26.2575, Review: Historical Ling; Lexicography: Jago (2014)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-26-2575. Thu May 21 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.2575, Review: Historical Ling; Lexicography: Jago (2014)

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Date: Thu, 21 May 2015 13:27:52
From: Jon Mills [j.mills at email.com]
Subject: An English–Cornish Dictionary

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3843.html

AUTHOR: Frederick W. P. Jago
TITLE: An English–Cornish Dictionary
SUBTITLE: Compiled from the Best Sources
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Jon Mills, University of Kent at Canterbury

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

When Jago published An English-Cornish  Dictionary in the nineteenth century,
the Cornish language had become virtually extinct and the Cornish language
revival had not yet begun.  Jago intended his dictionary to preserve the
Cornish language for the benefit of  the scholars and antiquarians of his
time. This edition published by Cambridge University Press will chiefly be
relevant  to those who have an interest in the history of Cornish
lexicography.

The main body of this book is the alphabetically arranged dictionary itself,
which consists of approximately 9,300 alphabetically arranged English
headwords, followed by their part-of-speech, Cornish translation equivalents
in all their variant spellings, sources and for some entries examples of
usage. This main body is preceded by an introduction in three parts, dealing
with the history of Cornish, the literature extant at the time that Jago
compiled this dictionary, and Jago’s remarks concerning his aims and
methodology. The main body is followed by seven appendices. Appendices 1-4 
include Genesis Chapter  1, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the Ten
Commandments  in Cornish. These are the versions to be found in Williams
(1865: 395-6) Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum, and to which Jago usefully provides
interlinear translations into English. Appendix 5  is a short place-name
dictionary for the most part taken from Bannister’s (1869) Glossary of Cornish
Names. Appendix 6 is a copy of Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte’s letter to the
Cambrian Journal unjustly accusing Pryce (1790) of plagiarism. Appendix 7 is a
copy of the Preface to Pryce’s (1790) Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica, which
Jago  includes “by way of serving as Pryce’s defence” since Pryce clearly
acknowledges all his sources.

Jago describes his aims as follows.  “1. To collect all the words which would
find a place in an English-Cornish Dictionary. 2. To quote some Cornish
phrases for the sake of illustration. 3. To give the various forms or
spellings of the words just as they are found in the remains of ancient
Cornish, without constructing a single word, or phrase, and without alteration
or addition. 4. To place the various spellings of the words in a gradational
form, for the sake of their being more easily compared. 5. To give one
authority at least for each word and phrase, for the sake of an easy reference
to the originals.” Jago mostly succeeds in his aims with the exception that he
perpetuates the mispellings to be found in Pryce (1790) and Williams (1865)
that had originated from Pryce and Williams’ misreading their manuscript
sources.

EVALUATION

It is unfortunate that Jago did not avail himself of those who, in the late
nineteenth century, still retained a traditional knowledge of Cornish, such as
 John Davey of Zennor. Jago (p. iv) mentions the  lists of Cornish words
contributed to the Cornishman newspaper (1879) by Bernard Victor and a Mr.
W.F. Pentreath, but sadly Jago apparently made no attempt to contact either of
these potential informants in order to gather further data.

This current edition by Cambridge University Press  suffers from the lack of a
preface to place Jago’s dictionary in its historical context, to describe its
significance in the development of Cornish lexicography and the significance
that it had for the  lexicography of the Cornish revival that followed a few
decades after Jago’s original edition was published.

This book will be of interest to students of the history of linguistics and
more specifically to those studying the history of lexicography or the history
of Cornish linguistics. It is not suitable for learners of Revived Cornish,
who might be led astray by the title,  since this book belongs to a different
era, contains several errors  and does not give the Cornish words in any of
the standardised spelling systems currently being taught. Thus, for the
learner of revived Cornish today,  Jago’s dictionary has been superseded by
more accurate and up to date dictionaries, such as those by Nance (1938; 1952;
1955), Nance and Smith (1934), George (1993), Gendall (1997) and Williams
(2000). 

