El Diccionari de la llengua catalana de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans

Resum

The Dictionary of the Catalan Language, published by the Catalan Studies Institute at the end of last year, is a response to the public demand for an updated rendering of the lexical normative of the Catalan language. This article presents in detail the process of updating the normative dictionary, performed by a large group of people. Such a process was undertaken on the basis of the creation of a general database and of an in-depth analysis of the General Dictionary of the Catalan Language by Pompeu Fabra, whose second edition dates back to 1954. The making of this new work, which is modern, flexible and coherent, was basically divided in five stages: the establishment of lexicographic criteria (putting Fabra's work in contrast with the demands of current lexicography); the updating of the nomenclature (selecting new common vocabulary, terminology, etc.); the writing of the entries and articles (organizing and updating their form, content and presentation); the approval of the dictionary by the Board of the Catalan Studies Institute; and its publication. In this article, the basic features of the new work are defined, and its new additions and changes, brought forth by the use of modern lexicographical criteria, are presented in relation to the earlier work. The new features are quantitative (considerable increase of the number of entries and subentries, and increase in the content of the articles), related to the arrangement of the articles (typographic matters, and aspects related to distribution and composition of the information), and related to spelling. As a conclusion, the author of this essay puts forward a general appraisal of the work and some personal considerations. He also urges the institutions to regard the new dictionary as an instrument for language normalization, and the public to see it as a necessary working tool.