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Dictionary of Old English: 2010 Progress Report

 

Joan Holland, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

http://www.doe.utoronto.ca

We would like to begin this report by expressing our immense gratitude for his years of service to Fred C. Robinson, Yale University, who stepped down from the DOE's International Advisory Committee in February. As one of the original members of the IAC, Fred advised and supported our founding editor, Angus Cameron, in his efforts to launch the Dictionary project, and his interest in our well-being has been a sustaining force up to the present. In turn, we are delighted to welcome Christopher A. (Drew) Jones, Ohio State University, as the newest member of the IAC.

We were deeply saddened this year to hear of the death of Bruce Mitchell, University of Oxford. Many of us in Toronto recall Bruce's visits, sometimes with his beloved Mollie, occasionally without, when we would all rush into the office at what seemed to us an excessively early hour to keep pace with Bruce's schedule. He would come prepared with sorting plans for various grammar words (interrogatives, prepositions, conjunctions, modal verbs, etc.), sporting a green visor to shade his eyes from our bright fluorescent lights. Although his contribution to the theoretical underpinnings of the DOE is little known, his gift of prodigious labour courses through the Dictionary to this day. In 2006, and again in 2010, he gave to the DOE gifts of books, pamphlets, and offprints from his unparalleled collection of materials on Old English syntax. His kindness, generosity and loyalty to us were indeed remarkable. A moving celebration of Bruce's life took place on 24 April 2010 at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford

— Toni Healey

 

Editorial and Technological Advances

The editors are currently drafting entries for the letters H (the next letter to be published), I/Y, L, M, and N, and the lemmatization (the assignment of spellings to headwords) of S is progressing well.

We are happy to report that, as of December, the online Oxford English Dictionary has implemented hotlinks to the DOE. We are delighted at this initiative for now, for the first time, two of the historical dictionaries of English are reciprocally linked. Our own link to OED was made accessible to users with the release of A to G online (2007) and on CD-ROM (2008). As we reported last year, we now have internal links as well to the Middle English Dictionary which will be made available to users when A to H is published. At the moment, the links to the MED are publicly accessible at our "Word of the Week" feature on our website (http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/wofw/). In another initiative, DOE is a partner in a larger collaborative project, "Making Medieval Manuscripts: New Knowledge, New Technologies", coordinated by our Toronto colleague, Alexandra Gillespie, which will draw on the technological expertise of the Stanford University Libraries' Modular and Interoperating Environment Project, with funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. One of DOE's goals is to link up palaeographical cruxes found in quotations from Parker manuscripts cited in DOE with their precise digitized images represented by Parker on the Web. By doing so, we hope to provide users of DOE with the visual evidence for our interpretation of some textual difficulties. As always, we welcome inquiries about our Web Corpus at corpus@doe.utoronto.ca.

 

Grants and Gifts

Finding sources of funding is an invigorating challenge in these recessionary times and so we are happy to report that in the course of the year we were awarded a two-year (2010-2012) grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a one-year grant by the British Academy and grants from three private foundations, the Salamander Foundation, Toronto, the Triangle Community Foundation, Raleigh, and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, New York, as well as gifts from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists and from colleagues and friends. We are immensely grateful to our funding agencies and individual donors, for their support helps ensure the completion of the Dictionary. We would also like to express our warmest appreciation to all those who have given us offprints and books to enhance our library. A list of gifts to the project in the past year is appended.

 