Prior to Jago’s (1887) original edition, three Cornish-English dictionaries
had been published. Pryce’s (1790) Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica, Williams’
(1865) Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum, and Stokes (1868) Cornish Glossary. Jago
compiled his English-Cornish Dictionary by simply amalgamating and reversing
these three dictionaries.  Jago (p. xv)  explains his rationale thus, “A
Cornish Dictionary without the English-Cornish part of it is like a bird with
one wing. The missing wing, imperfect as it may be, I have attempted to
supply. What should we say of a Latin Dictionary without an English-Latin
division? My wish has been to compile a handy dictionary, so that anyone might
find, so far as the remains of the ancient language will allow, what is the
Cornish for an English word.” Jago (p.xv) acknowledges his predecessors work,
“The labours of others have made such a task comparatively easy; indeed,
without the works of Williams, andc., this compilation would have been
impossible to me, and I have to acknowledge the invaluable assistance derived
from all sources.”

Jago’s dictionary, however, was to play a role beyond Jago’s stated aims. The
previously published Cornish-English dictionaries of Pryce (1790), Williams
(1865) and Stokes (1869) were not lemmatised. Thus any given lexeme might have
a number of entries at various places in the alphabetical headword list
according to its several inflections and variant spellings. By reversing the
dictionaries of  Pryce (1790), Williams (1865) and Stokes (1869) to create an
English-Cornish dictionary, Jago brought together all the variant forms of
each Cornish lexeme under one English headword. Using their newly devised
Unified Cornish orthography, Nance and Smith (1934) were then able to
standardise the variant spellings found in Jago’s dictionary to create their
An English-Cornish Dictionary. Nance (1938) then reversed the 1934 dictionary
to create the fully lemmatised A New Cornish-English Dictionary, suitable not
merely for antiquarians with an interest in a quaint, dead Celtic language,
but essential for those who aspired, as Nance himself did, to revive the
Cornish language.

Jago’s dictionary is still of use for the historical lexicographer of Cornish,
since its English-Cornish macrostructure  provides a means to look up all the
variant historical spellings of any given Cornish lexeme. This is particularly
useful for searching an electronic diachronic corpus of historical Cornish.

REFERENCES

Bannister, J. 1869. A Glossary of Cornish Names. London: Williams and Norgate
Gendall, R.R.M. 1997. A Practical Dictionary of Modern Cornish. Menheniot:
Teere ha Tavaz.

George, Ken. 1993. Gerlyver Kernewek Kemmyn: An Gerlyver Meur,
Kernewek-Sowsnek. Kesva an Taves Kernewek.

Nance, R. Morton, and A. S. D Smith. 1934. An English-Cornish Dictionary. St.
Ives: Federation of Old Cornwall Societies.

Nance, R. Morton. 1938. A New Cornish-English Dictionary. Federation of Old
Cornwall Societies.

Nance, R. Morton. 1952. An English Cornish Dictionary. St. Ives: Federation of
Old Cornwall Societies.

Pryce, William. 1790. Archaeologia Cornu-Britannica Or An Essay to Preserve
the Ancient Cornish Language. Sherborne: The Author.

Stokes, Whitley. 1869. ''Cornish Glossary'' Transactions of the Philological
Society 137-250. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Williams, Nicholas. 2000. English-Cornish Dictionary: Gerlyver
Sawsnek-Kernowek. Dublin: Everson Gunn Teoronta.

Williams, Robert. 1865. Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum - Gerlyvr Cernewec. London:
Trubner.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr Jon Mills lectures in English language and linguistics at the University of
Kent. His research interests include the Cornish language, lexicology,
lexicography and the teaching of English for academic purposes. He recently
provided the Cornish translation for the Oxford Children’s Cornish-English
Visual Dictionary. His PhD thesis was on Computer-assisted Lemmatization of a
Cornish Text Corpus for Lexicographical Purposes. For a list of his
publications see https://kent.academia.edu/JonMills.





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