[Lexicog] Re: Citation forms in Prefixing Languages

[Ron Moe]

Inflectional prefixes cause some of the most serious problems with chosing a
citation form. When a language has derivational prefixes, you merely get a
stack up of forms under each prefix. (Look under un- in any English
dictionary.) Derivatives don't alphabetize near the stem. So you have to
decide whether to also enter them as subentries, note the root under the
derivative, or just forget it. But when you have inflectional prefixes, then
the user must parse the form in order to find the entry. But it gets even
worse. In another message John said:

"...the morphophonemics of mandatory verb prefixation are such that in the
case of some stems it is
difficult to come at an initial segment for use in root indexes."

Some languages have prefixes that obscure the initial segment of the stem.
In Maguindanaon, the language I worked on in the Philippines, there was a
set of prefixes (ebpaN-, ipaN-, maN-, etc.) that nasalized the initial
consonant of the stem. There was another set (ibpaNVN-, maNVN-, etc.) that
reduplicated the first CV and nasalized the consonant. In these prefixes the
'N' was not added to the consonant, it replaced it with the equivalent nasal
at the same point of articulation. So maN- + sageb would yield manegeb, and
naNVN- + bantial would yield namamantial. Woe to the poor user who had to
figure out where to find namamantial. One of my colleagues in another
Philippine language worked with a room full of mother tongue high school
students to teach them how to find words in the dictionary. After a week
only one could, and he could only do it with partial success.

With some stems, only prefixed forms occur. The stem never occurs without
one of these nasalizing prefixes. (This is the problem that John is talking
about above.) So when I went to enter the stem, I either had to arbitrarily
guess what the initial consonant was (which of course I would never presume
to do), or I had to enter the word with one of the inflectional prefixes,
which is the course I took. But then most stems were entered without any
prefix, and others had to be found under an affixed form. I wrote a short
article for the published dictionary entitled, "How to find verb roots." I
shudder every time I think about it. The language also has infixes
(-in-, -em-/-um-, -in-em-/-in-um-) that follow the initial consonant. There
are also two prefixes (m-, min-) that delete an initial bilabial. So if you
encounter 'minadag' you would have to look under 'adag' 'padag' 'badag' and
'madag', hoping that one of them was the word you were looking for. If you
wanted to find 'manadag', you might find it under 'adag' 'tadag' 'dadag'
'nadag' or 'sadag'. And that's assuming you were familiar enough with the
language to even know where to look, and analytical enough to recognize
potential prefixes and figure out what they might be hiding. Mercy! It was
no good trying to cross reference. With over 220 prefixes it was hopeless.
Sorting from the rear would have been better. But with seven suffixes you
still had to exercise some guess work. For a printed dictionary there is
simply no good solution. I suppose in time the average user might become
proficient in hunting. But forget the one step lookup.

Ron Moe
SIL, Uganda

-----Original Message-----
From: Koontz John E [mailto:john.koontz at colorado.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 10:35 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Re: Citation forms in Prefixing Languages


On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Wayne Leman wrote:
> Not at all, John. You were hitting the proverbial nail on the head.
> And I was trying to indicate that it is an area the sorely (!) needs
> attention for those dictionaries which are intended to be user-
> friendly to the speakers of those languages.

I wondered if you had made some kind of a statement that abstracted stems
might be the way to go in Algonquian contexts.  I know that's a sore
temptation there, and I have a vague perception that some very careful
choices have to be made in selecting citation forms for Algonquian, from
noticing Rhodes' practice in his Odawa dictionary.  I suspect some of the
subtleties pass me by.

Allan Taylor expatiated some on this subject to me as I was helping with
the computer side of his Gros Ventre (White Clay People) dictionary - how
it might be easier to see the form of the stem if it were presented in an
underlying form with no inflectional affixes, but how, equally, this
presented almost insuperable problems for non-technical users.

kkk




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