[Lexicog] Theoretical constructs vs. practical reference dictionaries

[Lou Hohulin]

Thanks, Ken. Your examples give me some idea of the type of decisions you made regarding grammatical information in the dictionary.

The morphology of Tuwali Ifugao is extremely complex. For example, there is a change of meaning/function of affixes, depending on their co-occurrence with different classes of verbs. Below is one example:

The infix -um- consistently expresses non-past tense and always cross references the subject. But it also expresses the following ideas:
1. expresses a punctiliar aspect with one class of intransitive, action verbs (this seems statistically to be the 'default' affix for that root class).
2. expresses quantifying information with some verb classes, i.e. partitive 'some'. There is no word in the clause that equates English 'some'.
3. expresses a process when co-occurring with stative verb roots
4. expresses an inceptive aspect with a small class of verb roots
5. Derives process verbs from some classes of nouns.

There seems to be a fuzzy boundary between the semantics and function of the affixes. Yet, much of the information seems to me to be more 'morphosyntactic' than semantic, and yet, speakers who work with me feel that the information should be put in the entries of the affixes. At this point, I have been treating those different 'meanings' and 'functions' as senses of the affix so that it appears to equate the senses of content words. I also place the information about co-occurring verb root classes in an annotation for each 'sense'. In the grammar, I describe the verb root classes and affix patterns more fully.

What do you think?

Lou



"Kenneth C. Hill" <kennethchill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Re: Grammatical info in the Hopi Dictionary
>
> I am not prepared to write a paper on this, but here are a few examples:
>
> The "elsewhere" case for predicate pluralization in Hopi is the suffix
> -ya. But in the listing of verbs, we cite the plural suffix whatever it
> may be, including -ya.
>
> There is a minor adjectival class in which the nominative is in -y(o-) and
> the accusative is in -kw (or -ko-), plus elaborations. This pattern is
> easlily explained in the grammar, but because the items involved are few,
> we didn't bother suppressing the grammatical information at the specific
> entries.
>
> Some nouns are invariant regardless of singular or multiple reference. As
> we found that such nouns had no plural form, we marked them as "n.sg."
> Rather than simplify the notation "n.sg." to simply "n." and let the
> absence of a cited plural form speak for itself, we have left stand the
> mark "n.sg.
>
> Presentational redundancy is often a good thing. One has to be careful to
> keep it under control, but that is an editorial problem. And so far as I
> know, there is no linguistic notion of an "editorial" component of a
> language which might constrain this notion in any principled way.
>
> --Ken
>
>
> --- 'Lou Hohulin' <lou_hohulin at sil.org> wrote:
> > 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 H
> ill
>
>
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