Comparative aspects of Latvian and Czech lexicons: Materials for assembling a Latvian- Czech dictionary

Title: Comparative aspects of Latvian and Czech lexicons: Materials for assembling a Latvian-Czech dictionary Autor: Mgr. Michal Škrabal Department: Institute of the Czech National Corpus Supervisor: prof. PhDr. František Čermák, DrSc. The primary aim of this work is to classify the Latvian lexicon, or better its relevant segment, into individual groups, definable semantically, grammatically, syntagmatically, pragmatically, and so on, and to attempt to find for these classifications an ideal method of lexicographical adaptation and apply it to an emerging Latvian-Czech dictionary (the very first manual of its type). To this end, modern instruments were utilized which, in the recent past, have radically altered the methodology of lexicographical work: on the one hand, the linguistic corpora, which nowadays represent authentic, linguistic usage and, on the other hand, the specialized lexicographic software TshwaneLex, in which a lexical database of Latvian is constructed and from which the dictionary itself will be subsequently constructed. Because of the limited size of the Latvian corpus it was not possible to completely eliminate traditional sources, and the author of the work was forced to consolidate traditional and modern lexicographical methods. His primary source however remained the corpus..