Grammatik i SAOL. En undersökning av grammatisk information i Svenska Akademiens ordlista över 130 år

Abstract

This licentiate thesis deals with the grammatical information provided in the Swedish Academy Glossary (SAOL = Svenska Akademiens ordlista), a Swedish monolingual, contemporary and orthographic dictionary, first published in 1874. It has since appeared in 14 editions, the latest one published in 2015. Thus, the glossary reflects the historical development of Swedish during its existence. The material investigated includes most of the editions of SAOL: 1 (1874), 6 (1889), 7 (1900), 8 (1923), 9 (1950), 10 (1973), 11 (1986), 12 (1998), and 13 (2006, also in the form of a CD-ROM in 2007 and a phone app in 2011). The paper editions are accessible via the website SAOLhist, with various search possibilities. Grammatical information in SAOL is investigated on three structural levels: in prefatory text (prefaces and introductions), in the set of headwords, and in entry texts. Grammatical information in the prefaces and introductions in SAOL is sparse, and when grammatical issues are raised, it is almost exclusively with regard to their lexicographic realization. The headwords are examined with regard to verbal derivatives, strong and irregular inflected forms, adjectives in neuter form, occasionally classified as adverbs, and multiword units such as phrasal verbs. In entry texts, special attention is paid to word class labelling, including subcategories, and inflection, gender marking and syntactic notation. The study shows that the amount of grammatical information per headword varies considerably, between editions as well as between word categories. On the whole, there is considerably more grammatical information than might be expected in a monolingual glossary, primarily aimed at orthography and inflection.