17.1514, Review: African Lang/Dictionaries: Jones (2004) (3 books)

[linguist at LINGUISTLIST.ORG]

LINGUIST List: Vol-17-1514. Tue May 16 2006. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 17.1514, Review: African Lang/Dictionaries: Jones (2004) (3 books)

Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U <aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Aristar-Dry, Eastern Michigan U <hdry at linguistlist.org>
 
Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org) 
        Laura Buszard-Welcher, U of California, Berkeley  
        Sheila Dooley, U of Arizona  
        Terry Langendoen, U of Arizona  

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Lindsay Butler <lindsay at linguistlist.org>
================================================================  

This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our
supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We
welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite
the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. To start a discussion of
this book, you can use the Discussion form on the LINGUIST List website. For
the subject of the discussion, specify "Book Review" and the issue number of
this review. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for
the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and
follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the
book review staff directly.


===========================Directory==============================  

1)
Date: 12-May-2006
From: Dmitry Idiatov < Dmitry.Idiatov at ua.ac.be >
Subject: Boko dictionary 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 18:05:19
From: Dmitry Idiatov < Dmitry.Idiatov at ua.ac.be >
Subject: Boko dictionary 
 

Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2685.html 

AUTHOR: Jones, Ross McCallum
TITLE: Boko Dictionary
SERIES: Languages of the World/Dictionaries 24
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2004

AUTHOR: Jones, Ross McCallum 
TITLE: Bokobaru Dictionary
SERIES: Languages of the World/Dictionaries 30
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2004

AUTHOR: Jones, Ross McCallum 
TITLE: Busa Dictionary
SERIES: Languages of the World/Dictionaries 31
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2004

Dmitry Idiatov, Department of Linguistics, University of Antwerp

DESCRIPTION

The dictionaries provide a lexicographic description of three closely 
related East Mande languages. They have been compiled by the 
author over a period of 35 years under the auspices of the Summer 
Institute of Linguistics and represent an important supplement to the 
1998 grammar of this language cluster published by the same author 
with Lincom GmbH (Jones 1998). The three dictionaries are organized 
in the same way. They start with a very brief introduction in which the 
organization of the dictionary is explained, and a few grammatical 
phenomena relevant for the presentation of the data are mentioned. 
This is followed by a list of major typological features of the source 
language and two tables representing pronominal paradigms, which 
show the complexity typical for East Mande languages. The Bokobaru 
and Busa dictionaries also include a table with demonstratives. The 
second part is constituted by the LANGUAGE-English dictionary, 
which is root based. All non-sentential examples, derivatives and 
compounds beginning with the main entry word are given as sub-
entries. Entries, subentries and examples are in bold, abbreviations 
are in italics, and the rest is in regular font. The (sub)entries are 
presented in the practical orthography but are always accompanied by 
a phonological representation in square brackets when the 
orthographical form is ambiguous. Synonyms, variants and etymology 
for loans are often provided (cognate forms in one of the other two 
languages of the cluster are also subsumed under the 
label ''etymology''). The Boko and Bokobaru dictionaries include 
around 7000 entries (subentries and main entries). Busa dictionary 
includes around 6600 entries (subentries and main entries), although 
it is only half the size of the other two dictionaries, which indicates that 
the Busa entries are less elaborate. The third part of each dictionary 
is made of an English-LANGUAGE index. The LANGUAGE equivalent 
is provided with a part-of-speech label and a reference to the 
subentries and main entries, when the equivalent is not the main entry 
itself, or just to the main entry in the LANGUAGE-English.

EVALUATION

Abbreviations used: 
BK:[page number] -- Boko dictionary, 
BB:[page number] -- Bokobaru dictionary, 
BS:[page number] -- Busa dictionary. 
Examples are put between *...*. IPA characters are adjusted to the 
ASCII chart.

The dictionaries provide the first, and in all probability the last, 
lexicographic description of Boko, Bokobaru and Busa. Therefore, 
their importance cannot be underestimated. They will serve as a 
useful resource for anybody interested in Boko, Busa, Bokobaru, and 
in Mande or African languages in general. Linguists interested in 
lexical typology will surely find interesting data there as well. Although 
after 35 years of work on a language, one might have expected a 
more elaborate lexicographic description, the dictionaries are in 
general of good quality.

The following points of criticism can be mentioned. To start with, the 
Boko dictionary is advertised (both on the web and on its back cover) 
to provide ''glosses in English and French'', although only English 
ones are there. The introductions and grammatical sketches in the 
dictionaries are too summary and some users may find them difficult to 
use without having Ross's (1998) grammar at hand. To a certain 
extent this drawback is compensated by the list of typological features 
of the three languages and tables with pronominal paradigms.

In all three dictionaries, the number of entries is impressive for a 
dictionary of an African language. However, to a certain extent, the 
high number is due to the numerous compounds included as (sub)
entries. As a user I would have appreciated if their internal structure 
were made clear in one way or another. Another point is that many of 
the compounds do not seem to be particularly lexicalized and their 
inclusion as (sub)entries in the dictionary is at least questionable, e.g. 
*gukpe-deo* 'people from the east (lit.: 'east-people/inhabitants')' 
(BK:67) or *gusia-deo* 'people of darkness (lit.: 'darkness-
people/inhabitants')' (BK:67; it is also not very clear to me what the 
latter compound means exactly). A similar remark can be made 
regarding the use of illustrative examples. To my mind, they could 
have been left out when they do not add any relevant morphosyntactic 
or semantic information to the translation. For instance, for the word 
*fura* 'cap' an example literally meaning 'Sabi brought a new cap' is 
given (BB:45).

