Abstract
Lexicographers increasingly acknowledge the enormous potential of electronic dictionaries. The great capacity and speed characteristic of electronic products, combined with enhanced query and data retrieval technology, pave the way to a new generation of dictionaries unimagined in the paper-dictionary era. It is amazing to see how many of the lexicographer's greatest obstacles disappear in the electronic dictionary. This article will, firstly, attempt to give a perspective on typical features of electronic dictionaries. Secondly, electronic-dictionary entries will be designed as a solution to some of the most burning lemmatization problems encountered by lexicographers for African languages in paper dictionaries. Keywords: electronic dictionary, lexicography, data retrieval, lemmatization, cd-rom, access route, pop-up functionalities, pop-up screens, edutainment, cross-referencing, information retrieval, encoding, decoding, African languages, navigation bar.
Highlights
The electronic dictionary, whether on CD-ROM, online, or hand-held1, will supersede the paper dictionary in ways unimaginable in the paper-dictionaryLexikos 11 (AFRILEX-reeks/series 11: 2001): 139-159140 D.J
In contrast to the paper dictionary a variety of sophisticated search and querying strategies become possible in the electronic dimension
The lexicographer could for instance decide to compile a dictionary entry which resembles the typical layout in a conventional paper dictionary as in Table 7, linking the pop-up screens directly with selected words in the article
Summary
The electronic dictionary, whether on CD-ROM, online, or hand-held1, will supersede the paper dictionary in ways unimaginable in the paper-dictionaryLexikos 11 (AFRILEX-reeks/series 11: 2001): 139-159140 D.J. In contrast to the paper dictionary a variety of sophisticated search and querying strategies become possible in the electronic dimension.
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