dictionary verb citations

[Joost Kremers]

Hi John,

It's funny, really, seeing you mention this. There is a similar discrepancy
in Arabic, where dictionaries compiled by Western Arabists tend to use the
perfective form as citation form, while dictionaries compiled by native
speakers tend to use the imperfective form. The imperfective is indeed the
form that a native speaker will give you when you ask him what 'to jump'
means in Arabic.

So I would suggest, if your target audience are native speakers (which I
assume is the case, given that the dictionary is to be monolingual), use
the form that they would themselves use. Just imagine how you would feel
about a dictionary of English that listed all the verbs in their gerund
forms, or worse, in their past tense forms... i mean, you'd get used to it
easily enough, but it would nonetheless be kind of "off".

Just my two dimes, of course...

Joost


On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 01:27:10PM -0600, idiez at MAC.COM wrote:
>        Sooner or later I'm going to have to make a decision regarding 
> headword entries in a monolingual nahuatl dictionary. There is 
> obviously a long tradition of using the present tense as the citation 
> form. Although the early dictionary makers didn't understand exactly 
> how nahua verbs work, this system is very efficient as far as 
> intuitively distinguishing between verb classes 1-4 or a-d, depending 
> on the terminology one uses. Fran's dictionary is the prime example of 
> this: parenthesis mark class 2 verbs, and the few class 4 verbs are 
> rewritten in the preterite form. Class 1 and 3 are unmarked.
>        It's pretty well known that if you ask a native speaker how to say 
> "jump", for example, in nahuatl, he or she will answer, "nihuitoniz". 
> In other works, the future tense in nahuatl serves as a kind of 
> infinitive verb form. My questions is, why didn't Molina and his 
> successors use this as the dictionary headword form? And what do you 
> listeros think about incorporating this future based form into a 
> monolingual dictionary? Obviously it would be followed by a number 
> (1-4) to show verb class, and perhaps some kind of notation showing 
> transitivity, causitive, applicative, etc.
>        I'm not generally in favor of breaking with tradition, especially 
>        when it works, so I would appreciate hearing from anyone who has an opinion 
> on the matter.
> John
> 
> John Sullivan, Ph.D.
> Profesor de lengua y cultura nahua
> Unidad Académica de Idiomas
> Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
> Director
> Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, A.C.
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-- 
Joost Kremers, PhD
Graduate College "Satzarten"
J.W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main
Varrentrappstrasse 40-42
60486 Frankfurt am Main
Germany
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