A Case of Kinship

Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik, vol. 81, pp. 457–492

Abstract

Abstract This article describes onomasiological explorations of Old Frisian and Old English lexis in the semantic field of KINSHIP through a novel, digital approach. In connecting Old Frisian lexis, drawn from the Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch (AFWB), to the overarching structure of A Thesaurus of Old English (TOE), a dataset has been created that shares a semantic framework with the one existing for Old English lexis. The connected resources are shared and analysed using the web application Evoke. Statistical data provided by this tool, such as the degree of lexicalization for this field, facilitates comparative analyses of the two historical languages. As this article demonstrates, the reuse of the onomasiological macrostructure of TOE offers new insights into linguistic and cultural aspects of these two languages and their language communities.

Authors 2

1. Rita van de Poel Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University Leiden Niederlande

2. Sander Stolk Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University Leiden Niederlande