Dissemination and Outreach

This year, as ever, we have been happy to have visitors use our research collection here in Toronto, where they have onsite access to our materials and tools. Javier Martín Arista of the University of Rioja and Joyce Hill of the University of Leeds were here for extended stays and gave lectures sponsored by the project. Erik Carlson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota, spent a week using our collections for research related to his dissertation. He is the 2010 winner of the John Leyerle – CARA Prize for Dissertation Research, a fellowship sponsored by The Medieval Academy of America. Our Editor, Antonette diPaolo Healey, represented the project at a number of conferences during the year. In February, she spoke at the International Conference "Rethinking and Reconceptualizing Glosses: New Perspectives in the Study of Late Anglo-Saxon Glossography", at the Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta in Rome. In March, she was the 2010 Distinguished Speaker for the Medieval Studies Programme at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario. In April, she attended the 85th annual meeting of the Medieval Academy of America at Yale University, and celebrated with colleagues the achievements of Fred Robinson, who was honoured at the Academy meeting. In June, she delivered a paper entitled "Matters of the Heart" at the Fifth International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology in Oxford, where she had the opportunity to speak with the editors of the OED. The project received some welcome publicity when Toni Healey was interviewed by Ammon Shea for Humanities magazine, a publication of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The interview was published in the January/February 2010 issue (http://www.neh.gov/ news/humanities/2010-01/OldEnglish.html). We are grateful to the Endowment for highlighting the contributions of our project to humanities research.

— Joan Holland

 

Staff

  • EDITOR: Antonette diPaolo Healey
  • REVISING EDITOR: Joan Holland
  • DRAFTING EDITORS: David McDougall, Ian McDougall

EDITORIAL STAFF:

  • Catherine Monahan
  • Xin Xiang (Systems Analyst)
  • Elaine Quanz

INTERNATIONAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE:

  • Roberta Frank, Yale University
  • Helmut Gneuss, University of Munich
  • Simon Keynes, University of Cambridge
  • Andy Orchard, University of Toronto
  • Christopher A. Jones, Ohio State University
  • Eric Stanley, Pembroke College, Oxford

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS:

  • Alex Fleck
  • Paul Langeslag
  • Stephen Pelle
  • Richard Shaw
  • Ann Wesson

STUDENT ASSISTANTS:

  • Karen Law
  • Abigail Ferstman (Mentorship Student)
  • Ishita Petkar (Mentorship Student)

EDITOR, Toronto Old English Series: Andy Orchard

EDITOR, Publications of the Dictionary of Old English: Andy Orchard

 

Funding

  • The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (formerly the Canada Council): Grants in Aid of Research, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975; Major Editorial Grants, 1976‑81, 1981-86, 1986-91, 1991-96; Grants from the Federal Matching Funds Policy, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991; Special Presidential Grant, 1993; Consortium Support Programme, 1996-98, 1998‑2000, 2000-2003, 2003-2005, 2005-2010
  • The British Academy
  • Canada Foundation for Innovation (for TAPoR [Text Analysis Portal for Research]), 2002-2007
  • Connaught Fund, University of Toronto, 1986‑1991
  • Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, 1998-99, 1999-2000, 2000-2001, 2002-2003, 2004-2005, 2008-2009, 2010-2011
  • Early English Text Society
  • Marc Fitch Fund
  • Foundation for Education and Social Development, Boston
  • Jackman Foundation
  • Macdonald-Stewart Foundation
  • McLean Foundation, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2009
  • Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 1985-90, 1994‑99, 2000-2005, 2006-2011, 2009-2011
  • Peter Munk Charitable Foundation
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Research Tools Program, 1991-93, 1993-95, 1995-98, 1998-2000, 2000-2002, 2002-2004, 2004-2006, 2006-2008, 2008-2010, 2010-2012
  • Presidents' Committee, University of Toronto
  • Salamander Foundation, 1998-2001, 2001-2004, 2004-2006, 2006-2008, 2008-2011
  • Salus Mundi Foundation, 2002, 2004
  • St. George's Society, Toronto, 2007-2012
  • Triangle Community Foundation
  • University of Toronto
  • Xerox Corporation University Grants Committee

 

Friends of the Dictionary of Old English, 2009-2010

We wish to acknowledge the very generous contributions the project has received during the past year. Donors who supported our research in honour of or in memory of individuals are also noted separately at the end of the list. All of us on the project are grateful to each one of you. We would like to mention especially the generous donation of $2,147 US from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists. The strong support of the most important scholarly organization in our field has been invaluable to us. We are also very grateful to all those scholars who have kindly donated books to the DOE library. Such contributions of publications, both old and new, enable us to maintain our research collection. We hope to have included all who have so generously supported our work, but must apologize to any of our donors inadvertently left off this list of acknowledgements. This list encompasses gifts given between December 15, 2009 and December 15, 2010.

