Arabic-L:LING:Thesaurus responses

[Dilworth B. Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 21 Jun 2000
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Thesaurus response
2) Subject: Thesaurus response
3) Subject: Thesaurus response

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1)
Date: 21 Jun 2000
From: mustafa abd-elghafar mughazy <mughazy at students.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Thesaurus response

I do not know of any recent attempt to compile an Arabic thesaurus, and I
can understand why. Early Arabs, as you mentioned, were aware of the
concept especially during the Abbasid era where they held lexical contests
(how many synonyms they knew). There are several books that list synonyms
and their shades of meaning such as fiqh al-lugha by al-tha3alibi, which
is quite available even in the States. However, to have a modern Arabic
thesaurus is, I think, a colossal project, and the result will be size of
the Encyclopedia Bratanica because of the many dialects and variations
within what some people call MSA. For example, there are about 200 words
that will be under the entry 'horse', and that is no exaggeration.

Mustafa Mughazy

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2)
Date: 21 Jun 2000
From: Muhammad Deeb <mdeeb at gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>
Subject: Thesaurus response

	Arabs did not and do not necessarily have to anticipate or adhere
to the patterns followed by Thomas Cooper, Roget or New Collins in their
respective thesauri.  In this kind of lexicon, entries are commonly linked
associatively by cross-reference through semantic relations as synonymy
and antonymy.  Arabic in that sense shows a surplus of specialized
dictionaries dealing with clothes, foods, animals, [nautology], laonwords,
&ct.

	Two such dictionaries come readily to mind: (a) Ath-Tha at alibi's
*Fiqh al-Lughah,* and As-Suyuti's *Al-Muzhir.* I'm afraid I haven't come
across a convincing thesaurus in modern Arabic lexicography.

								M. Deeb

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3)
Date: 21 Jun 2000
From: Digitek <sakhrus at erols.com>
Subject: Thesaurus response

You might want to check the lexicons at Sakhr's Website, www.sakhrsoft.com
and www.sakhr.com for your requirements.  The Arabic Lexicon site includes,
Muheet and Muheet al-Muheet and other collections.

Digitek International

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End of Arabic-L: 21 Jun 2000