[Lexicog] Re: Variant words

[Rudolph C Troike]

Thanks to David for his comments on this issue. It might be possible to
kill two birds with a stone and a half, if you printed main entries in
boldface, and alternants in non-bold, but with both pointing to the other
as a possibility. The responsibility of a lexicographer in initiating a
dictionary tradition is awesome. Mary Haas told me once of her experience
in working with some Choctaw (I believe, though possibly Cherokee) in
Oklahoma, who were literate in their language. When she was transcribing
texts, they occasionally corrected her phonemic spelling, because a form
appeared differently in a 19th-century dictionary that a missionary had
compiled. On looking in the dictionary, she discovered that the different
spellings that they were insisting on were evident misprints (e.g., a <p>
for a <t>, but no amount of argument that they were actually pronouncing a
/t/ would sway them from the conviction that the proper spelling should be
what was in the dictionary!

	Rudy Troike
	University of Arizona





------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/HKE4lB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->


Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    lexicographylist-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/