Native speaker accessibility to Alg. dictionaries
Richard Rhodes
rrhodes at COGSCI.BERKELEY.EDU
Mon Mar 29 17:56:02 UTC 2004
Wayne,
One possible idea to deal with semi-sophisticated users who
forget to strip prefixes is to list forms with a given prefix and
cross-reference with dummy entries. In a dictionary of 10,000
entries, adding 100 or 2000 which get one past the prefix hurdle is
not excessive. So the Cheyenne dictionary would contain the following
entries, appropriately alphabetized:
naaa- see eaa-
naa'a- see ea'a-
na'aa- see e'aa-
na'a'a- see e'a'a-
naae- see eae-
naa'e- see ea'e-
na'ae- see e'ae-
na'a'e- see e'a'e-
naah- see eah-
na'ah- see e'ah-
naak- see eak-
na'ak- see e'ak-
naam- see eam-
na'am- see e'am-
naan- see ean-
na'an- see e'an-
naao- see eao-
naa'o- see ea'o-
na'ao- see e'ao-
na'a'o- see e'a'o-
naap- see eap-
naas- see eas-
na'as- see e'as-
na'ap- see e'ap-
naat- see eat-
na'at- see e'at-
naats- see eats-
na'ats- see e'ats-
naav- see eav-
na'av- see e'av-
naea- see eea-
nae'a- see ee'a-
na'ea- see e'ea-
na'e'a- see e'e'a-
naee- see eee-
nae'e- see ee'e-
na'ee- see e'ee-
na'e'e- see e'e'e-
naeh- see eeh-
na'eh- see e'eh-
naek- see eek-
na'ek- see e'ek-
naem- see eem-
na'em- see e'em-
naen- see een-
na'en- see e'en-
naeo- see eeo-
nae'o- see ee'o-
na'eo- see e'eo-
na'e'o- see e'e'o-
naep- see eep-
na'ep- see e'ep-
naes- see ees-
na'es- see e'es-
naet- see eet-
na'et- see e'et-
naets- see eets-
na'ets- see e'ets-
naev- see eev-
na'ev- see e'ev-
naha- see eha-
nahe- see ehe-
nahk- see ehk-
naho- see eho-
nahp- see ehp-
naht- see est-
nahts- see ests-
naka- see eka-
nake- see eke-
nako- see eko-
nama- see ema-
name- see eme-
namo- see emo-
nana- see ena-
nane- see ene-
nano- see eno-
etc.
Of course, not all the theoretically possible root onset syllables
are realized, so those that aren't can be eliminated. (I actually did
this for the variants in b ~ p ~ bb, g ~ k ~ gg, and d ~ t ~ dd in
Ottawa.)
The thing about dictionaries is that you are not punished for
redundancy in moderation. And appropriate redundancy can pay big
dividends for users.
Rich
> > Wayne, I think this is a really important issue. Linguists and other
>> scholars are likely to be very obedient, and will read the
>> introductory material and follow the directions given. But we can't
>> expect community members to necessarily do that, and if a dictionary
>> has community members as a target audience, this has to be addressed.
>
>Absolutely, Monica. It was a wakeup call for me when not a single Cheyenne
>in my class was able to locate the verbs because they all assumed that they
>needed to find the verbs starting with the pronominal prefixes (just as they
>locate words in English dictionaries starting with the first letter). And I
>did
>have a short explanation on the first page of the Intro which they were
>required to read. Since last week's class I have expanded that section a
>great deal, giving examples.
>
>>
>> Does anyone have any suggestions?
>>
>> With respect to your specific question - I don't know anything about
>> Cheyenne
>
>Oh, it pretty much behaves like the other Alg. lgs.
>
>> - does it have person-marking prefixes on all of the forms
>> of the verb, making it impossible to choose a form without one for
>> the entry?
>
>Yes, unlike some Alg. lgs. Cheyenne uses pronominal prefixes even for third
>person, so it has pronominal prefixes for each person of the Independent
>Order.
>
>Now, for AI verbs, the verb stem *is* the 2nd person plural addressee
>imperative form.
>
>Over the years, in my various classes, Cheyennes have had no problem being
>able to pull the verb stem out of the verb and give its meaning. For that
>matter, they usually can do this also for preverbs. So, either I just need
>to remind the students to use the same morpheme approach to locating verb
>stems in the dic'y (and I have full verb subentries under the stem
>headwords), or else I need to pick one of the person, probably either first
>or third as the dic'y headword, and give up wanting to have semantically
>related forms cluster together in the dictionary due to their having close
>spelling based on derivational relationship.
>
>Wayne
>-----
>Wayne Leman
>Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language
>
>>
>> - Monica
>>
>>
>> >There is one message totalling 97 lines in this issue.
