Orð og tunga - 01.06.2001, Page 68

58
Orð og tunga
8 The future
Although the initial impulse to make the word-list was administrative, the bene ts to
future word studies both within the dictionary and in a wider scholarly circle should
be considerable. It will, to take random examples, be possible to search for all the
nouns that end in -hvalr (should one be interested in whales, see g. 1) or all the nouns
that end in -leikr or -leiki (should one wish to continue the research highlighted by
the Norwegian scholar Alfred Jakobsen (1970), concerning, amongst other things, the
distribution of these two suf xes; cf. also Walter 1972). The ability to conduct this type
of search will, amongst innumerable other bene ts, make up for the previous lack of a
word-list with reverse alphabetisation for Old Norse.11
ONP' s word-list
About tlie word-list Instructions for searcliing Dansk version
Searcli string: |hval Iixact spelling: P
Search mode: fcömpönent 3 Word-type: | headword
Word class: fsb" 3 Gramm. specif.: | unspecified 3
Scarch string: hval
Search modc: component
Word class: sb.
Spelling: exact
Word-ty/x: headword
Gramm. spccif.: unspecified
Items found: 123
almciiningshvalr sb. m.
Citation slips: 1
andhvalr sb. m.
Citation slips: 2
Fig. 1. An example ofthe net interface to ONP’s word-list: the inquirer has asked
for information about all the noun (sb.) headwords that include the element hval;
this allows for all items ending in -hvalr (including of course hvalr itself) and all
compounds containing (-)hval- or (-)hvals- or (-)hvala-. "Exact spelling " (top right
option) u'a.v requested to eliminate forms in hvál(l).
Tlie result is 123 items; at the bottom of the screen there is the beginning of the
alphabetical list ofitems that each search generates.
11 An extremely useful list of this type, Orðmyndir í stafrófsröð eftir niðurlagi, for Modern Icelandic is to
be found in íslensk orðtíðnibók 1991:628-1066.