Arabic-L:LING:Announcing Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 17 Jan 2011
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Announcing Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project

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1)
Date: 17 Jan 2011
From: <stephan.guth at ikos.uio.no>
Subject: Announcing Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project

Dear all

I should perhaps not conceal from you that I have already begun work on
"the" etymological dictionary everybody is looking for. Since this is a
vast project, I am still hesiting to call what I have been able to do so
far a real beginning. But there is a basic concept, a preliminary internet
design which I am experimenting with, an open structure that envisages and
allows a number of additional features/aspects/jobs, there is a huge
amount of relevant material that I have collected, and there are the germs
of some model entries which will be needed when it comes to trying to
raise monies for each single operation that will add to the dictionary.

As a working title, I called the project "An Etymological Dictionary of
Arabic Language and Culture" (EDALC) or "An Etymologico-Conceptual
Dictionary..."

http://www.hf.uio.no/ikos/english/research/projects/etymological_dictionary_arabic/index.html

since it comprises both a strictly etymological component and another one
dealing with semantic history and the history of key concepts. There is
already a lot of highly valuable material around, but it is scattered here
and there, and one of the major tasks of the EDALC project is to
systematically make this material available as dictionary lemmata in a
pre-designed format (accessible online).
The other big task is to (choose and) digitalize key texts of the Arabic
turaath as well as the nahDa and our own days, to raise monies for this,
to employ people and to supervise their work. It's an enormous task, of
course, but I think we have to begin SOMEwhere, and after that the project
will run more or less by itself because of its open structure -- a kind of
Wikipedia to which the global community of scholars of Arabic can
contribute (controlled by an editorial board / a committee of peer
reviewers).

I will be happy to receive support for this project, however critical it
may be, and welcome everybody who is seriously interested in forming a
core group in order to advance the project to the next level(s):
applications for funding, discussing components and design, etc.

However is interested, please contact me!
Stephan Guth, Oslo

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