[Lexicog] Digest Number 343

[Mike Maxwell]

Allan Johnson wrote:
> I found an example that might be helpful.  The attached file shows an entry
> in a sense-primary PLB format, followed by the same information in a
> form-primary MDF format.  Both forms use wordforms inside a lexical entry.
> The lexeme is a root (which often will also be a wordform as in this case,
> but not always), and its associated wordforms are various inflections or
> derivations of this root.

Rather belatedly, I'm getting around to looking at this.  It is a
fascinating example--once again, it reminds me of how English-centric much
of lexicography is.

For those unfamiliar with Philippine languages (and I have to confess, I
don't know any), Allan's description above pretty well sums it up.  There
is a root (shown in his examples as the headword).  A number of forms can
be derived from that root by various morphological operations (including
ordinary affixation and infixation, and in at least one case by null
morphology).  The derived (or inflected; the distinction is, I gather,
unclear in some Philippine languages) forms are listed with their affixed
forms as citation forms for the subentries.  (Notice that the subentry for
the null-derived word is not shown with a separate citation form.)

If you're familiar with traditional Semitic lexicography, the similarities
will be obvious: the lexicon has been organized according to roots
(although for at least this word, the root happens to be a possible
wordform, unlike the case for Arabic).  The subentries are organized around
possible full words, which have as I say their own citation forms.

It is apparently a debatable question whether Tagalog roots have a POS, or
if only the words derived from them have roots.  (I don't know whether
Allan's example is Tagalog; in any case, you'll notice that the headword is
not actually assigned a POS, only the subentries are.)  That's also true of
Arabic lexicography, I believe: ktb doesn't have a POS, but the nouns and
verbs derived from it of course do.

Conceptually, the subentries in this root-organized dictionary are in some
sense ordinary lex entries, which have been grouped together under their
common root.  So I guess this is another argument for the Fieldworks (as
opposed to LinguaLinks) decision to not have separate classes for major and
minor entries.  It's turtles all the way down!
--
	Mike Maxwell
	Linguistic Data Consortium
	maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu


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