Challenges in endangered language lexicography

International audienceWhen it comes to endangered minority languages, lexicography is faced with specific limits and challenges. Based on our field lexicography experience and on the writing of a Palikur (Arawakan, French Guyana) dictionary, this paper aims to present some of the shortcomings of dictionary production, and what should and could be done to address the specific challenges which have to be met. First of all, we shall discuss several frequent limits (of) small language dictionaries, namely: i) the absence/scarcity of available corpora; ii) the use of an onomasiological approach for word collection, through a kind of enlarged Swadesh list methodology; iii) the consequent reduction of dictionaries to mere lexical lists; iv) the consequent risk of minoring the lexical specificities of a language by using pre-determinate lists of things or notions to be named. Secondly, we shall advocate for an approach to field lexicography centred on the collection of the most rapidly vanishing parts of the vocabulary, and insist on the strategies which can be used in order to do so, defending the necessity to overcome the lexicographer’s absence of expertise in many fields of knowledge by promoting multidisciplinary field work. This issue will be illustrated by the example of the “biolexicon” (plants, insects, etc.) in Palikur. Finally, we shall tackle word translation issues, and the risk to produce either hyperonymic lexicographical descriptions or precise (but unusable for the reader) equivalents. We shall show how these constraints should lead to a semi-encyclopaedic lexicographical approach

A la frontière entre morphologie et sémantique, les suffixes classificateurs en palikur

En s’appuyant sur des données récemment recueillies sur le terrain, cet article discute le système de classificateurs du palikur, langue arawak parlée en Guyane française afin de montrer de quelle manière le fonctionnement de ces morphèmes les place à l’interface entre morphologie et sémantique. Il propose également une réflexion sur le rôle des classificateurs en général et une analyse sémantique des classificateurs palikur qui dépasse les caractérisations existantes, exclusivement géométriques.Dwelling upon recent field data from Palikur, an Arawakan language spoken in French Guyana, this article analyses the complex classifier system of this language in order to show how these morphemes can be placed on the interface morphology and semantics. It also discusses the role of classifiers in general and provides a semantic analysis of Palikur classifiers which goes beyond the existing descriptions, all of them based on geometrical characterizations

Stratégies de dénomination et de désignation des couleurs en palikur

International audienceDwelling on lexicographical research and specific surveys, this study presents the strategies used for expressing colour in Palikur, an Arawakan language spoken in French Guyana and Brazil. It includes a presentation of the protocol used in the surveys, followed by a description of the resulting colour terms and of the role held by colour in denominative and descriptive strategies. Data analysis corroborates previous findings regarding the small number of colour names per se, but it also allows identifying other strategies (morphological, syntactic and semantic) used for describing coloured objects and discussing their underlying semantic mechanisms, as well as the characteristics of the elements used as a referential basis in metonymies employed for designating colours, and the universal nature of these mechanisms

Les erreurs dans la traduction automatique du genre dans les couples français-anglais et anglais-français : typologie, causes linguistiques et solutions

International audienceEn s’appuyant sur les notions de classes de comportement, de marquage et d’indices morphosyntaxiques, cet article montre d’une part que l’on peut prédire en amont, au niveau lexical et pour chaque unité linguistique, le type de problème qui peut surgir lors de la traduction (automatique ou non) du genre dans les couples français-anglais/anglais-français, et d’autre part qu’il est possible de trouver des solutions systématiques et automatisables pour chaque type de problème. Le modèle proposé pour ces deux langues peut être étendu à d’autres langues ou couples de langues mais aussi à d’autres catégories linguistiques, et peut en cela contribuer à l’amélioration du fonctionnement des traducteurs automatiques

Dire la couleur en palikur : des techniques d’élicitation aux stratégies de désignation et aux processus de catégorisation

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Une langue amérindienne entre la Guyane et le Brésil et entre oralité et écriture: le Palikur (ou Parikwaki)

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Analyse contrastive des indices morphosyntaxiques nominaux de genre et de nombre en vue d'une approche typologique de la traduction automatique - Applications sur le français, l'anglais et le roumain

