Integration of multi-word expressions into the Digital Dictionary of German Language (DWDS). Towards a lexicographic representation of phraseological variation

One central goal of the project ‘Zentrum für digitale Lexikographie der deutschen Sprache’ (Center for digital lexicography for the German Language, www.zdl.org) is to provide a corpus-based lexicographic component of common German multi-word expressions (MWE), including idioms, for DWDS (www.dwds.de), a general language dictionary of contemporary German. As a central challenge of this task, we have identified an adequate lexicographic representation of such common properties of MWE as variation and modification. To document the variation, we have developed a special entry-clustering model, which we call hub-node entry. This model comprises a core hub entry headed by a short nuclear form of the MWE and several node entries, which represent the most common variants in their full lexical forms