[Lexicog] Theoretical constructs vs. practical reference dictionaries

[Lou Hohulin]

Thank you, Ken Hill, for reminding us of this distinction.

In your e-mail, you mentioned putting a fair amount of grammatical information in the Hopi dictionary.  I'd like to raise some questions about the amount of grammatical information that we should put in 'practical reference dictionaries'. I am writing a descriptive grammar, along with the compilation of a dictionary of a largely undocumented language (Tuwali Ifugao - Austronesian, Philippine-type), and am attempting to integrate the information between the two products. However, decisions regarding what should be put in the dictionary, as well as in the grammar, are difficult. Is there a principled way to make consistent decisions?

I also noted Rich Rhodes comments about the lexicon and grammar being a 'continuum' -- that isn't the way he stated it, but essentially I agree with that theoretical position; however, when it comes to the practical task of producing helpful dictionaries and grammars, we desperately need a theoretically sound basis for deciding 'what goes where'.

I am using the SIL-developed program, LinguaLinks, which allows me to interlinearize text, and then, attested examples from the texts can be seen in entries. Also, there is an annotation field that allows grammatical information, encyclopedic information, etc. In addition, there is a thesaurus program which allows ease in classifying words into domains. The domains are not always as unique as I need for the language; however, it is a tremendously helpful program for clearly defining the differences in large numbers of very specific words.

Lou Hohulin


On Sat, 7 Feb 2004 12:42:31 -0800 (PST)
 "Kenneth C. Hill" <kennethchill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I detect a common confusion in this interchange, the loss of the
> distinction between "the lexicon" as a theoretical construct (alongside
> "the grammar, the syntax, the phonology, the onomasticon," etc.) and "a
> dictionary" as a specific reference work. A dictionary is motivated by the
> perceived needs of the prospective users as well as by the author's
> perhaps idiosyncratic interest in including certain information. In the
> Hopi Dictionary, for example, there is a lot of stuff that properly
> belongs in the grammar, but it was thought to be useful to remind the
> potential user of various details of grammatical behavior within the body
> of the dictionary. And the grammar we provided was a bare-bones practical
> sketch. The Hopi Dictionary mixes encyclopedic knowledge in with
> everything else in a somewhat unprincipled way simply because that
> information was considered of potential interest to the reader and,
> anyway, we weren't about to write a separate encyclopedia. Items appear in
> the dictionary that pertain to the theoretical onomasticon but, I guess,
> only where the onomasticon and the encyclopedia overlap: selected
> placenames and a couple of personal names with historical importance.
>
> I urge the distinction between the dictionary-as-theoretical-construct and
> the dictionary-as-practical-reference-work. Most of us, I believe, are
> concerned overwhelmingly with the latter. I know some others have pointed
> this out, but I hereby put my two cents in.
>
> --Ken Hill
>
> A few quotations that led up to the statement above:
>
> ... what does it mean to be lexicalized?
>
> ... what goes in a dictionary and what goes in an encyclopedia?
>
>
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