Manhart editing

[Jan Ullrich]

What I find unreasonable and uncalled for in the way this thread evolved is
that the discussion of the inaccuracies in earlier documentary linguistic
works is interpreted by some as derogatory. Taking a critical look at the
previous works is fundamental to furthering the research on a language. So I
don't see why critical analyses of their works should be interpreted as
dismissing the merits or questioning the good intentions of the early
lexicographers, most of whom were indeed amateur linguists.

In the introduction to the New Lakota Dictionary I attempted to provide a
fair evaluation of the contribution of the early Dakota and Lakota
dictionaries, discussing both their strong and weak points. I emphasized
that despite their flaws our current research on the language would have
been much more difficult without them.

What I think has actually been much more problematic than the quality of the
early Dakota and Lakota dictionaries is the lack of critical approach to
them. Too often have they been described and used as authoritative and
definitive works. I think they should be viewed as a valuable but still
preliminary work in progress.

Many of the problems with Dakota/Lakota lexicography began with the Dakota
translation of the Bible. A significant proportion of this translation has
morphological and syntactical constructions that are not attested by data
from the authentic texts (early or modern). It is hard to judge whether this
was caused by poor translation skills or low Dakota language competence of
the bilingual French and Dakota speaking mixed-blood Michael Renville who
was the main assistant to Riggs and the Pond brothers during the
translation. But what cannot be doubted is that the Riggs dictionary was
largely based on this problematic text. And there is plenty of evidence that
Buechel used the Riggs Dakota dictionary as his primary source for his
Lakota dictionary manuscript (especially in his early years in South Dakota)
and borrowed heavily from it. Approximately 70% of the Buechel entries were
taken directly from Riggs and more than half of these were never extended
nor altered in any way. A large number of these entries was rejected by
Deloria or by other native speakers during later research, as not being
Lakota words at all. It is clear, therefore, that these entries were never
checked with native speakers or attested from texts before the dictionary
was first published in 1973. This is one of the reasons I question the
decision by Univ. of Nebraska to publish the second edition without any
research. Ultimately this means that errors introduced by unidiomatic Bible
translation originating in 1840s as (well as other types of inaccuracies)
represent a large portion of a book published 152 years later (in 2002) and
described by the press as "The most complete and up-to-date Lakota
dictionary." 

Manhart's editing further deepened many of the problems with the Buechel
manuscript and brought new ones, still it was good to have the first edition
available. But I find it difficult to see any improvements in the second
edition. The inconsistencies in spelling and orthography use are
exacerbated, translations of the example sentences are mostly incorrect, the
chosen type face is hard to read, omissions of words were not fixed, no
attempt to involve native speakers was made etc. Reprinting the first
edition would have probably done a better service to the researchers on the
language.

If anyone is interested in reading more of my "two cents" on the early
dictionaries please see the introduction to the New Lakota Dictionary. In it
I categorize some of the inaccuracies of the early works, but among other
things I also say the following:

"Manhart's contribution in making Buechel's manuscript available to the
public cannot be dismissed, even if most of his editorial decisions were
controversial. The Buechel dictionary remains a valuable resource, one that
has to be taken into account by any lexicographer who is ready to approach
it critically."

Jan