| Abstract: |
The following article gives a brief outline of the historical lexicography of Spanish, focusing on its history which has been dominated by the Royal Spanish Academy's attempts to realize a Diccionario Histórico, an endeavor which has unfortunately remained fragmentary. In addition, this paper also deals with the present and future perspectives of the historical lexicography of Spanish, namely the RAE's project of a new lexicographical thesaurus (Nuevo diccionario histórico de la lengua española), which will, it is to be expected, benefit largely from the huge electronic corpora accessible today. Moreover, the most outstanding etymological and period dictionaries (e. g. Joan Coromines, Bodo Müller or research done by the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies) will be treated, although it needs to be said that Spanish historical lexicography has not drawn as much scholarly attention as one might hope, particularly when compared with French and Italian. |