Three hefty lexica

In recent months three large Australian bilingual dictionaries have been published, after decades of preparation. Some of their attributes are compared in the table below.

First, consider what the three works have in common. All were begun more than half a century ago, by trained linguists in collaboration with many named native speakers of the particular language. There are many cross-references between entries, and there is extensive use of example sentences to illustrate senses.

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language	Pintupi-Luritja Dictionary. Fourth edition.	Warlpiri Encyclopaedic Dictionary	A New Grammar of Dyirbal. Supplements.
begun	1966 by Ken & Lesley Hansen	1959 by †Ken Hale	1963 by Bob Dixon
arrangement	alphabetical, with English alphabetical finder	alphabetical, with English alphabetical finder, and scientific name index	thesaurus of nominals (b) and verbals (c), with Dyirbal alphabetical finder (d)
entries	“over 10,000” [back cover] 10,970 entries (no subentries)	11,152 entries and subentries, and a further 1362 senses	(b), (c): too complex to count (d): over 4000
scope	Old and Young language; includes pronouns, demonstratives. many suffixes, some placenames	4 varieties; includes bound pronouns, nominal suffixes, about 450 placenames	10 dialects; not included are pronouns, noun markers, verb markers, demonstratives, etc.; proper nouns
pages	2273 = 8 front matter + 2121 main body + 144 English finder (in two volumes A-P and R-Y)	1447 total = xv + 1416 + 16 (1188 main body, 133 finder)	927 total (b): xv + 413 (c): xii + 227 + [10] (d): 238 + 12
aspect	portrait	portrait	landscape body portrait finder & prefaces
font size	approx 12 pt headword approx 10 pt body	10.25 pt headword 9.75 pt body	10.46 pt
page size	A4 210 x 297 mm	213 x 273 mm	NA (A4 PDF)
graphics	none	line drawings through main body; 16 pages of colour images; 3 kinship diagrams	none
mass	6.6 kg = 3.4 + 3.2	2.8 kg	NA
retail price	$135	$59.95 hardcover; ePDF and epub TBA	free download
source	https://www.openbookhowden.com.au/product/pintupi-luritja-dictionary-vol-1-2-set-fourth-edition/	https://shop.aiatsis.gov.au/products/warlpiri-encyclopaedic-dictionary	https://global.oup.com/booksites/content/9780192859907/#
sample page (including ‘road’ entry)	page 2025	page 1162	(b) page 196

A couple of other sizeable bilingual dictionaries also appeared in the last months of 2022. after many decades work:

• 430 pages Gija Dictionary, begun in the 1970s by Frances Kofod
• 1321 pages in two volumes: Words of Waya: a Dictionary of the Wayan Dialect of the Western Fijian Language by Andrew Pawley and Timoci Sayaba; begun in 1967; the 6th and final version

We can expect it will be a long time before any of these dictionaries are ‘refreshed’, to use Nick Thieberger’s term. Even so, we note Nick’s appeal for ‘dictionary creators to archive their primary files’.