RusEng Dictionary w/words organized by "type"

[David J Birnbaum]

Dear SEELANGers,

A couple of thoughts about Kenneth's recent message about dictionaries that
group words according to grammatical properties (appended),

For the benefit of those who have not already encountered it, an excellent
print reference more of less of this type (see below for details) is A. A.
Zaliznjak's Grammaticheskii Slovar' Russkogo Iazyka. Briefly:

1. The dictionary contains words followed by columns of index values
pointing to tables that describe the word's grammatical properties. For
example, the dictionary uses its own taxonomy of conjugation patterns, and
each verb has a number listing the relevant properties. There are also
index values for verb aspect, gender and animacy of nouns, and just about
any other inflectional information a linguist or language student might
want to find. There are no definitions (in Russian or English) except where
needed to distinguish homonyms. There is a comment field with notes about
morphological properties that are not easily reduced to index values and
tables.

2. The head words in the dictionary are arranged in alphabetical order from
the *rear* of the word, following the model of the "obratnyi slovar'." That
is, the dictionary begins with words that *end* in "a" and ends with words
that end in "ia". This makes it very easy to find words with similar
endings.

3. The dictionary does not group words by grammatical properties (other
than to the extent that grammatical properties might be determined by the
way the head word ends). But there is an electronic version of this
dictionary, and one can search it for the values from the index columns and
retrieve a list of words that match the query input. For example, to
retrieve all masculine nouns ending in soft signs but no other words ending
in soft signs, one would search for all words ending in soft signs and then
pipe the output of that first search through a second search that would
locate the index values that represent masculine nouns.

Authorized licenses for the electronic version of the dictionary are
available from David Hart at Brigham Young University. You can write to
David directly for more information at david_hart at byu.edu .

Cheers,

David J. Birnbaum
________

> Is there a Russian/English dictionary (or even just
> a Russian dictionary w/out English) - which has the
> words organized by "type" [I'm sure there is a better
> word for this - perhaps declinsion and conjugation
> patterns].
>
> For example:
>
> All masc, singular, nominative nouns which
> end in ', and follow normal rules, are grouped
> together.
>
> All verbs which end in at', and follow the
> standard at' declinsion pattern, are grouped
> together.
>
> One of my frustrations is not so much with nouns
> and adjectives - but with verbs and declension
> patterns.
>
> There seems to be definiancy in examples - perhaps
> one example, or a small handful, or a few exercises
> to help understanding.
>
> But if this is a rule that one needs to learn to
> apply to encounters with large numbers of verbs,
> it would be helpful to keep the 'regular' verbs
> together, all of the ones that follow all of the
> rules of the particular conjugation pattern.
>
> Otherwise, each verb needs to be learned dinstinct
> and separate, and as a student of Russian, it gets
> confusing.
>
> Either print or electronic dictionary would be fine!
>
> -Kenneth
>
> --
> -- Kenneth.Udut at SPCORP.COM
________

Professor David J. Birnbaum
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
1417 Cathedral of Learning
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA
Voice: 1 412 624 5712
Fax: 1 412 624 9714
Email: djb at clover.slavic.pitt.edu
URL: http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                http://members.home.net/lists/seelangs/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------