[Lexicog] Re: Lacunae -- what should go in a dictionary

[Ron Moe]

The best intermediate solution is to get someone knowledgeable about plants
and animals to describe the form, characteristics, and uses of each. A
definition like 'a small green insect that has a bad smell when crushed' is
better than 'insect sp.' The biologists might wish for the scientific name,
and that would certainly be ideal, but most users want a description. The
scientific name means nothing. I would recommend developing a template of
questions to ask. You will probably need a different template for each major
type of plant or animal. For instance for trees you might have, "Is the wood
used for firewood? Is the wood good for building houses and furniture? Is
the wood hard or soft? What do the leaves look like? What do the flowers
look like? Is the fruit edible? Do the bark, leaves, or fruit have medicinal
uses?"

Ron Moe
SIL International
Phoenix, Arizona
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Cami Borza [mailto:camiborza at yahoo.com]
  Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 11:56 PM
  To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
  Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Re: Lacunae -- what should go in a dictionary


  Rudy,

  Thank you very much for your suggestions. It really sounds great.

  Unfortunately the situation in Congo doesn't allow us to do that anywhere
in the forsiable future (in my opinion). You see in the areas where we work
they have no libraries, no universities, no museums, no roads, no
electricity and no means to go in there except charted planes. There might
be a couple of cameras available in a few hundred km area, but then there is
no way of developping those films except when they occasionaly travel to
Uganda. I don't think any scientific researcher would dare to travel there.
SAD BUT TRUE!

  That's why I don't know what to do with these names for plants and
animals.

  Let's just hope one day would be possible to do research. But I think the
idea of contacting the Belgium society sounds great. Maybe they have already
done some research.

  Cami.


  Rudolph C Troike <rtroike at u.arizona.edu> wrote:

    Re Cami's question, my first suggestion would be to contact a university
    in the area to find out if there are any botanists or zoologists around
    who could help. Secondly, to check at the library of one or more
    universities in the region, to see if there are books on the flora and
    fauna available. Librarians, in my experience, will often go far out of
    their way to respond to requests for help, even when they do not know
    anything about the subject matter.

    As suggested earlier, another useful approach, if practicable, is to
visit
    a natural science museum in the region and see what resources they have.

    Finally, since in the colonial period there were often expeditions from
    museums in the home country to collect and classify specimens, and often
    publish results in research reports, probably a very productive approach
    would be to ! contact a major natural science museum in Belgium, and
perhaps
    one in France, to see if there are research reports on these topics.
Some
    of these may actually date to the 19th century. Also, there are
    undoubtedly curators in such museums who would be interested in
    establishing contact with someone in the field who could actually
furnish
    specimens with native names, and ethnographic information on their use.

    Since the existence of a number of different terms for 'manioc' imply
    native knowledge on different means of collection and preparation, it
    would not only be valuable to annotate a dictionary with this kind of
    detailed ethnographic information, but it might be possible to link this
    information with prior anthropological research on food and agricultural
    practices in the region. There is certainly a growing scientific
interest
    in ecological issues, to which this information could contribute. As I
    have noted here before, once languages beco! me extinct, dictionaries
often
    become a major source of ecological and cultural information, so the
long
    term scientific and historical importance of inclusiveness in providing
    detailed glosses should not be overlooked.

          Rudy





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