A Chronology of the Medieval Irish Lexicon

在过去的1500年里，爱尔兰和苏格兰一直在说和写盖尔语。虽然拉丁语在欧洲其他地区的书面记录中占主导地位，但爱尔兰人和苏格兰人很早就适应了他们的语言，并培养了现在世界上最古老和最丰富的白话文学之一。早在7世纪就编纂了大量关于本土法律的书籍，随后的几个世纪见证了宗教写作、诗歌和一系列全球独一无二的叙事故事的培养。任何一种语言中的词汇都会随着时间的推移而变化，最显著的是随着新词的引入，这些新词通常是从其他语言借来的，而由于这样或那样的原因，不再被认为有用的词也会消失。盖尔语词汇在整个中世纪时期都受到其他语言的影响，最著名的是拉丁语、挪威语、法语和英语。然而，很大一部分变化是语言内部的，最常见的是影响现有单词的含义。是的，如果我们要在过去的任何时候正确地解释这种语言，避免对文本的不合时宜的阅读，准确地理解意义的变化是必不可少的。该项目将解决词汇和词义变化的问题，解决最权威的早期爱尔兰语历史词典--主要基于旧爱尔兰和中爱尔兰材料的爱尔兰语言词典的核心问题。该词典在1913年至1976年间分册出版，现在以更新的数字格式存在(www.Dil.ie)。它是以7世纪至17世纪之间记录的盖尔语为基础的，每个条目都包含了来自原始文本的多次引用，说明了该词的含义。然而，最初的词典编撰者没有努力提供引用的日期，因此单词的年龄和它们的含义往往不清楚。在这个项目中，我们将提供词典编纂过程中使用的所有文本的日期。随后，当用户访问特定条目时，还会向他们显示每个单词的时间范围的可视化，并查看该词义是如何随着时间的推移而发展的。这将使学者们能够确定最适合他们正在研究的任何文本的词义，或者追踪随着时间的推移词义的变化。这也将是对今后盖尔语历史研究的重大贡献。研究人员将首次能够绘制词汇发展的图表，包括新词的创造，某些词的过时，以及几个世纪以来词义的变化。然而，它的用处将超出语言研究的范围。考古学家和历史学家将能够追踪意识随着时间的变化，并将这些映射到考古和历史记录中的变化。例如，《词典》包含了许多与服装有关的词汇，未来的考古学家将能够将词义的变化映射到可以从考古和历史收藏中收集到的东西上。要书写一种语言的历史，我们首先需要了解它的词汇的变化，特别是人们在不同时代所使用的词语的含义。这个项目将为学者们提供一个独特而强大的工具来研究这些问题，并致力于研究一部全面的、具有历史深度的语言史。

Gaelic has been spoken and written in Ireland and Scotland continuously for the last 1500 years. While Latin dominated the written record in the rest of Europe, the Irish and Scots adapted their language to writing at an early date and cultivated what is now one of the oldest and richest vernacular literatures in the world. Vast tracts on native law were compiled as early as the 7th century and subsequent centuries saw the cultivation of religious writing, poetry and a body of narrative tales which is globally unique. The vocabulary in any language changes over time, most notably with the introduction of new words, often borrowed from other languages, and the loss of words which, for one reason or another, are no longer deemed useful. The Gaelic vocabulary fell under the influence of other languages throughout the medieval period, most notably of Latin, Norse, French and English. However, a large proportion of changes are internal to the language and most commonly affect the meaning of existing words. Yes an accurate understanding of changes in meaning is essential if we are to properly interpret the language at any time in the past and to avoid anachronistic readings of texts. This project will address the issue of changes in the vocabulary and the meaning of words by tackling a problem at the heart of the most authoritative historical dictionary of early Irish, A Dictionary of the Irish Language based mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials. The Dictionary was published in separate volumes between 1913 and 1976 and now exists in an updated digital format (www.dil.ie). It is based on the Gaelic language as recorded between the seventh and seventeenth centuries, and each entry contains multiple citations from original texts illustrating the meaning of the word. However, the original compilers of the Dictionary made no effort to provide dates for the citations and so the age of words and their meaning is often unclear. In this project, we will provide dates for all the texts that were used in the compilation of the dictionary. Subsequently, when users access a particular entry, they will also be shown a visualisation of the chronological range of each word and see how the sense has developed over time. This will enable scholars to identify the senses of words most appropriate to any text on which they are working or to trace the changes in meaning over time. It will also be a major contribution to future studies of the history of the Gaelic language. For the first time, researchers will be able to chart the development of the vocabulary including the coining of new words, the obsolescence of certain words, and changes of meaning of words over centuries. Its usefulness will extend beyond the study of language, however. Archaeologists and historians will be able to track changes of sense through time and map these onto changes in the archaeological and historical records. For example, the Dictionary contains numerous words relating to clothing and a future archaeologist would be able to map changes in the sense of words onto what can be gathered from archaeological and historical collections. To write the history of a language we need, first of all, to understand the changes in its vocabulary and particularly what people meant at different times by the words that they used. This project will provide a unique and powerful tool for scholars to investigate these questions and work towards a history of the language which is comprehensive and has historical depth.