>> >
>> >Topics of the day:
>> >
>> > 1. Cheyenne dictionary: the jury's verdict
>> >
>> >----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> >Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:11:05 -0500
>> >From: Wayne Leman <wayne_leman at SIL.ORG>
>> >Subject: Cheyenne dictionary: the jury's verdict
>> >
>> >Also posted to Lexicography List, March 23, 2004:
>> >http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/
>> >
>> >This semester I am teaching a course at the reservation college called
>> >Cheyenne Linguistics. Students are fluent speakers of the language, eager
>to=
>> >
>> >learn. I have had most of them in classes I have taught in the past. Last
>> >week their home assignment was to work with the current release of our CD
>> >dictionary of Cheyenne. I gave the students a homework sheet with
>specific
>> >things to try to find in the dictionary. A key part of the homework was
>for
>> >the students to locate three entries which happened to appear on the same
>> >page of the dictionary, and all of which have the same stem -m=E9sehe
>meanin=
>> >g
>> >'eat.' This was the first field test of a stem-based Cheyenne dictionary.
>> >
>> >The first entry they were to find was the verb =E9m=E9sehe 'he is
>eating,'
>> >composed of the third person prefix =E9- plus the verb stem.
>> >
>> >The second entry was n=E1m=E9s=EAh=E9t=E1no 'I want to eat,' composed of
>the=
>> > first
>> >person prefix n=E1-, the verb stem, plus a suffix -t=E1no meaning 'want
>to.'=
>> >
>> >
>> >The last entry was the noun m=E9s=EAh=E9stoto meaning 'potatoes,'
>composed o=
>> >f the
>> >steam 'eat', a nominalizer -htot and an animate plural suffix -o.
>> >
>> >We discussed in class how the students did interacting with the
>dictionary.
>> >Although all of the students know well the verb prefixes, not one was
>able
>> >to locate the verbs 'he is eating' and 'I want to eat'. The issue was
>that
>> >they were trying to locate 'he is eating' by its first letter, the prefix
>> >=E9-, and 'I want to eat' by its prefix n=E1-. Each of the verbs they
>were
>> >looking was clearly listed as subentries under their "headword" verb
>stem,
>> >but that did not help when they were looking for those verbs under their
>> >pronominal prefixes.
>> >
>> >I thanked the students for helping me realize that something more needed
>to
>> >be done so that they and other Cheyennes with far less class time than
>they
>> >have had would be able to locate verbs. I then illustrated why the verbs
>> >were arranged as they are in the dictionary, to group together words
>(both
>> >nouns and verbs) which have the same stem. They quickly saw from examples
>I
>> >put on the board that if we listed all forms of all verbs, with all
>person
>> >prefixes, all pluralization suffix combinations, all modes, etc., that
>the
>> >dictionary would mushroom in size to have millions of entries.
>> >
>> >This problem of native speakers locating entries in a dictionary for a
>> >language which has pronominal prefixation (or even more difficult
>prefixal
>> >allomorphy) is a common one, and has been discussed in the
>lexicographical
>> >literature.
>> >
>> >There are various solutions, none of which are perfect. We can enter only
>> >complete verbs, choosing one of the persons, such as third person, to be
>the=
>> >
>> >default form for entering verbs. This would obscure the stem relationship
>> >between verbs and nouns derived from them which start with the first
>letter
>> >of the stem. We can have a more detailed explanation in the Introduction
>to
>> >the dictionary of how the verbs are composed (we have spent a lot of time
>on=
>> >
>> >this in previous classes and students understand verb construction well)
>and=
>> >
>> >how to locate verbs by their stems. I already had the following paragraph
>on=
>> >
>> >the first page of the dictionary, which they were asked to read in the
>> >homework assignment:
>> >
>> >"This dictionary is arranged in alphabetical order according to the first
> > >letter of the Cheyenne entry. Many entries are parts of Cheyenne words
>> >called morphemes ("blocks") or roots. Most of these partial word entries
>> >also include complete Cheyenne words as examples. There is also a
>separate
>> >English index to the Cheyenne words in the dictionary."
>> >
>> >Obviously, this was not complete enough to help the students. At a
>minimum,
>> >there needed to be examples illustrating how to locate verbs by the first
>> >letter of their stem.
>> >
>> >I know that others of you have struggled with creating dictionaries which
>> >are accessible by language speakers themselves, not just the linguistic
>> >community.
>> >
>> >What solutions have you found which help language speakers use their own
>> >dictionaries fairly easily?
>> >
>> >Thank you,
>> >Wayne
>> >-----
>> >Wayne Leman
>> >Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language
>> >
>> >------------------------------
>> >
>> >End of ALGONQDICT Digest - 11 Dec 2003 to 23 Mar 2004 (#2004-1)
>> >***************************************************************
>>
>>
>> --
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Monica Macaulay
>> Department of Linguistics
>> University of Wisconsin
>> 1168 Van Hise
>> 1220 Linden Drive
>> Madison, WI 53706
>>
>> email: mmacaula at wisc.edu
>> phone: (608) 262-2292
>> web: http://ling.wisc.edu/~macaulay/monica.html
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
--
******************************************************************
Richard A. Rhodes
Department of Linguistics
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2650
Voice (510) 643-7325
FAX (510) 643-5688
******************************************************************
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