[Lexicog] Dictionary of a language with classifiers

[Kim Blewett]

I wonder how many of these languages DO have stand-alone forms without
classifiers?

Rapoisi (Bougainville, Papua New Guinea) is a suffix-heavy language in which
most roots can become either nouns or verbs with affixation. One of the few
prefixes, however, is a generalizer 'bo-,' which creates an abstract noun
out of almost any root in the dictionary, except for personal names and some
animate nouns. In fact, very few roots can be uttered in isolation and
speakers don't readily recognize an utterance of an isolated root, without
the 'bo-' attached.

Thus it is very easy and natural to produce a root-based dictionary for
Rapoisi, and we are pretty satisfied so far with the solution I proposed to
Nilson recently; that is, noun forms with classifier suffixes are entered as
Subentries. (See my response to Ron Moe for more details.) We put the 'bo-'
forms in the \lc field, but sort on \lx.

Kim

-----Original Message-----
From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
[mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Maxwell
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 9:12 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] Dictionary of a language with classifiers

 From a lexicographic standpoint (i.e. leaving aside the issue of how
you might set this up in Toolbox or some other program), it sounds like
what you're talking about is the difference between a root-based
dictionary and a word-based dictionary.

The root is your noun with no classifier, which (if I understand
correctly) is not a stand-alone form, and (apparently) has a pretty
generic meaning, like "stonyness".  So a root-based dictionary would use
the root as the headword, despite the fact that this root is not (I
gather) pronounceable in isolation.  The various forms with classifiers
would then appear as subentries under this lexical entry headed by the
root.  (The subentries might be headed by the full classified noun, e.g.
'iyaa' or iyakap', or just by the classifiers: '-a' or '-kap'.)

As Greg Aumann commented, whether these other forms truly have different
"meanings" depends very much on what you mean by "meaning".

A word-based dictionary, OTOH, would have separate lexical entries for
each of the forms with classifiers (headed by the full wordform, i.e.
'iyaa' or 'iyakap'), together with an indication of what the root is
(and possibly cross-references to one or more of the other forms with
classifiers, although if all the classifiers are suffixes, this might
not be necessary, as they would sort together in alphabetic order).

Conceptually, these two sorts of dictionaries contain the same kind of
information, it's just presented in different ways.  One of the design
goals of programs like FieldWorks is to abstract away from these
presentation issues, allowing you to leave aside the issue of which kind
of dictionary you will want to eventually produce while you're working
on it, and to generate root-based or word-based representations at any time.

There's a long tradition of root-based dictionaries in Semitic
languages, for different reasons (Semitic languages do not have noun
classifiers).  In general, experts find them easy to use, while everyday
users find them hard to use.  Hence there has recently been (I am told)
a trend towards the use of word-based dictionaries in e.g. Arabic.
However, the lookup problems in Semitic languages are considerably more
complex than they probably are in Karo, due to prefixes, infixes and
other kinds of "fixes".

I would imagine that not all nouns in Karo (need to) take classifiers.
For instance, do abstract nouns take classifiers?  How about animate
nouns?  (Of course, animate nouns may obligatorily take gender markers,
which may amount to the same thing.)

BTW, the Ethnologue lists Karo as having 150 speakers.  Is this
accurate?  I have some questions about interlinear text in Karo, which
I'll take off-line.
--
	Mike Maxwell
	Linguistic Data Consortium
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu

	"When I get a little money I buy books;
           and if any is left I buy food and clothes."
	--Erasmus




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