[Ads-l] MetroLex (NYC lexicography meetup), Sept. 29

[Ben Zimmer]

Those of you in the NYC area may be interested in attending the next
MetroLex event on Sept. 29 at Columbia. Details below -- you can use the
Eventbrite link to reserve a seat.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/metrolex-digitization-and-its-discontents-tickets-37535636098

MetroLex: Digitization And Its Discontents

Fri, September 29, 2017
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT
Columbia University
Hamilton Hall, Room 703
New York, NY 10027

The Dictionary Society of North America has partnered with local
organizations in the New York City area to establish a series of meetups
called MetroLex. MetroLex meetups bring together lexicographers, linguists,
technologists, educators, and other language professionals to share
research and projects relating to dictionary technology, dictionary use,
language documentation, semantic ontologies, and lexicography.

Once again MetroLex will be held at Columbia University, hosted by
associate professor of English and comparative literature John H.
McWhorter. The theme of this session focuses on the lexicographical
challenges of the transition from print to digital, with a consideration of
what is lost and gained in the process. John Morse, former president and
publisher of Merriam-Webster, will look at the rich supporting information,
or "metadata," found in a dictionary's traditional work galleys, much of
which (like handwriting and date stamps) can be lost as publishers move to
all-digital authoring systems. Angus Grieve-Smith, a corpus linguist, will
consider what happened when lexicographers for France's equivalent of the
Oxford English Dictionary, the Trésor de la Langue Française, first
incorporated digitized texts but based their corpus on the authority of
literary critics, providing an inadequate picture of the French language.

The event is free and open to the public — you don't have to be a
lexicographer to attend! More information on our speakers follows below.

John Morse, "The Metadata of a Work Galley: A Guided Tour Through a
Dictionary's 'Offline' Information"
John is the former President and Publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc., holding
those titles until his retirement last year. He joined Merriam-Webster in
1980. As Manager of Editorial Operations and Planning beginning in 1983,
and as Executive Editor in 1991, he was responsible for all
product-development operations. He became Publisher in 1996, widening his
responsibilities to include all company operations, and was named President
and Publisher in 1997. He was actively involved in the company's editorial
process, including the creation of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary,
Eleventh Edition in 2003 and Merriam-Webster's Advanced Learner's English
Dictionary, a dictionary for people learning English as a second or foreign
language, in 2008. He is a strong advocate for cross-media development and
has written and spoken widely about the evolution of reference books in
print and online formats. He is a graduate of Haverford College and holds a
Masters of Arts degree in English Language and Literature from the
University of Chicago.

Angus Grieve-Smith, "The Challenge of Representativeness in the 1971 Trésor
de la Langue Française Dictionary"
Angus is a linguist and programmer. After teaching French and Linguistics
at Hofstra University and Saint John’s University in New York and creating
an early prototype sign language synthesis application at the University of
New Mexico, he is currently developing teaching and learning tools for
Columbia University. His research has covered the history of negation in
French and fights over transgender terminology. He is currently compiling
the Digital Parisian Stage Corpus, a representative corpus of
nineteenth-century French theatrical texts, available on GitHub.

The presentations will be followed by discussion and light refreshments
provided by Oxford University Press.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org