Lexicography is the craft of making dictionaries. In this help file for SooSL, we will teach you only the basics of lexicography. We can't teach you the whole craft. If you want to learn more, there are suggestions below.

You should plan your dictionary carefully. There are many different types of dictionaries. 

To plan well, we recommend you study other materials to learn how to make a good dictionary. 

Ways to expand and improve your dictionary

Here are some topics you might want to study. They will help you make your dictionary better.

• deciding what dialects to include in the dictionary
• finding and choosing words (signs) to include
• choosing a good "citation form", that is, the form of the word (sign) that you put in the dictionary
• distinguishing different senses from each other
• distinguishing multiple senses of one sign from homonyms (two signs that happen to be the same but have unrelated meanings)
• choosing good glosses to explain the meaning
• deciding about grammar categories
• crafting good example sentences
• idiomatic phrases and figurative language
• other information to include in notes and extra images
• lexical relations: synonyms, antonyms, part-whole relations, generic-specific relations, etc.

Be careful, though! Each new type of information you decide to add to your entries will be multiplied by the number of signs in your dictionary. In a big dictionary, that can be a lot of work! Before you add a new feature or new type of information, estimate how long it will take you to do it for every sign. It is better to publish a simple dictionary first, so people can start using it. Then add other features later, and publish again.

Ways to learn more about making dictionaries

If you want to learn more, here are some materials that we can recommend. Study them to get ideas for your dictionary, to make your dictionary better. They talk about making dictionaries for spoken languages, but most of the ideas apply also to sign languages. The software they describe is different from SooSL, but the principles are the same. Study these materials to figure out what to do. Then come back to this help file to learn how to do it in SooSL.

• Bartholomew, Doris A. & Schoenhals, Louise C. 2019. Bilingual dictionaries for indigenous languages, 2nd edition, ed. by Thomas L. Willett. Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, A.C. https://mexico.sil.org/resources/archives/80401
• SIL International. 2021. Dictionary-Making and Lexicography Course. https://sites.google.com/sil.org/dls-course/ (currently in draft form)
• Warfel, Kevin & Stutzman, Verna. 2020. Rapid word collection training manual. Dallas: SIL International. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BA7h39hXUKi1ZtWTBQCG2B_rjyIoUjeG/view

If you need help applying these ideas to your SooSL dictionary, contact us. We can explain things to you one-on-one. If you want, we can plan a dictionary workshop for your team.

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