[Lexicog] deciding on the citation form

[Piotr Banski]

Greetings, Listers,

I was wondering if you can point me to a book or a paper that discusses
the rationale behind the lexicographer's choice of the citation form for
the given lexeme class of the given language. That may easily turn out
to be several papers or books and I'll be grateful for any hint you can
provide.

For example, with verbs you usually go for the infinitive, unless it's,
say, Greek (at least Modern Greek), where there are no infinitives,
Bantu, where you don't want all verbs sorted under, say, "k", English,
where infinitives are not marked morphologically, or Latin (why? greater
homonymy among infinitives than among 1Sg forms?). I seem to vaguely
recall some discussion of Latin citation forms by Peter Matthews, but I
can't find it anymore -- can anyone please refresh my memory on this or
at least point me to the appropriate source?

Similarly with nouns, where you probably usually want to go for NomSg,
but then there's Latin, where (I'm not sure) you use {NomSg, GenSg}
pairs -- is that correct? Or do you just go for NomSg, treating the
GenSg ending as the first bit of grammatical information? (And is there
any practical difference between these approaches apart from having to
allow for a larger number of homonyms on the latter?)

Then there's Hebrew (and, I guess, Arabic, Amharic, possibly Semitic in
general (?)), where I don't know what happens. Just consonantal roots?
That would mean rather complicated entries. (But Amharic indirectly
marks vowels in its syllabary, so there things should be different,
shouldn't they.) I'd appreciate a pointer or two, similarly for
polysynthetic languages, where my imagination simply fails.

I can imagine this evolving into some on-list discussion, but if I get
off-list mails, I promise to prepare a summary of them.

Thanks in advance,

  Piotr Banski



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
Yahoo! Groups gets a make over. See the new email design.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/hOt0.A/lOaOAA/yQLSAA/HKE4lB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

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

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    mailto:lexicographylist-digest at yahoogroups.com 
    mailto:lexicographylist-fullfeatured at yahoogroups.com

<*> 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/