[Lexicog] Digest Number 343

[Claire Bowern]

Hi all,
sorry for the delay in posting, only just got internet set up at my
field site.

I'm doing general salvage work this summer with 10 speakers or so of a
language called Yan-nhangu (Eastern Arnhem Land). A dictionary is part
of that. Here are some general thoughts, in no particular order.

 regular intermediate results are important - e.g. a draft printout, a
semantic field resonably complete, at regular intervals, so people don't
get discouraged that all this information is going into the computer and
nothing's coming out.

 backups!!!!

 a mixture of texts and targetted elicitation - texts in general will
throw up lots of vocabulary but you also need to ask for things, either
through translation, vernacular definitions (tell me all you know about
X), miming, etc.

 a stable, flexible database program (we're using Shoebox).

 some things can easily be changed later on, others are more difficult.
Coming up with a good database structure early on is really important
(I've learnt this the hard way, several times actually!)

I second Conor's point that enthusiasm and goodwill will go a long way,
and with endangered languages it's very important to collect the
information in some format that can be interpreted later on. That
doesn't have to be a fancy database, it can be a text document, or
pencil and the backs on envelopes. I'm in the situation at the moment
where I'm editing someone else's lexicon collection - it's disorganised,
badly glossed, badly spelled and generally confusing, but it'll still
save a lot of time in elicitation and checking and compiling new words.
(What happened, I think, was that they didn't understand the underlying
concept of shoebox data bases, and how the backslash codes tag different
types of information, so they just put any information anywhere.) Having
said that, though, it would have been way more useful if they'd spent a
bit of time keeping things a little orderly. Collected data can still be
useless, for example, if the gloss isn't written down, or the database
is in a format that no one can read. Enthusiasm rocks, but directed
enthusiasm really really rocks!

 That's another point in dictionary making - compulsive order.

Claire

--------------
Dr Claire Bowern
Linguistics, Rice University
Houston TX



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