Re: Dictionaries of agglutinating languages

>Adrian Morgan wrote:
>>
>> Robert Hailman wrote:
>>
>> > I haven't seen any dictionaries of any languages of a similar nature to
>> > yours, but my idea is to only put in words the meaning of which can't
be
>> > derived easily by the root & the affixes; or perhaps you could only
>> > include the words using uncommon affixes.
>>
>> Well, quite. The problem is in defining 'derived easily' and 'common'.
>> These qualities /can't/ be defined except as one end of a very fuzzy
>> and subjective continuum -- but to compile a dictionary I have to be
>> definitive.
>
>Very true. Another idea: Provided all these affixes are regular in how
>they alter the meaning of the root, just put the root words in the
>dictionary, and have an appendix at the end with a table of all the
>affixes.>
This last would be my approach.  I'm not familiar with how Turkish
dictionaries are organized, but Indonesian, while not agglutinative, has
very consistent, transparent (and limited) derivational morphology.  So you
will have the head word XXXX:  followed by its various derivs., as well as
compounds, idioms etc.     There has to be occasional cross-referencing,
since some few forms might derive ambiguously-- e.g. (*) /peNatak/ could be
< peN+katak, peN+atak or even pe(N)+Natak. (Base-initial /N/ is quite rare,
and often the result of "wrong division".)   The dictionary I use has no
separate list of affixes (though that might be a good idea).

ObConlang:  The Kash dictionary is organized along similar lines.