Wright’s Sources: Compatibility with Other Filters and Parameters in EDD Online 4.0

This paper focuses on the challenge that the revised edition of the English Dialect Dictionary Online (EDD Online), planned for 2022 as version 4.0, raises regarding the large number of sources used by Joseph Wright in his comprehensive English Dialect Dictionary (EDD; 1898–1905). In particular, it discusses the possibilities and limits of combining queries on sources with the various other search parameters and filters in the presently available online version of the EDD, thus paving the way for its improvement. This online version 3.0 was the product of a long-term project undertaken at the University of Inns-bruck. In the face of the intended revision work on our interface, the ten search parameters—from headwords to phrases—and the seven co-filters, such as usage labels, are tested in their relation to the filter sources, also considering the four different types of sources. Sections 2 to 5, after the Introduction, demonstrate these four types in turn. Given that any document of historiography, including language history as provided by the EDD, is only as good as its sources, the scrupulous analysis of Wright’s sources and of the limits of their compatibility with other search criteria is seen as an essential part of the overdue fair criticism of Wright’s unique achievement. The issue of the compatibility of search criteria in computerized dictionaries poses a new challenge that scholars have hardly responded to.