What I also felt missing in the dictionaries is encyclopaedic information 
and attention to stylistic nuances of translations. For instance, quite a 
few examples seem to be translated word-for-word rather than in plain 
English. Thus, one finds translations like 'Sabi's masculinity is 
complete' (BB:65) and 'We are the truly circumcised' (BK:165), where I 
would like to see a cultural comment explaining what is exactly meant 
or a more liberal translation, followed by a literal translation. 
Admittedly, in some cases both free and literal translations are 
provided, as in (BK:156), but strangely enough the literal translation 
there precedes the example, while the free translation follows. 
Another example of a too literal translation is 'His male organ is 
discharging' (BK:64). Here the English translation seems to be of a 
rather different stylistic register than the Boko sentence. I do not know 
whether the dictionaries were also meant to be used by the speakers 
of Boko, Bokobaru and Busa, but should this be the case, I am sure 
plain English translations would have been more useful to them than 
such word-for-word approximations. The general lack of stylistic labels 
in the dictionaries (such as, vulgar, formal, archaic, etc.) is also 
regrettable. Just as regrettable is the lack of ethnographic comments 
and more extensive descriptions of many artefacts and concepts 
typical for the three language communities. No scientific names and 
descriptions are provided for flora and fauna terms, although in the 
case of terms designating animals and birds quite specialized English 
equivalents can often be found.

The way the labels ''vt'' (transitive verb) and ''vi'' (intransitive verb) are 
used in the dictionaries is not completely clear to me. As in other 
Mande languages, the distinction between transitive and intransitive 
verbs in Boko, Bokobaru and Busa is very straightforward and easy to 
make: If the verb has a preposed object then it is transitive, in all other 
cases it is intransitive. Both transitive and intransitive verbs can also 
have a postposed indirect object regularly marked by a postposition. 
As a rule, omission of the direct object of a transitive verb is not 
allowed. In BB:106-107 we can find the following (sub)entries. On the 
one hand, there is *le ke* 'sharpen' labelled as ''vt'' and indeed, it 
needs a preposed object *fee le ke* 'sharpen a knife'. On the other 
hand, there is *le die ...-ne* 'give instructions' also labelled as ''vt'', but 
it allows only for a postposed object marked by the postposition *ne*. 
At the same time, there is *le ku ... -n* 'interfere in, involved (be)' 
which is also used without a preposed object but is labelled as ''vi''. 
Another point here is that in all three cases *le* 'mouth, opening' is 
itself an (incorporated) object of the verb.

The root principle of organization of the dictionaries is sometimes a bit 
uncomfortable. For instance, in the Boko dictionary *lán ...-wa* 'as if' is 
put under *lá1* 'as, since' on p.98, whereas I would have looked for it 
on p.100, according to the alphabetical order. Furthermore, it is not 
always clear why entries are organized the way they are. Are they 
organized from a basic, prototypical meaning to secondary meanings 
(e.g., metaphoric extensions), or from the most common meaning to 
less common ones, or from an etymologically first meaning to the 
derived meanings? Consequently, it is not always easy to find your 
way in such an entry. This is particularly the case with verb entries, 
such as the entry *mo* in BK:114 organized as follows: 1) 'swallow', 
2)'come', then subentries in the following order 'swallow whole' --
 'bring to' -- 'gulp down' -- 'bring, come with' -- 'be enough' -- 'arrival' --
 'arrival time' -- 'swallow down' -- 'oral' -- 'bridesmaid'. Admittedly, I 
may be too demanding here. People tend to forget how difficult it is to 
organize all your entries in a clear and straightforward way.

Typos are not numerous. The typeface is clear and legible with 
boldface (sub)entries and examples. The nice cover is also an 
aesthetic plus as compared to the usual Lincom publications. I 
particularly appreciated the presence of phonological transcriptions 
for main entries, as well as references to synonyms and source forms 
of loanwords. The availability of an English-LANGUAGE index is more 
than welcome. Last but not least, I was positively impressed by the 
wealth of vocabulary treated in the dictionaries. Thus, ideophones and 
flora and fauna terms, which are often underrepresented in 
lexicographic publications, can be found in abundance in the 
dictionaries under review. The dictionaries even include place and 
person names. Subsuming, I find the three lexicographic descriptions 
under review to be of good quality. They will surely serve as an 
invaluable source of information to all those interested in Boko, Busa 
and Bokobaru.

REFERENCE

Jones, Ross McCallum (1998). The Boko/Busa language cluster. 
München: Lincom GmbH [LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics, 30] 

I am a PhD student at the University of Antwerp. My current research
focus is on typological aspects of interrogativity, especially
interrogative pro-words. I am also interested in descriptive linguistics
and lexicography, with special emphasis on Mande languages, such
as Bamana and Toura. I am working on a Toura-French dictionary.
The latter work stems from the project on "Lexicology of Eastern
Mande languages in the context of Mande linguistic comparison"
(http://www.unizh.ch/spw/afrling/prjbsch/mande.htm) funded by the
Swiss National Science Foundation. The first results of this project
have been recently put on the web at http://www.mandesud.net.





-----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-17-1514