New generation corpus-based frequency dictionaries

With a brief outline of the history of frequency dictionaries of the past, a renewed need for these dictionaries, based on modern large corpora, is observed. A linguistic background and some criticism of what has been done is offered. It is stressed that, next to the traditional and predominant paradigmatic approach, at least some attention should be paid to syntagmatic or combinatorial aspects of the lexis as well, as these are readily available in modern corpora. Against this background, solution to this need and projection of corpus possibilities is presented as it has been realized in the recent large Frequency Dictionary of Czech (Frekvencní slovník ceštiny). A brief discussion of the linguistic and lexicographic problems is followed by a brief step-by-step description of technical solution.