In recent years the focus in linguistics research has shifted from the investigation of syntax, phonology and logical semantics supported by intuitions and speculation, to a more hard-nosed analysis of words in text and speech, focusing on how words are actually used. As such, lexicography has moved from the periphery to the centre of language research. At the same time, lexicography itself is in transition from a highly traditional craft, to a new interdisciplinary science. This handbook contrasts traditional methods of lexicography with newly emerging electronic and corpus-driven approaches. The International Handbook of Modern Lexis and Lexicography is a fully international and comprehensive reference work. It deals with every aspect of lexicography in all major languages, together with area studies of lexicography in indigenous languages, as well as rare and endangered languages. Readers will benefit from the comparative study of best practice and future targets in lexicography in all the countries of the world. The Springer Handbook will be of interest to users ranging from general readers and undergraduates to specialists from the fields of lexicography, language teaching, computational linguistics, translation studies, and literary and cultural studies.
About the Author:

Patrick Hanks (born 24 March 1940) is Professor in Lexicography at the Research Inst. of Information and Language Processing (RIILP) at the University of Wolverhampton, England. He has recently published: Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations. MIT Press, 2013. He is also visiting professor and lead researcher on a project researching the origins, history, and geographical distribution of family names in the UK ('FaNUK'), at the Bristol Centre for Linguistics in the University of the West of England. P. Hanks worked for Oxford University Press as chief editor of current English dictionaries (1990-2000). He was managing editor of the first edition of the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary (1987) and of Collins English Dictionary (1979). He holds a BA and MA in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford, UK, and a PhD in Informatics from Masaryk University, Brno, CZ. In 1988-90, he was a visiting scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he worked with Ken Church on statistical methods for corpus analysis of phraseology and meaning.

Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (born 15 September 1971) is a professor of African linguistics in the department of languages and cultures at Ghent University, where he is active within the KongoKing research project, and he is an extraordinary professor in the department of African languages at the University of Pretoria. He holds an MSc in microelectronic engineering (1995), as well as an MA (1999) and PhD (2005) in African languages and cultures. In 2002 he co-founded TshwaneDJe HLT -- makers of the leading dictionary application TLex, and in 2006 he was a founding member of African Language Technology. He is a past board member and two-term past President of Afrilex (2001-2013), and served on the boards of Euralex (2006-2014), Asialex (2007-2013) and Australex (2008-2013).