Building a paralympic, frame-based dictionary - towards an inclusive design for Dicionário Paraolímpico (Unisinos/Brazil)

Abstract

This paper presents some theoretical and methodological issues emanating from the building of Dicionário Paraolímpico (Paralympic Dictionary), an online lexicographical resource that will describe the lexicon of Paralympic sports in Portuguese and English, structured according to the notion of semantic frame. It follows the lead of previous works published by the SemanTec research group (Unisinos/Brazil), such as Dicionário Olímpico (Olympic Dictionary, 2016). For the current project, some features from the previous works were kept, such as the basic microstructure of scenarios and the megastructure. There are, however, significant changes to be introduced in the Paralympic Dictionary. Some of them are the result of the Olympic Dictionary’s revision, and address issues such as content multiplicity of the sport and scenario definitions, and the absence of relevant information in the microstructure of lexical units. In addition, some of the changes concern the features that distinguish the Paralympic Dictionary from the Olympic Dictionary, since Paralympic sports have specific frames. Another important issue to be addressed refers to the accessibility of the dictionary itself by people with disabilities. After discussing these issues, the paper concludes by outlining future plans, including further developments for the Paralympic Dictionary and its broader implications in the context of the SemanTec research group.