[Lexicog] Re: Lacunae -- what should go in a dictionary

[Cami Borza]

Rudy,

Thank you very much for your suggestions. It really sounds great.

Unfortunately the situation in Congo doesn't allow us to do that anywhere in the forsiable future (in my opinion). You see in the areas where we work they have no libraries, no universities, no museums, no roads, no electricity and no means to go in there except charted planes. There might be a couple of cameras available in a few hundred km area, but then there is no way of developping those films except when they occasionaly travel to Uganda. I don't think any scientific researcher would dare to travel there. SAD BUT TRUE!

That's why I don't know what to do with these names for plants and animals.

Let's just hope one day would be possible to do research. But I think the idea of contacting the Belgium society sounds great. Maybe they have already done some research.

Cami.


Rudolph C Troike <rtroike at u.arizona.edu> wrote:

Re Cami's question, my first suggestion would be to contact a university
in the area to find out if there are any botanists or zoologists around
who could help. Secondly, to check at the library of one or more
universities in the region, to see if there are books on the flora and
fauna available. Librarians, in my experience, will often go far out of
their way to respond to requests for help, even when they do not know
anything about the subject matter.

As suggested earlier, another useful approach, if practicable, is to visit
a natural science museum in the region and see what resources they have.

Finally, since in the colonial period there were often expeditions from
museums in the home country to collect and classify specimens, and often
publish results in research reports, probably a very productive approach
would be to contact a major natural science museum in Belgium, and perhaps
one in France, to see if there are research reports on these topics. Some
of these may actually date to the 19th century. Also, there are
undoubtedly curators in such museums who would be interested in
establishing contact with someone in the field who could actually furnish
specimens with native names, and ethnographic information on their use.

Since the existence of a number of different terms for 'manioc' imply
native knowledge on different means of collection and preparation, it
would not only be valuable to annotate a dictionary with this kind of
detailed ethnographic information, but it might be possible to link this
information with prior anthropological research on food and agricultural
practices in the region. There is certainly a growing scientific interest
in ecological issues, to which this information could contribute. As I
have noted here before, once languages become extinct, dictionaries often
become a major source of ecological and cultural information, so the long
term scientific and historical importance of inclusiveness in providing
detailed glosses should not be overlooked.

      Rudy




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