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entirely pre-searched for each lemma-form, and the results archived <strong>in</strong> static HTML (Hypertext
Mark-up Language) pages. This constitutes a digital archive of lexicographic ‘slips’, provid<strong>in</strong>g
the dictionary writers with immediate access to the searches, and also enabl<strong>in</strong>g the citations and
their contexts to be archived <strong>in</strong> a generic format that is not tied to any particular operat<strong>in</strong>g
system or database program (Fraser 2008).
This digital archive of Greek lemma searches has helped speed the process of writ<strong>in</strong>g entries.
Interest<strong>in</strong>gly, as this lexicon has been designed for students, Fraser noted that it gives fewer Greek
quotations and more space to semantic description. Citations have also been restricted to a canon of 70
authors, with no examples taken from fragmentary authors or <strong>in</strong>scriptions. Fraser also reported that
while dictionary entries are stored <strong>in</strong> XML, the project created a new DTD for their system based on a
“provisional entry structure.”
The PDL already conta<strong>in</strong>s digital versions of lexicons for some <strong>in</strong>dividual authors 159 as well as several
major classical lexicons, such as the Lewis & Short Lat<strong>in</strong> Dictionary 160 and the Liddell Scott Johnson
Greek English Lexicon (LSJ). 161 The lexicons that are a part of Perseus, however, differ from the
projects described above. Instead of design<strong>in</strong>g lexicons for both pr<strong>in</strong>t and electronic distribution, the
lexicons, and <strong>in</strong>deed all reference works that are part of Perseus, have been created from the start to
serve as both hyperl<strong>in</strong>ked tools <strong>in</strong> an <strong>in</strong>tegrated Greek and Lat<strong>in</strong> read<strong>in</strong>g environment and as
knowledge sources that can be m<strong>in</strong>ed to support a variety of automated processes. 162
In addition to turn<strong>in</strong>g “traditional” pr<strong>in</strong>ted lexicons <strong>in</strong>to dynamic reference works, current research at
Perseus is explor<strong>in</strong>g how to create a new k<strong>in</strong>d of “dynamic lexicon” that is generated not from just one
pr<strong>in</strong>ted text but from all the texts <strong>in</strong> a digital library (Bamman and Crane 2008). They first used the
large, aligned, parallel corpus of English and Lat<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong> Perseus to <strong>in</strong>duce a word-sense <strong>in</strong>ventory and
determ<strong>in</strong>ed how often certa<strong>in</strong> def<strong>in</strong>itions of a word were actually manifested, while us<strong>in</strong>g the context
surround<strong>in</strong>g words to determ<strong>in</strong>e which def<strong>in</strong>itions were used <strong>in</strong> a given <strong>in</strong>stance. The treebank was
then used to tra<strong>in</strong> an automatic syntactic parser for the Lat<strong>in</strong> corpus, <strong>in</strong> particular to extract <strong>in</strong>formation
about word’s subcategorization frames and selectional preferences. Cluster<strong>in</strong>g was then used to
establish semantic similarity between words determ<strong>in</strong>ed by their appearance <strong>in</strong> similar contexts
(Bamman and Crane 2009). This automatically extracted lexical <strong>in</strong>formation can be used <strong>in</strong> a variety of
ways:
A digital library architecture <strong>in</strong>teracts with this knowledge <strong>in</strong> three ways: first, it lets us further
contextualize our source texts for the users of our exist<strong>in</strong>g digital library; second, it allows us to
present customized reports for word usage accord<strong>in</strong>g to the metadata associated with the texts
from which they’re drawn, enabl<strong>in</strong>g us to create a dynamic lexicon that not only notes how a
word is used <strong>in</strong> Lat<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong> general, but also <strong>in</strong> any specific author, genre, or era (or comb<strong>in</strong>ation
of those). And third, it lets us cont<strong>in</strong>ue to m<strong>in</strong>e more texts for the knowledge they conta<strong>in</strong> as
they’re added to the library collection, essentially mak<strong>in</strong>g it an open-ended service (Bamman
and Crane 2008).
As one example, Bamman and Crane (2008) traced how the use of the word libero changed over time
and across genre (e.g., classical authors vs. Church Fathers). The Perseus corpus is somewhat small,
159 For example, P<strong>in</strong>dar --http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/textdoc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.04.0072
160 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/textdoc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.04.0059
161 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/textdoc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.04.0057, for more on the development of the LSJ, see Crane (1998) and
Rydberg-Cox (2002).
162 For more on the need to design “dynamic reference works,” see Crane (2005) and Crane and Jones (2006).