[Lexicog] Detailed scientific/cultural information in dictionaries

[Rudolph C Troike]

I especially appreciate Bill Poser's comment about the usefulness of
dictionaries for other (often later) users. Too often we linguists are
satisfied with just a bare-bones listing of linguistic forms, perhaps with
a little etymological or derivational information, and in the process of
collecting the data do not go beyond the general equivalence which may be
given by a consultant. In the process recently of going through a number
of dictionaries of California Indian languages (written primarily for the
benefit of linguists, since the languages had only one or two surviving
speakers), it has been instructive and frustrating to find frequent
entries of the form "xxxxxx  bird (sp.)", where even the species of the
bird is unidentified. By contrast, I was able to find precise species
identification in word lists written down by a biologist, C. Hart Merriam,
who insisted on the crudest form of English orthographically-based
spelling (of the sort "puh-la-kah-lay"), sometimes leaving one to wonder
at the pronunciation. However, in at least one case I was able to correct
a species mis-identification in a linguist's dictionary from Merriam's
lists, which had potential significance for reconstructing former
distribution of the species. Sally McLendon was able to demonstrate that a
certain fish species had disappeared from Clear Lake as a result of the
change of water temperature after a dam was constructed by taking a Pomo
speaker to a local museum and finding that he had a Pomo name for a
species of fish no longer found in the lake.

	So while it may take a little extra time at the outset to include
as precise information as possible, and as much information as possible
(say, on the shape or use of a cultural artifact, or a distinction between
similar forms), the potential unforseen future dividends are great, even
for native communities which may want, as Natasha Warner is now doing with
Mutsun, to reconstitute and revive their language. Particularly in the
case of languages on the verge of extinction, the more information the
better.

	Rudy





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