Re: Dictionaries of agglutinating languages

> > It would make the dictionary easier to use:
> > pick out the root, and the meaning of the derived term is right there,
> > mit definition.
>
> Yes. But it does require the user to be aware of the derivational
> history of a word--something which won't always be true. Last year on
> an exam I asked students to parse complex words into their component
> morphs. One of the words was 'actively'. I was very surprised to see
> how many students did not see the root 'act' in the word. They did
> find 'active', but 'act' was, for all intents and purposes, invisible
> to them. Just because a linguist is able to demonstrate a particular
> morphological structure, it doesn't mean that linguistically innocent
> speakers will see the same structure. So organizing a dictionary
> according to roots will have problems.
Yes, but remember that this is supposed to be for an *agglutinative*
language, not English.  English derivational morphology is heavily
influenced by Latin and many, many roots which are historically analyzable
and obvious to linguists are no longer seen as roots by a native
speaker.  The example you gave makes it seem that your students no longer
think of 'act' as the root of 'active', probably because -ive is only
productive in the scientific vocabulary, and the word 'active' is not seen
as scientific.  In an agglutinating lang, on the other hand, the root
relationships are generally much more obvious and regularly occuring, and
any L1 speaker or competent L2 speaker should be able to recognize them.

>
> > With the idea I proposed, it takes a little more work:
> > find the root in the dictionary, get it's definition, go to a table in
> > the back, find every affix used, and figure out how the combine to give
> > the derived work it's meaning. That would be quite a laborious task.
>
> But not always accurate. A favorite example I give to my students when
> the subject of derivation comes up is the suffix -hood in English. It
> attaches to nouns to create abstract nouns meaning something like 'the
> property of being an X'. Thus, father -> fatherhood; knight ->
> knighthood, etc. However, it won't work with all nouns: candle ->
> *candlehood (although one could imagine what that might mean). And
> there are nouns which don't conform to the "regular" pattern: neighbor
> -> neighborhood (does *not* mean 'property of being a neighbor'). So
> confining all of the derivational affixes to an appendix and relying
> on the user to piece things together will fail to capture these kinds
> of irregularities--especially if the user is an L2 learner.
>
> > Basically, the same amount of work has to be done, but using my idea
> > it's up to the reader to do most of the work, and with your idea, Dirk,
> > it's up to the person writing the dictionary to do most of the work. I
> > could see either working.
>
> Suppose that the language community numbered 1000. Now, one person
> could spend a great deal of time and energy creating a dictionary
> which "spoon-fed" derivation in a manner similar to what I have
> suggested, enabling the 1000 users to find words quickly and
> efficiently. Or we could have the lexicographer spend not quite as
> much time and energy (though still a lot) and simply provide the users
> with an appendix of derivational affixes. Then 1000 people would have
> to spend a lot of time and energy *every time* they wanted to look up
> a word. I don't think that it would pay off in the long run to
> organize the dictionary that way.
>
> I do think that having the affixes in an appendix is a great idea. But
> having derivational information *only* in such an appendix would
> create many problems that could be avoided.
I agree with you, but the Yivrindil dictionary will nonetheless *only*
define roots and derived forms whose meanings have drifted
unpredictably.  Other derivatives will be listed but not separately
defined, as the user should be able to arrive at their meaning using the
appendix of affixes.  Any other solution requires far too much redundancy
and is really unnecessary.


> Gee, I really sound invested in this idea, don't I? I'm really not.
> But it is fun to think about.
>
> Dirk
>
> --
> Dirk Elzinga
> dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu
>
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
"All for the sake of paradise, the tyrants of our generation stacked
bodies higher than Nimrod stacked bricks, yet they came no nearer heaven
than he did."  --J. Budziszevsky