, as of September 2007) A–H in the second edition together with I–Z in the first edition. A parallel text base of 76 integral Anglo-Norman texts, linked to the Dictionary and fully searahcble, went online in March 2007.
In 2007, a further award, of £. 873,669, was made by the AHRC for the period 2007–2012. This will allow the Dictionary to advance as far as M.
Anglo-Norman, the form of French used in medieval Britain from 1066 until the mid-fifteenth century, is a major component of English. It is crucial to historians of English; as an important dialect of medieval French (in which the earliest French literary texts were written), it forms a key element in any account of the history of French vocabulary. The language of a major European power in the Middle Ages, Anglo-Norman was the medium for a vast array of historical, administrative, and legal documentation. The Anglo-Norman Dictionary (1977-1992) is the only guide to this difficult vocabulary. The first half of this Dictionary is nothing like as comprehensive as the second half (from P onwards); the project's ultimate aim is a complete revision, which will probably produce a dictionary two to three times the size of the first edition.
At present, the new AND2 offers an exciting mixture of technology and traditional philological methods. The basis remains high-quality lexicography which has been recognized by major projects elsewhere, like the Dictionnaire Etymologique de l'Ancien Français in Heidelberg www.deaf-page.de or the Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch in Nancy.
The innovation in the online version is twofold. Firstly, free online access will open the Dictionary to anyone with access to the Internet. Secondly, there is a distinctive new feature which exploits a unique strength of digital dissemination. Traditional dictionaries have published letter by letter. To make production and distribution viable, a scholarly dictionary had to be published in relatively large sections, typically (save in etymological and some onomasiological dictionaries) an alphabetical sequence. In a purely on-line publication, that production-based constraint is removed. The vagaries of scribal and editorial practice in Anglo-Norman sources, which routinely disperse related forms into different parts of the alphabet, mean that a given word-family (or even word) often has representatives appearing under separate letters.
Thus, for example, the revision of E could usefully have drawn on, and subsumed, certain articles currently in AND1 under S. Within G, all words deriving from Germanic etyma need to be re-examined together with their covariant equivalent at present located under W (e.g.: garde / warde ) so that a rational distribution of words and forms can be achieved. Publication by entry instead of by letter allows not only revision (in the first instance) of F-H, and (now) of I–M, but also, where desirable, changes to entries elsewhere. The whole can be continuously updated, corrected, and expanded, without the need for cumbersome supplements or new editions. |
