Mulleres na Lexicografía / Women in Lexicography

Beryl T. Sue Atkins (née Sinclair)

English, French, Irish

1931 (Edinburgh, Scottland) - 2021 (Sussex, England) Sue Atkins was born in Edinburgh in 1931 and spent most of her life in Sussex (England). She is one of the most renowned lexicographers of the last decades. Her contribution to the COBUILD-project, originally conceived by her brother, J. Sinclair, is worth noting.

Sue Atkins graduated in French Philology from the University of Edinburgh in 1952 and taught English language in Finland during the 1950s. Subsequently, she was editor-in-chief of the “Collins-Robert” English-French bilingual dictionary (1978) and was involved in the publication of the “Oxford-Hachette” dictionary. She was a pioneer in the incorporation of linguistic corpora for the compilation of dictionaries and, in this respect, her contribution to the creation of the “British National Corpus” (BNC) is noteworthy. Sue Atkins was involved as a consultant in the “Hector” computer lexicography projects between 1991 and 1993 and also in the DELIS (electronic dictionary) project between 1993 and 1996. The Hector project was the result of a cooperation between the British company Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Oxford University Press (OUP) and aimed to systematise the use of corpora in the compilation of lexicographical entries. The DELIS project was funded by the European Union, with the collaboration of several European universities (Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and England). Sue Atkins worked here as a consultant together with Charles Fillmore, whose work focused on frame linguistics. During the 1990s, she was president of EURALEX (European Lexicography Association). Sue Atkins' work played a key role in the consolidation of lexicographic practice in South Africa, where she taught several courses (Salex'97 and Afrilex-Salex'98) in lexicographic training. She collaborated in the creation of the English-Irish dictionary “Foras na Gaeilge” (2004-2013). In cooperation with M. Rundell, she published the "Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography" in 2008, a work that promotes the use of computer-treated corpora for the analysis of linguistic data and the subsequent creation of dictionaries.

Dictionaries: Atkins, B. T. S.; A. Duval (eds). 1978. Robert & Collins English-French, French-English Dictionary, Paris: Le Robert/Glasgow: Collins. Corréard, M-H.; V. Grundy (eds). 1994. The Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary (French-English, English-French). Paris: Hachette/Oxford: Oxford University Press. focloir.ie - New English-Irish Dictionary (NEID). 2013. Foras na Gaeilge. Sinclair, J. (ed.). 1987. Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary. London & Glasgow: Collins. (COBUILD1) Other important publications:: Atkins, B. T. S. 1992/93. ‘Theoretical lexicography and its relation to dictionary-making.’ En Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 14: 4–43. Atkins, B. T. S. 1995. ‘Analyzing the verbs of seeing: a frame semantics approach to corpus lexicography’ En Gahl, S., C. Johnson; A. Dolbey (eds.), Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 1994, BLS, University of California, Berkeley, Ca. Atkins, B. T. S.; M. Rundell. 2008. The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Atkins, B.T.S., M. Rundell, A. Kilgarriff. 2010. ‘Database of Analysed Texts of English (DANTE): The NEID Database Project’. En Dykstra, A.; T. Schoonheim (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th EURALEX International Congress. Leeuwarden/Ljouwert, The Netherlands: Fryske Akademy, 549–556. Fillmore, C. J.; B. T. S. Atkins. 1992. Toward a frame-based lexicon: the semantics of RISK and its neighbors. En Lehrer, A.; E. F. Kittay (eds), Frames, Fields, and Contrasts: New Essays in Semantic and Lexical Organisation. Hillsdale N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum, 75–102. Fillmore, C. J.; B. T. S. Atkins. 2000. ‘Describing Polysemy: The Case of ‘Crawl’ En Ravin Y.; C. Leacock (eds.), Polysemy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 91–110.

https://euralex.org http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ https://lexicom.courses/ https://www.focloir.ie/

BTS Atkins (1931-2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZck6jUP-Hw Interviewed by M. Rundell

Among several prizes and awards, she received an Honorary DLitt from the University of Brighton in 2000. In 2002, EURALEX published the festschrift “Lexicography and Natural Language Processing” honouring Atkins' contribution to international lexicography. She was also declared an Honorary Life Member of EURALEX. In addition, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Pretoria for her contributions to lexicographical practice worldwide, particularly for the role she played in the dissemination of good lexicographical practice in African languages.

Photo: Rundell, M. et al (2022). Remembering Sue Atkins. International Journal of Lexicography, 35(1), 7. doi: 10.1093/ijl/ecab030 Bibliography: Atkins, B. T. S.; A. Duval (eds). 1978. Robert & Collins English-French, French-English Dictionary, Paris: Le Robert/Glasgow: Collins. Atkins, B. T. S. 1992/93. ‘Theoretical lexicography and its relation to dictionary-making.’ En Dictionaries: Journal of the Dictionary Society of North America 14: 4–43. Atkins, B. T. S. 1995. ‘Analyzing the verbs of seeing: a frame semantics approach to corpus lexicography’ En Gahl, S., C. Johnson; A. Dolbey (eds.), Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 1994, BLS, University of California, Berkeley, Ca. Atkins, B. T. S.; M. Rundell. 2008. The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Atkins, B.T.S., M. Rundell, A. Kilgarriff. 2010. ‘Database of Analysed Texts of English (DANTE): The NEID Database Project’. En Dykstra, A.; T. Schoonheim (eds.), Proceedings of the 14th EURALEX International Congress. Leeuwarden/Ljouwert, The Netherlands: Fryske Akademy, 549–556. Moon, R. (2021). Sue Atkins, Lexicographer and Linguist (1931-2021). RiCOGNIZIONI. Rivista Di Lingue E Letterature Straniere E Culture Moderne, 8(16), 115-116. https://doi.org/10.13135/2384-8987/6246 Rundell, M. et al (2022). Remembering Sue Atkins. International Journal of Lexicography, 35(1), 1–19. doi: 10.1093/ijl/ecab030 Prinsloo, D. (2021). Beryl T. (Sue) Atkins: Lexicographer from A to Z. Lexikos, 31(1), 511-514. https://doi.org/10.5788/31-1-1664

Paula Rodríguez Rey

Iván Arias Arias