Book Review: A Way with Words: Recent Advances in Lexical Theory and Analysis: A Festschrift for Patrick Hanks edited by Gilles-Maurice de Schryver

In his introduction to this collection of articles dedicated to Patrick Hanks, de Schryver presents a quote from Atkins referring to Hanks as “the ideal lexicographer’s lexicographer.” Indeed, Hanks has had a formidable career in lexicography, including playing an editorial role in the production of four major English dictionaries. But Hanks’s achievements reach far beyond lexicography; in particular, Hanks has made numerous contributions to computational linguistics. Hanks is co-author of the tremendously influential paper “Word association norms, mutual information, and lexicography” (Church and Hanks 1989) and maintains close ties to our field. Furthermore, Hanks has advanced the understanding of the relationship between words and their meanings in text through his theory of norms and exploitations (Hanks forthcoming). The range of Hanks’s interests is reflected in the authors and topics of the articles in this Festschrift; this review concentrates more on those articles that are likely to be of most interest to computational linguists, and does not discuss some articles that appeal primarily to a lexicographical audience. Following the introduction to Hanks and his career by de Schryver, the collection is split into three parts: Theoretical Aspects and Background, Computing Lexical Relations, and Lexical Analysis and Dictionary Writing.