Le développement de la traduction automatique implique non seulement des documents plus variés, mais aussi de plus en plus de langues. Or, le nombre croissant de langues suppose une plus grande diversité linguistique à traiter et donc une augmentation significative des difficultées de traduction. Dans cette thèse, les problèmes de traduction sont appréhendées a priori en fonction des différences entre langues. En partant de l'idée que toutes les différences interlinguistiques ne sont pas problématiques pour la traduction, le critère de sélection retenu est la notion de marquage (redéfinie en fonction des exigences de la traduction automatique - TA) associée à celle de classes de comportement. L'objet de l'étude a été restreint au genre et au nombre et à trois langues : français, anglais et roumain. Le modèle proposé, inspiré par la morphologie contrastive et la typologie, vise à repérer les types de difficultés qui peuvent apparaître, pour un couple de langues donné, dans la traduction automatique du genre et du nombre. Le repérage de ces difficultés reposera sur l'assignation de chaque nom à une classe de comportement dans chaque langue, associée à l'étude des interactions des différentes classes de comportement. Cette démarche permet la réalisation d'un "cahier des charges" pour la TA, impliquant deux démarches complémentaires : identification des questions principales que le linguiste doit se poser lorsqu'il traite une question dans une approche de type TA et inventaire des problèmes concrets qui peuvent apparaître une fois obtenues les réponses, inventaire corroboré par des requêtes soumises à des logiciels de traduction.The evolution of Machine Translation involves not only a greater variety of documents but also an increasing number of languages, entailing a bigger linguistic diversity and thus a significant rise of translation difficulties. In this thesis, translation problems are considered a priori, mainly as a result of interlinguistic differences. Having taken as a starting point the idea that not all interlinguistic differences are problematic in translation, we have retained as the basic criterion for distinguishing them the notions of marking (redefined according to MT standards) and behavioural classes. The object of this study has been restricted to two linguistic categories : gender and number, and three languages : French, English and Romanian. The model we propose, inspired by contrastive morphology and typology, aims at identifying the types of MT difficulties that can appear, for a given language couple, when translating gender and number. This identification will be based on assigning each noun to a behavioural class in each language, and on studying behavioural classes'interactions. The approach will eventually permit the creation of MT difficulties that can appear, for a given language couple, when translating gender and number. This idenfication will be based on assigning each noun to a behavioural class in each language, and on studying behavioural classes' interactions. The approach will eventually permit the creation of MT specifications involving two complementary procedures : identification of the main questions a linguist has to answer when dealing with a specific MT issue and a complete inventory of the problems that may appear once the answers are found, an inventory corroborated by requests treated by a MT system.ORLEANS-BU Lettres (452342103) / SudocSudocFranceF

