[Lexicog] popular lexicography

[Ron Moe]

There is also the concept of "folk definitions" of the sort that a parent
would give a child when the child asks what a word means. "Mommy, what does
'polygamy' mean?" "It's when a man is married to two women." Most (all?)
languages have standardized ways of saying what a word means, whether to a
child or another adult. "I think you are using that word incorrectly. I
believe it means when a man has two or more wives." Or the style that
preachers sometimes use: "Peace isn't the absence of strife. It is the
serenity that allows you to maintain a sense of calm in the midst of the
storm."

When I talk about the process of developing a dictionary, I distinguish
between a "simple" dictionary and a "well-developed" dictionary. "With DDP
we can now develop a simple dictionary in a matter of two or three months."
But this is really different than an amateur attempt. The latter could be
described as "amateur lexicography," "nonprofessional lexicography," or
"unsophisticated."

Ron Moe

-----Original Message-----
From: Koontz John E [mailto:john.koontz at colorado.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2004 4:54 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] popular lexicography



On Tue, 2 Nov 2004, phil cash cash wrote:
> i am searching for a concept that might describe lexicography done by
> non-linguists/non-lexicographers.  my only thought at the moment is
> "popular lexicography".

I don't see any real problems with "popular lexicography," but
alternatives might be "innocent lexicography" or "naive lexicography," or,
in most cases under consideration, "English-modeled" or "English-based"
lexicography.  You can probably substitute a generic term like
superstratum for English.  A common element is probably the notion that a
more or less naive conception of some dominant language provides a
reasonable model of universal linguistic properties - grammar, glossing
metalanguage, etc.

Another common element, however, is the absence of some of the more
effective features of a lexicon, e.g., a lack of examples,
cross-references, register information, attibutions, etc.  People don't
always think of these if they start from scratch to re-invent the process,
and they are also a lot of work and might not be practical in some cases.

Somewhere in between these two groups of problem, maybe, are difficulties
with corpus development.





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