Using Dictionaries (was Re: Greek question (night?))

[Yoel L. Arbeitman]

 	Point well taken. But, dictionaries of "Classical Languages", Lat. and
Gk., will always give both the nom. citation form AND the stem, usually in
the form of the genitive sg. Case under discussion: Lat. nox, noctis will
always be the listing from which one knows that the nom. nox /noks/
represents a reduced stem /nok-/ + the desisence   -s. And OIndic (Skt.)
dictionaries give for noun and verb the stem rather than either resp. the
nom. sg. or the third sg. active present. For the verb Classical
Dictionaries give first sg. act. present. In Semitic the verb is given in
the past/perfect(ive) 3 sg. masc., etc. Thus there is variation in what is
given as the basic datum. Probably what is here said about Finnish I am
sure is true irrespective of whether or not I want to compare it to the
hypothetical IE cited. And this is probably true for most modern language
dictionaries. The Classical, OIndic, Hebrew, Arabic, etc., cases I am most
familiar with, have a very long grammatical tradition.
	Yoel

Bob Whiting wrote:

>What has been pointed out here is another pitfall of using
>dictionaries to do comparative linguistics without knowing
>anything about the languages that are being compared.
>Dictionaries traditionally give the nominative singular as the
>lexical entry.  In many instances the nominative singular is the
>linguistically least-marked form.  Many times features of the
>root that are important for comparative work are suppressed in
>the nominative singular because of the phonotactics of the
>language, but will still be found in the stem (the form to which
>other case endings are added).  Thus using a dictionary without
>being aware of the phonotactical rules of the language is a
>recipe for disaster when doing comparative work.  Not only can
>you get false positives by comparing two similar looking forms
>that may have resulted from the suppression of entirely different
>elements from the stem, but you can also get false negatives from
>words where one language has suppressed or mutated a stem element
>and another hasn't (e.g., Lat. <nox> - Ger. <Nacht>).  Similarly,
>if you don't know that the stem of Fin. vesi (the dictionary
>entry) 'water' is vete- you are likely to miss the connection
>with IE *wat-/*w at t-.

>So doing comparative work by looking words up in a dictionary is
>just a matter of collecting "lookalikes" that have similar
>meanings.  Some may be valid comparisons and some not; but if
>they are, it is more a matter of luck rather than skill since
>most dictionaries simply don't tell you everything that you need
>to know to do comparative linguistics beyond this simplistic
>level.