TLS is a corpus-based historical and comparative encyclopaedia of Chinese conceptual schemes, implemented as an interactive database. Work on the database began in the early eighties, and the project is being actively pursued by a large body of editors and contributors around the world. TLS today boasts the following features:
- TLS is the first synonym dictionary of classical Chinese
in any Western language. TLS focusses on the history of distinctive
semantic nuances of words studied.
- TLS is the first dictionary of classical Chinese aiming to be systematically
linked to archaeological illustration of whatever
can be illustrated from excavated evidence.
- TLS is the first dictionary which systematically organises the Chinese
vocabulary in taxonomic ("is a kind of") and mereonomic
("is part of") hierarchies thus showing up whole
conceptual schemes or cognitive systems. These are taken to circumscribe
the changing topology of Chinese conceptual space.
- TLS is the first dictionary that systematically registers a range
of lexical relations like antonym, converse, epithet
etc.. TLS thus aims to define conceptual space as a relational
space.
- TLS is the first dictionary of Chinese which incorporates detailed
syntactic analysis of (over 600 distinct kinds of)
syntactic usage. TLS thus enables us to make a systematic study of
such basic phenomena as the natural history of abstract nouns
or of reflexivity of psychological verbs in China.
- TLS is the first corpus-based dictionary which will record the history
of rhetorical devices in texts and will thus enable
us to study such intellectually crucial things as the natural
history of irony in China.
- TLS includes the first dictionary of 290 mathematical terms,
by Karine Chemla, CNRS, Paris.
A
detailed presentation of the project is available. (There is also a
presentation in Chinese.)
