dictionary verb citations

[Jonathan Amith]

Hi John,

I would assume that you are talking about the best headword entry for
printed monolingual dictionaries; with electronic versions there is no
problem. It is not hard to allow look-up from any inflected form.

For print versions for monolingual speakers the problem is
interesting. First, if you are right in stating that "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" that does not mean
that the most likely way for a native speaker to LOOK UP a word is in
the first person future. From my experience asking for a translation
and asking for a look up are not the same. So an argument might be
made that while speakers respond 'nicho:kas' for 'como se dice llorar'
they might be more comfortable in looking up cho:kas, ticho:kas, etc.
I don't know, but this is something to think about.

Another problem for not using a canonical form is that of keeping
words together that might facilitate dictionary construction. There
are also words that in the intransitive might not take a 1st person
subject but that would with a transitive. For example, think of
poso:ni and poso:nia (also poso:naltia). One cannot say niposo:nis. So
poso:ni would be entered under poso:nis. But poso:nia can take a human
agent: nicposo:ni:s. Entering by stem keeps these two entries close.
There is also the example of posteki (intransitive) vs. posteki
(transitive). By entering most common inflected form the first would
be postekis (although one can say, less commonly, nipostekis 'I'll get
a broken bone'). However, for the transitive nikpostekis (or ?
nitlapostekis). Speakers might be confused in looking up posteki when
for some this usually takes an inanimate subject and for others it can
take an human subject. There are probably a lot of verbs like this,
that are most common with 3rd-person inanimate and less common with
human subject. A question, then, is it easier to create a dictionary-
look-up culture based on stems, or have speakers look back and forth
between ni- and zero- subjects?

There is also the problem of directionals, etc. If I ask a speaker to
say 'fall over' the answer will be (at least in the Balsas) niwetsis
(let's say). But if I ask for the way to say 'to fall down (i.e., off
of something) the answer will be niwa:lwetsis or nonwetsis. Again,
there might be a reason to keep all these entries together. What of
the case such as o:nemiko 's/he was born'. The future is
wa:lnemis 's/he will be born.' Speakers will need to know that they
are equivalent.

Another example: te:mowa 'to look for'. With a specific object in the
Balsas it is always reduplicated: niktehte:mo:s 'I'll look for it' but
with the meaning of 'sabanear' (to go out looking for animals) it
takes a directional, nonspecific object, and no reduplication:
nontlate:mo:s.

There is also the question of when to give a reflexive a distinct
entry. Thus nimomikti:s 'I will kill myself' could perhaps be listed
under nikmikti:s 'I kill him/her/it.' But what of the cases when there
is a significant semantic gap between the reflexive and nonreflexive,
e.g, nihki:xti:s 'I will remove it' and nimoki:xti:s 'I will have a
child who looks like me' (though also 'I will remove myself (from a
task/cargo/unpleasant situation).'

The question of impersonal passives (or whatever) such as
tlawa:kis 'everything will dry up'; is this to be given a separate
entry from wa:kis?

Finally, there are modismos that are only found with third person
verbs. For example -pan (y)ehko 'to have a bout of craziness'
thus nopan yehko 'at times I get attacks (e.g., of epilepsy, etc.).
Here both the future and non-3rd-person inflections are not used.
Where would these be listed? Under nehkos? under (y)ehkos. But if the
later then you'll be splitting the verb entry and covering up an
important relationship.

Anyway, I think that the problem is quite complex and what at first
glance might appear to be a speaker-centered solution in the long run
might not be.

Jonathan











Quoting "Frye, David" <dfrye at UMICH.EDU>:

> On the other hand, there is no reason why you couldn't list the verbs
> in the same way that most English-English dict's list English verbs,
> i.e. by the standard form (which could very well be the future)
> followed by other relevant forms. E.g. "write (vb), wrote, written,"
> etc. In this case, "temoz (vb), temo" could be one entry, and "temoz
> (vb), temoa" could be another.
>
> david
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Nahua language and culture discussion on behalf of Frances
> Karttunen
> Sent: Tue 2/15/2005 2:59 PM
> To: NAHUAT-L at LISTS.UMN.EDU
> Subject: Re: dictionary verb citations
>
>
>
> > My questions is, why didn't Molina and his successors use this as
> the
> > dictionary headword form?
>
> One reason is that one can form the future from the present by
> regular
> rules, but future forms are ambiguous. Since the final vowel is
> dropped
> from Class 2 and 3 (b and c) verbs in the future, one can
> hypothesize
> more than one possible stem for a verb that ends in iz or oz.
> Leaving
> aside contrastive vowel length for a moment, is temoz from
> invariant
> temo or from temoa?  Is yoliz form yoli or yolia?
>
> Fran
>
>
>


Jonathan D. Amith
Center for Latin American Studies
University of Chicago
5848 S. University Ave.
Kelly Hall, Room 305
Chicago, IL  60637
773/834-9753