[Lexicog] Cheyenne dictionary and blog

[Wayne Leman]

Jan, I was startled recently to discover that Cheyenne students (they are adult speakers of the language) locate Cheyenne words in the printed form of the dictionary (same content as the online dictionary) by going to the English-Cheyenne index at the back of the book. And it's not full enough for best dictionary usage, as you note.

Wayne
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Wayne Leman
Cheyenne dictionary online:
http://www11.asphost4free.com/cheyennedictionary/default.htm












  Dear Mike Cahill




  > The other major thing I wanted to mention is the output. 

  > It's possible to do a reverse gloss, an index. A lot
  > of dictionaries I've seen have the format Boko-English, where as you say,
  > the Boko is the head word, with explication in English. But there's also a

  > "finder index", giving an English word (gloss) and then a pointer to the

  > fuller Boko entry. That's what's possible in the current FieldWorks.



  I haven't looked at FieldWorks yet but from Clair's review and your explanation above it seems that the "finder index" isn't an improvement of the Toolbox feature.

  Clair is right that endangered languages need dictionaries that have both sections, that is Language-English and English-Language. And the English section should be more than just a finder index. The experience shows that many native people who want to re-learn their ancestral language don't take the pains in referring to the front section. Instead they simply use the word they find in the finder index in whichever way they feel it is appropriate (i.e. without studying the usage rules).



  Moreover, as you know, it is very frequently the case that for a single English word there are multiple lexemes used in the other language, often with subtle meaning differences. In Lakota there are dozens of words for 'come', 'go', 'bring', 'take'. Listing these in a finder index just makes the student overwhelmed and does not encourage him/her to refer to the ten or fifteen listed lexemes in the front section where meaning and usage are explained in detail. 



  Most of the modern languages have student dictionaries with both sections being full-fledged dictionaries of their own, with detailed information on meaning and usage. This is probably more than most endangered languages can hope for, but it would be very helpful if we could at least provide a finder index with a comment for each word, for instance:



  come:  -- vi. hi (to have come here), u (to be coming here), gli (to have come back here), ku (to be coming back here); hiyu (to start coming)

            -- vcol. ahi (they all have come here), au (they all are coming here), agli (they all have come back here), aku (they all are coming back here); ahiyu (they all start  coming)



  In our current work on the Lakota language dictionary we are hoping to provide such Lakota section, which would be fuller then just a finder index. But Toolbox does not help to automate the process (at least partly) or provide a database structure that would support this type of output.



  I hope this helps to clarify the needs of endangered languages. Many thanks to SIL team for the lexicography tools.





  Jan



  Jan Ullrich

  Lakota Language Consortium

  www.lakhota.org









   
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