[Lexicog] Lacunae-what should then go in the dictionary?

[Richard Rhodes]

Connor,
	Sorry for the late response. The real thing to do is to
collect samples and take them to the botanist, ornithologist,
whatever. Mostly, we don't do that for a variety of reasons. (I
wouldn't want to take those two porcupines that the locals insisted
are very different in to be examined.) Sometimes really good nature
guide books help, but that's second best -- and there are lots of
misidentifications from pictures alone. Getting an extensive
description along with a tentative id from pictures is frequently the
most practical. It doesn't hurt to collect such data even if you are
taking an actual sample in.

Cheers,
Rich

PS I have some other comments about lacunae, but I've been too busy
to mail in a blog. Mostly the question revolves around who gets to
call what a lacuna?


At 12:20 AM -0400 4/28/04, Conor McDonough Quinn wrote:
>Dia dhuit, a chara!
>
>>  The problem that I have encountered is that the natives came up
>>with lots of words for plants and animals (and not only) that they
>>don't know what it is in French. So, I ended up with a long, long
>>lists of "sort of...(plant, animal etc.)". Now that is more or less
>>OK for now, for this little dictionary. But what about a bigger,
>>broader dictionary? There might be plants or animals that have not
>>even been discovered yet by "westerners" or botanists or
>>zoologists!?
>One way to deal with this is just to get people to describe everything
>they know about that plant/animal/other, in the language.  This makes for
>a good definition, tends to elicit other vocabulary you might never
>have run into, collects valuable (and often lexicographically crucial)
>cultural knowledge, and greatly facilitates identifying that
>plant/animal/other for specialists, both in/of the Linnaean taxonomic
>tradition and in/of the indigenous ones.
>
>Sla/n,
>do chara
>
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>


--
******************************************************************

  Richard A. Rhodes
  Department of Linguistics
  University of California
  Berkeley, CA 94720-2650
  Voice (510) 643-7325
  FAX (510) 643-5688

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