[Lexicog] Re:Getting to know you

[Dick_Watson at gial.edu]

> I am enjoying reading others' notes and introductions, so I'll add mine.
> My linguistic studies began at the SIL summer course at the U of Oklahoma
> the summers of 1958 and 59.  In Viet Nam my wife and I and Cubuat (the
> Pacoh man who helped us the most) developed a trilingual dictionary as
> part of our field work on the Pacoh language (Mon-Khmer) from 1961 to
> 1965.  After serving in administration during the intervening years, we
> were able to do some hurried completion for publication in 1975 and 76.
> Although it suffers from the lack of opportunity to "do it right" while in
> the country and language area, this Pacoh dictionary of a little over four
> and a half thousand words is the first and only dictionary in the language
> and has the eccentricity of having the words alphabetized from back to
> front.  For many languages of that area the rhyme is most stable and
> useful part for various purposes.  The presyllable is not the most stable
> or useful part, but if we were to publish again, we would probably yield
> to the norm and sort from the beginning of the word.  All of that work was
> done with file cards and typewriter, but we now have it in Shoebox where
> we can search and sort in a variety of ways in seconds instead of hours,
> when we can find the seconds to work on it.
>
> In the Sudan Branch of SIL from 1981 to 1999, I helped start and work on
> several dictionaries, which I hope are continuing to grow.  For Ma'di and
> Keliko I was not only able to start dictionaries in Shoebox, but with help
> from Bill Mann and John Duerksen I was able to use them in CARLA for spell
> checking the texts and other materials developed in those languages.
>
> While based in Nairobi, I also had the privilege of co-teaching a couple
> of lexicography seminars/workshops with Ron Moe.  Now, on faculty at GIAL,
> besides teaching in our grammatical analysis and field methods courses, I
> am preparing materials for a lexicography course scheduled for Spring
> 2005.