L’intraduisibilité dans la traduction terminologique– un point de vue culturel

International audienceThe article tackles the untranslatability of perfumery French terms into Chineseand discusses the cultural explanatory factors that influence it. The first part isdevoted to the theoretical presentation, which first defines culture as all that iscreated and known materially and spiritually, that it is the identity of a socialgroup which differs from others. Translation is defined as a reformulation of themessage in the target culture, and the essence of translating a term consists indetermining its equivalent in the target language. The relation between the sourceterm in the source language and the target term in the target language istheoretically an equivalence. However, terms are designations of concepts, andthe creation of terms is a process of linguistic materialization of concepts. Sincethis process of linguistic materialization is cognitive and is strongly influenced bycultural practice and context, it is possible that the equivalence relation betweenthe source term and the target term is not always absolute. It is possible that theso-called "equivalence" is just a partial equivalence or a functional equivalence.To justify the theoretical deduction, a terminology database in perfumery has beencreated, in which a certain number of French-Chinese terms in perfumery arecollected. These terms constitute the object of analysis. The second part thereforespecifies the inventory of French-Chinese terminological work in the field ofperfumery, the parallel corpus in which the identification of bilingual terms iscarried out, the principles to follow when identifying bilingual terms, the methodused to construct the terminological database and to demonstrate the terms, andthe method used to analyse the terms in the database. Then the third part isdevoted to an observation of non-equivalences between French and Chineseterms. The non-equivalences are at the categorical and conceptual level. Thismeans that the concepts designated by the French terms and the conceptsdesignated by the Chinese terms are not mutually concordant. The non-equivalences are also found at the semantic level, which means that the Frenchterms and their corresponding Chinese terms are semantically divergent.Examples cited from the terminological database testify first to the existence ofcategorial and conceptual non-equivalence, then to the absence of total semanticequivalence in the translation of terms. These non-equivalences are the directcauses of failures in the translation of terms, in other words, the direct cause ofterminological untranslatability. A final discussion asserts that the indirect causesof the terminological untranslatability are found in cultural divergences. Moreprecisely, the untranslatability is related to the practice of the field of perfumeryand to the situation of terminological standardization in both countries. Thedifferent development in practice and in terminological work in perfumerybetween France and China leads to an unbalanced terminological developmentbetween the two languages, which manifests itself in the untranslatability of terms.The non-equivalences are also explained by the lack of terminologicalstandardization in perfumery and the complexity in the perfumery market.Countless perfumed products, constant innovation of perfume notes, advertisingstrategies to increase turnover, etc., all this complexity is reflected in the linguisticdescription of products, including in terms. Finally, the conclusion opens aresearch perspective on terminological standardization in perfumery as well as on the translation approaches of translators faced with the untranslatability of terms.L’article observe l’intraduisibilité dans la traduction terminologique franco-chinoise en parfumerie et en discute les facteurs culturels explicatifs. Unepremière partie est consacrée à l’exposé théorique, qui définit la traductioncomme une reformulation de message dans la culture cible, et affirme quel’essentiel de la traduction d’un terme consiste à déterminer son équivalent dansla langue cible. Mais vu que la matérialisation linguistique de concept est unprocessus cognitif fortement influencé par le contexte culturel, la relationd’équivalence entre le terme source et le terme cible ne pourrait pas être toujoursabsolue. Une base de données terminologiques franco-chinoise en parfumerie estélaborée pour justifier l’appareil théorique. La deuxième partie précise donc l’étatdes lieux du travail terminologique franco-chinois en parfumerie, le corpusparallèle dans lequel s’effectue le repérage des termes bilingues, et la méthodeemployée pour analyser les termes dans la base de données. La troisième partiemontre des exemples qui témoignent d’abord de l’existence d’une non-équivalencecatégorielle et conceptuelle puis de l’absence d’équivalence sémantique totaledans la traduction des termes, causes directes de l’intraduisibilité terminologique.Une discussion finale permet d’affirmer que les causes indirectes del’intraduisibilité se trouvent dans le contexte culturel. Précisément,l’intraduisibilité est très relative à la situation de normalisation terminologique età la complexité sur le marché de parfumerie. La conclusion ouvre une perspectivede recherche sur l’aménagement terminologique en parfumerie aussi sur lesapproches traductives des traducteurs face à l’intraduisibilité des termes

From Semantics to Culture (and Ethno-cognition): Naming Birds In Two Amerindian Languages from French Guyana

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Palikur traditional roundwood construction in eastern French Guiana: ethnobotanical and cultural perspectives

Abstract Background Palikur Amerindians live in the eastern part of French Guiana which is undergoing deep-seated changes due to the geographical and economic opening of the region. So far, Palikur’s traditional ecological knowledge is poorly documented, apart from medicinal plants. The aim of this study was to document ethnobotanical practices related to traditional construction in the region. Methods A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was used. Thirty-nine Palikur men were interviewed in three localities (Saint-Georges de l’Oyapock, Regina and Trois-Palétuviers) between December 2013 and July 2014. Twenty-four inventories of wood species used in traditional buildings were conducted in the villages, as well as ethnobotanical walks in the neighboring forests, to complete data about usable species and to determine Linnaean names. Results After an ethnographic description of roundwood Palikur habitat, the in situ wood selection process of Palikur is precisely described. A total of 960 roundwood pieces were inventoried in situ according to Palikur taxonomy, of which 860 were beams and rafters, and 100 posts in 20 permanent and 4 temporary buildings. Twenty-seven folk species were identified. Sixty-three folk species used in construction were recorded during ethnobotanical walks. They correspond to 263 botanical species belonging to 25 families. Posts in permanent buildings were made of yawu (Minquartia guianensis) (51%) and wakap (Vouacapoua americana) (14%). Beams and rafters were made of wood from Annonaceae (79%) and Lecythidaceae (13%) families. The most frequently used species were kuukumwi priye (Oxandra asbeckii), kuukumwi seyne (Pseudoxandra cuspidata), and pukuu (Xylopia nitida and X. cayennensis). Conclusions Although the Palikur’s relationship with their habitat is undergoing significant changes, knowledge about construction wood is still very much alive in the Oyapock basin. Many people continue to construct traditional buildings alongside modern houses, using a wide array of species described here for the first time, along with the techniques used