[Lexicog] Lacunae-what should then go in the dictionary?

[Cami Borza]

Chaz,
When you mentioned there is no difference between tree and wood, I remembered a problem that I have on what to enter in a dictionary and I would like to ask you all your opinions on this. Let me explain:

I'm working with 8 Congolese languages and the lexicography work was very slow so far, collecting even as little as 2000 words in 20 years. Now we have decided that I would help all the teams put together a very small, basic dictionary (without definitions or much explanation, basically the word and it's equivalent in French). To do this we are using Ron Moe's DDP.

The problem that I have encountered is that the natives came up with lots of words for plants and animals (and not only) that they don't know what it is in French. So, I ended up with a long, long lists of "sort of...(plant, animal etc.)". Now that is more or less OK for now, for this little dictionary. But what about a bigger, broader dictionary? There might be plants or animals that have not even been discovered yet by "westerners" or botanists or zoologists!?

But even if we don't go that far, what would you guys do with this kind of words that the natives do not know what it is in the national language or language of broader circulation? For example: one of our project gave me about 10 different words for different kinds of "manioc" (a plant they eat in Congo). Their national language is French and I'm sure they have no idea what those words would be in French. So, what is a lexicographer supposed to do in this case?

Thanks for the input,
Cami Borza
SIL-ECG

Chaz and Helga Mortensen <chaz_mortensen at sil.org> wrote:
Wayne wrote:

> In your research, what (apparent) lexical lacunae have you encountered,
> where there is lack of lexicalization for concepts which seem to be part
of
> the culture of the language speakers?

It's not a lack of lexicalization, but it has always struck me as odd that
the Emberas, who live in the jungle, don't differentiate between "tree" and
"wood".

-Chaz



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