— Toni Healey

 

SUPPORTERS

  • †Helen Balfour
  • Wendy Cameron
  • David Carlson
  • Wendy Cecil
  • Howell Chickering
  • Roberta Frank
  • Allen Frantzen
  • Antonette diPaolo Healey
  • John Hill
  • E.D. & M.P. Hirsch
  • International Society of Anglo-Saxonists
  • Maruja Jackman
  • Philip & Mary Maude
  • James McIlwain
  • Linda Munk
  • George & Jennifer Rigg
  • Harry & Medora Roe
  • Salamander Foundation
  • Nan Shuttleworth
  • Mary Slade
  • St. George's Society
  • Triangle Community Foundation
  • Anonymous (1)

 

DONORS

  • Estate of Sharon Butler
  • Glenn Carter
  • Sheila Delany
  • Peter Dendle
  • Nicole Discenza
  • Steven Foulds
  • Dorothy Haines
  • Jon Harstone
  • Roger Higgins
  • Joan Holland
  • Brenda Hosington
  • Emily Jensen
  • Leena Kahlas-Tarkka
  • Dwight Keister
  • Matti Kilpiö
  • William Kretzschmar
  • Inge Milfull
  • Haruko Momma
  • Catherine Monahan
  • Hubert Morgan
  • Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
  • Carol Percy
  • Barbara Place
  • Winifred Potter
  • Robert Rice
  • Matti Rissanen
  • Joseph & Sandra Rotman
  • Linda Simpkins
  • Charles Smith
  • Helen Smith
  • Larry Syndergaard
  • Paul Szarmach
  • Julie Towell
  • Ruth Wehlau
  • Anders Winroth
  • Anonymous (1)

 

IN MEMORY OF ASHLEY CRANDELL AMOS

  • Ruth Wehlau

 

IN MEMORY OF HELEN BALFOUR

  • Joseph & Sandra Rotman

 

IN MEMORY OF ST. CLAIR BALFOUR

  • †Helen Balfour

 

IN MEMORY OF SHARON BUTLER

  • Brenda Hosington

 

IN MEMORY OF ANGUS CAMERON

  • Roberta Frank
  • Philip & Mary Maude
  • George & Jennifer Rigg

 

IN MEMORY OF ROWLAND L. COLLINS

  • Howell Chickering

 

IN MEMORY OF STEPHEN GLOSECKI

  • John Hill

 

IN MEMORY OF MARTIN GREEN

  • Sheila Delany

 

IN HONOUR OF ANTONETTE diPAOLO HEALEY

  • Roberta Frank
  • Inge Milfull
  • Julie Towell

 

IN HONOUR OF JOAN HOLLAND

  • Inge Milfull
  • Julie Towell

 

IN MEMORY OF NICHOLAS HOWE

  • Roberta Frank
  • Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe
  • Anonymous (1)

 

IN MEMORY OF EDWARD B. IRVING, JR.

  • Howell Chickering
  • John Hill

 

IN MEMORY OF BRUCE MITCHELL

  • Antonette diPaolo Healey
  • Joan Holland

 

IN MEMORY OF CHARLES MUSCATINE

  • Sheila Delany

 

IN MEMORY OF JOHN C. POPE

  • Howell Chickering
  • E.D. & M.P. Hirsch

 

IN MEMORY OF ALAIN RENOIR

  • Sheila Delany

 

IN HONOUR OF FRED C. ROBINSON

  • Howell Chickering
  • Peter Dendle
  • Allen Frantzen
  • Antonette diPaolo Healey
  • Leena Kahlas-Tarkka
  • Matti Kilpiö
  • Robert Rice
  • Matti Rissanen
  • Anders Winroth

 

IN MEMORY OF RAYMOND P. TRIPP, JR.

  • John Hill