The Shape of the Medieval Dictionary Entry [1994, rptd. 1996, 2008]

Abstract

"The history of lexicography in the Middle Ages," Olga Weijers tells us, "is much less interesting for its matter than for its form." This paper examines the development of the dictionary entry structure beginning with Papias' Elementarium doctrinæ (11th century) and ending with Firmin Le Ver's Dictionarius (1440). Although many entries in Papias are limited to the simple headword + definition structure, analysis shows that the use of two other positions, the post-lemmatic and the post-definitional, was quickly developed. The marginal position was also part of Papias' layout. The post-lemmatic position could contain definitional connectors, indications of language, etymology and derivation, and grammatical information. Similar information could also be found post-definitionally, but in differing proportions. What becomes clearer as one advances to the work of Le Ver, after a brief examination of Hugutio and Balbus, is that certain kinds of information tend to become associated with certain positions. For example, nearly all of the 4200 occurrences of adverbium in Le Ver are post-lemmatic, as are the absolute expressions for describing vowel length, media correpta, penultima producta, etc. Verbal expressions for the latter, corripitur, producitur, are virtually exclusively post-definitional. To describe the entries of Papias and Le Ver we have developed a simple database with four and ten fields respectively. This allows an analysis of the contents of each position and the creation of entry profiles for each lexicographer.