Producing LRs in Parallel with Lexicographic Description: the DCC project

This paper is a brief presentation of some aspects of the most important lexicographical project that is being carried out in Catalonia: the DCC (Dictionary of Contemporary Catalan) project. After making a general description of the aims of the project, the specific goal of my contribution is to present the general strategy of our lexicographical description, consisting in the production of an electronic dictionary able to be the common repository from which we will obtain different derived products (the human dictionary, among them). My concern is to show to which extent human and computer lexicography can share descriptions, and the results of lexicographic work can be taken as a language resource in this new perspective. I will present different aspects and criteria of our dictionary, taking the different layers (morphology, syntax, semantics) as a guideline. General outline of the DCC project The Dictionary of Contemporary Catalan (DCC) is a large scope lexicographic project that started at the beginning of 1985 in the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. Because of its nature, cost, structure, etc. the DCC should be considered with the status of a Catalan National Project. The general aim of the DCC is the creation of a descriptive dictionary of the contemporary Catalan language. Up to this moment, the Catalan lexicography has remarkable resources as regards its different aspects: historical and dialectal, etymological, and normative, but there is a lack in a specific work concerned with the synchronic description of the lexis without a normative perspective. The DCC project corresponds to the activities related to the study of language, which are specific to the Institute, and accomplishes thus its institutional mandate. The IEC has the responsibility, acknowledged by the Catalan and Spanish national authorities, of updating and establishing a standard and normative Catalan. The carrying out of this institutional mandate means that the creation of linguistic resources as the basis for such activities becomes a crucial issue, which is behind most programmes and research projects fostered by the Institute. According to this plan, the development of the DCC is structured in two stages which correspond, on the one hand, to the creation of linguistic resources that will enable the realisation of the project and, on the other, to the exploitation of these resources for the purposes mentioned above. 1 The first stage of the DCC project took place from 1985 to 1997, and its total cost came to more than 900 million pesetas (6 M ECUS). The second stage has an estimated duration of 8 years, and an approximate cost of 950 million pesetas. The DCC project has been financed with specific funds by the Science and Education Ministry of the Spanish Government and by the Generalitat (autonomous government) of Catalonia. Both administrations have signed, through the “Secretaria de Estado para Universidades e Investigacion” and the “Comissio Interdepartamental per a la Recerca i el Desenvolupament Tecnologic (CIRIT)”, specific agreements to carry out the The Descriptive Dictionary of Catalan and the DCC lexicon