8.504, Sum: Electronic Dictionary

[linguist at linguistlist.org]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-8-504. Sat Apr 12 1997. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 8.504, Sum: Electronic Dictionary

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry: Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
            T. Daniel Seely: Eastern Michigan U. <seely at linguistlist.org>

Review Editor:     Andrew Carnie <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Associate Editors: Ljuba Veselinova <ljuba at linguistlist.org>
                   Ann Dizdar <ann at linguistlist.org>
Assistant Editor:  Sue Robinson <sue at linguistlist.org>

Software development: John H. Remmers <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
                      Zhiping Zheng <zzheng at online.emich.edu>

Home Page:  http://linguistlist.org/

               ************************************************
  During the month of April, you may make credit card donations to
  LINGUIST via the Cascadilla Press web site:
                  http://www.cascadilla.com/linglist.html
  If you believe LINGUIST is a valuable service, please contribute to
  the LINGUIST Editorial Support Fund, which pays our student editors.
                ***********************************************



Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <seely at linguistlist.org>

=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Fri, 11 Apr 1997 18:17:03 -0400 (EDT)
From:  ping at cogsci.urich.edu (Ping Li)
Subject:  Sum: Electronic Dictionary on CD-ROM

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Fri, 11 Apr 1997 18:17:03 -0400 (EDT)
From:  ping at cogsci.urich.edu (Ping Li)
Subject:  Sum: Electronic Dictionary on CD-ROM

Dear LINGUIST colleagues,

A few weeks ago I sent out an email inquiry on electronic
dictionaries of English. I would like to thank the following people
for their kind replies:

Helmut Feldweg
Lance Eccles
Richard Cook
Sean Burke
James Vanden Bosch
Guillaume Gantard
Patrizia Bonaventura
Akai Joanne
Kirk Fraser

They have pointed out that there are many CD-ROM dictionaries on the
market, for example:

Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD)
Webster's New World dictionary, 3rd college edition (1988)
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE)
Oxford English Dictionary
American Heritage dictionary
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary (10th ed.)
Macquarie Dictionary (for Australian English)

However, what I have been looking for is an electronic dictionary
whose lexical items and definitions are readable directly in
plain ASCII texts (on which I can run standard UNIX search or data
manipulation commands). Although all of the electronic dictionaries
on CD-ROM do have underlying plain ASCII texts, these texts are
encrypted and extraction or manipulation on them cause copyright
violations. Sean Burke did point out that the Project Gutenberg
has released an e-text version of Webster's Unabridged (1913)
and it can be queried at: http://humanities.uchicago.edu/
forms_unrest/webster.form.html. The SGML source files (45mb, in pieces)
can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.prairienet.org/pub/providers/
gutenberg/etext96/. Helmut Feldweg also pointed out that Longman
has just released LDOCE on CD-ROM suitable for NLP purposes.

Once again, I want to thank the colleagues who shared their very
useful information with me.

Sincerely,

Ping Li

Ping Li, Ph.D. 				Email: ping at cogsci.richmond.edu
Department of Psychology           	http://www.urich.edu/~pli/
University of Richmond			Phone: (804) 289-8125
Richmond, VA 23173			Fax:   (804) 289-8943

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-8-504