[Lexicog] augmentation and reconstruction in editing

[Ron Moe]

Hi Jess,

It would help to know more of your situation. Is Yahgan an extinct language?
Is this why it is so difficult to sort out questions? If you are trying to
document an extinct language by compiling all the data available, then about
all you can do is create a best-guess entry and follow it up with a
discussion of the data. Most dictionaries of this sort will list variant
forms in the literature and cite the source. Dictionaries of ancient Greek
do this. Go to the following web site for an example of how Liddell and
Scott handle the Greek word praos/praus/preus 'gentle' and all the
spellings, misspellings, dialectal variants, and inflected forms.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057
%3Aentry%3D%2386189

They start each article by listing the attested forms with their
bibliographical references, then they list the meanings with example
sentences taken from the literature (also referenced). In this way the user
can evaluate the evidence for himself.

Ron Moe

-----Original Message-----
From: yahganlang [mailto:phonosemantics at earthlink.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 3:18 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Lexicog] augmentation and reconstruction in editing




Hi, folks, and thanks to those who responded to my query a few weeks
ago about cranberry morphemes.

I'd like to get some advice on a different set of issues facing the
Yahgan dictionary. The original manuscripts from which the 1933
edited print version derive lost their last 60 or so pages during
the rush to hustle them out of harm's way during bombing raids in
Germany in the Second World War.

The result is that no original materials from these manuscripts can
be cited. Instead I've had to resort to a variety of less direct
supports of attestation and accuracy of forms in the corresponding
section of the print edition of the dictionary, which wouldn't
normally be that much of an issue except for the extraordinary
numbers of errors already found accrued between the surviving ms
materials and the print edition.

So far I've used entries from a much earlier surviving dictionary
manuscript containing many fewer headwords than the missing ms.
pages would have, and derivations from other parts of the later
dictionary ms's. Most lexical derivatives (and many compounds) are
predictable in meaning, so it is often easy to tell when the 1933
print edition flubbed it. Many of the remaining unvalidated forms
can have a measure of trust put in them from this knowledge.

The original ms. materials have their stresses indicated about half
the time- I will have to see whether many of the forms without
stresses so marked can be reliably so after the fact by formula, and
if derivatives then can point out root stresses. Because of the
massive abbreviation used in the 1933 edition, stress marking was
dropped. Many roots and derivatives differing only in stress were
then wrongly consolidated under single heads.

Definitions were also often mucked up by the editors- where outside
attestation can be found these can be caught if big enough, but for
more subtle types of error there is no recourse. As I compared the
original surviving ms's (from 1877-9) against the 1933 edition I
lost count as to how many times I groaned, lifted my eyebrows,
dropped my jaw, slapped my forehead, or plain burst out laughing. If
there were an award given for "worst edited dictionary" the 1933
Hestermann/Gusinde would be up there in the running.

I am also using other sources to augment the existing document, as
well as correct it in other places, materials often available to the
editors of the 1933, but dismissed by them quite mystifyingly (most
likely due to Depression-era stress, exhaustion, and in the case of
Gusinde an extremely negative attitude towards the original
compiler, Thomas Bridges).

The resulting new document therefore contains a slew of materials of
varying reliability and different primary and secondary sources. Has
anyone here had to deal with these issues as they did their own
compilations from different sources? How should one mark them? What
about differing original orthographies? Can forms be "converted" but
keeping the original alongside for reference? Yahgan has had about
20 differing orthographies used to record it (mostly minor variants).

I have a copy of Dale Kinkade's Upper Chehalis Dictionary, in this
work forms with variant orthography or questionable provenance are
placed at the end of each alphabetical section, rather than
integrated. Do other people have other solutions?

Thanks in advance for replies.
Jess Tauber
phonosemantics at earthlink.net







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