The present section summarizes in a nutshell the answer to the most general question: What does a lexicographer do; how does he proceed?

We will here review the entire process from the collection of primary data up to the printing of the dictionary. In the case of underdescribed languages, the complete process has, in fact, to be followed. In the case of well-described languages, most dictionaries are produced in a much simpler way, viz. on the basis of an existent dictionary. The task may then be to expand or to reduce the model dictionary.

• For the expansion, new data must be obtained and analyzed in just the way described here for a novel dictionary.
• For the production of an extract from an existent dictionary, focus is on the steps of lemma selection (3.a) and of exporting information from the lexical database (3.d).

The main steps in the overall process are the following:

1. Plan the project
1. Define the goal of the dictionary and its user group.
2. Define the database (corpus) on which to base the dictionary.
3. Set the software up.
4. Compose the lexicographer's instructions.
2. Execute the research
1. Assemble the corpus
2. Set up the lexical database
3. Produce a word list
4. Produce concordances
5. Lemmatize the corpus
6. Fill in the entries
7. Consistentify the entries
3. Publish the dictionary
1. Select the information to be published
2. Compose the sections of the framing structure
3. Define the macrostructure
4. Export the dictionary file
5. Lay the text out
6. Produce it.
7. Convert a bilingual dictionary

References

Zgusta 1971