LINGUIST List 7.600

Tue Apr 23 1996

Sum: "their" for "his/her", Spanish Online Dictionary

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <dseelyemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Laurence_Kitchingsfu.ca, "their" to replace "his" or "her"
2. Sondra.AhlenSPEECH1.CS.CMU.EDU, SUM: Spanish Online Dictionary

Many kind thanks to the 36 persons who responded
to my enquiry re the use of "their" to replace
"his" or "her".

The compiled list of responses is in two parts
and likely too long for the List; whoever would like
a copy may request it from me at:

Laurence_Kitchingsfu.ca

A while back I posted a request for information on online Spanish
dictionaries, especially of the Spanish Royal Academy's Diccionario
de la Lengua Espan~ola, and references to reverse Spanish dictionaries.

I'd like to thank the following for responding:

Marian Macchi (mjmthumper.bellcore.com)
James Fidelholtz (jfideludlapvms.pue.udlap.mx)
Luis Fernando lara (laracolmex.mx)
Thanassi Protopapas (protopapbekas.cog.brown.edu)
Eulalia de Bobes i Soler (lali2oasis.uab.es)
Alfredo Torrejon (torrealmail.auburn.edu)
David Eddington (deddingtfrank.mtsu.edu)

Several were requests for information. Alfredo Torrejon writes the following:

> There is a more recent inverse dictionary of Spanish, the Diccionario
> inverso de la lengua espanyola, by Ignacio Bosque and Manuel Perez
> Fernandez, published in Spain by Gredos in 1987. This dictionary
> supercedes Stahl and Scavnicky's, because it is based on the 1984 edition
> of the Academy's Diccionario and adds other sources as well. I am not
> aware of an electronic edition of this dictionary or of the Academy's,
> though. If you find out something, I will very much appreciate your
> informing me, as I myself am working on a Spanish dictionary for college
> students.

David Eddington did know of a modified version of the Royal Academy
Dictionary:

> There is a Spanish word list of about 90,000 words available via ftp.
> Ftp to linguistics.archive.umich.edu. It is called span-lex.zip and is
> the directory /linguistics/lexica. I have used this as a reverse
> dictionary for studies. A colleague of mine wrote a small program that
> lets you access it easily. If your interested I can get a copy for you.

The wordlist mentioned by Eddington has proven to be very useful. One
warning is in order, and that is that some modifications have been made
to the original Academy dictionary in the form of additional words.
Nevertheless it is very usable on unix with grep for searching for
words with particular orthographic sequences.

One additional online Spanish dictionary-like resource that I'm aware
of is called Comp-jugador, created by Daniel M. Germa'n. This is
a web interface to an online conjugator of verbs and can be found
at :

http://csgwww.uwaterloo.ca/~dmg/lando/verbos/con-jugador.html

-Sondra
ahlencs.cmu.edu