Speaker
Description
From 2017 until 2021, the Croatian Web Dictionary – Mrežnik was a project of the Croatian Science Foundation; from 2022 until now, it has been an internal project of the Institute for the Croatian Language, and from 2024, it will be funded by the EU program NextGeneration EU. The project goals are to compile an e-dictionary of the Croatian language that is online, free, corpusbased, monolingual, hypertext, searchable, normative, and based on the contemporary results of e-lexicography and computational linguistics. Mrežnik consists of three modules: for adult native speakers of Croatian, schoolchildren, and non-native speakers of Croatian. It will be the central meeting point of the existing language resources of the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics but also of all language resources created within the project. Croatian Web Dictionary – Mrežnik is conceived as a dynamic dictionary that will be further compiled and edited even after the end of the NextGeneration EU project, as it is a long-term project of the Institute for the Croatian Language. The reason for launching the Mrežnik project was primarily because in 2016, at the time of the project application, Croatia was still one of the countries that did not have an online dictionary of their national language compiled according to the rules of contemporary e-lexicography. The need for extensive scientific research in e-lexicography was also recognized, i.e., getting to know the theory and practice of creating e-dictionaries and the possibilities that new dictionary platforms offer. Mrežnik is compiled taking into account semantic relations and the systematic nature of language. The systematic nature of the dictionary can be seen in almost all areas: accentuation of entry words, the selection and accentuation of forms in the grammatical block, the definition of words that belong to closed grammatical and semantic groups, etc. The two essential computer tools for compiling this three-module dictionary are Sketch Engine, a corpus query system (loaded with the corpora) to support language analysis, and TLex, a dictionary writing system. Word Sketches are specially adapted to the needs of the project and are based on a developed Sketch Grammar. In 2022, a part of the dictionary (A – F) was exported from TLex to both the web application (https://rjecnik.hr/mreznik/) and the CLARIN European science infrastructure repository (clarin.si repository and the github.com public data management system). The presentation will focus on the corpora and wordlist(s), normative and pragmatic aspects of Mrežnik, micro- and macrostructure of Mrežnik, and the place of grammar in Mrežnik. The fact that Mrežnik is the first gamified Croatian web dictionary and the first dictionary with recorded pronunciation will be stressed. The comparison of the three modules will also be addressed, and it will be shown that the center of all lexicographic decisions was always the user.
