Thesaurus Glossariorum Latinorum (TGL): Reveal Abavus Corpus History – TGL-ReACH

The TGL-ReACH project focuses on a well-defined family of glossaries, known as Abavus, which, despite its importance in the field of medieval Latin lexicography, has never yet been fully edited.
By analyzing these documents, we aim to test the research hypothesis that early medieval glossaries, and in particular the representatives of the Abavus family, allow us to observe and highlight a crucial paradigm shift in the history of lexicography. A key indicator of this shift is the growing use of explanations based on different etymological strategies, to complement the more familiar and transparent synonyms; the simple fact that Abavus maior incorporates entries from Book 10 of Isidore of Seville's Etymologies is indicative of this new direction.
Recent works in the field, with few exceptions, when they devote a few lines to early Latin glossaries, generally refer to the state-of-the-art dating back a century. The reason is simple: very few new studies have been published in this field. It is therefore urgent to provide the community with new analysis tools in line with current needs.
The ambition of the TGL-ReACH project is therefore to produce an entirely new study of these glossaries, proposing a broader approach to their analysis in context. The final result developed for the analysis will be an open-access website based on five databases, containing the lexicographic material, together with all the sources and references required.
Finally, the project aims to develop, test and run-in a complex data processing chain involving HTR and machine learning, and thus demonstrate its efficiency on a larger scale. It constitutes a fundamental validation step for the longer-term realization of the future integral TGL.