The lexicographic treatment of quantitative pronouns in Zulu

In Zulu, there are three kinds of quantitatives: inclusive, exclusive and numeral. For the lemmatization of these, even existing traditional dictionaries felt the need to move away from a pure 'stem' approach towards a 'word' approach. In a new Zulu-English dictionary project, this is not only confirmed, but is taken one step further with particular attention to the microstructure

Revolutionizing bantu lexicography: a Zulu case study

Zulu uses a conjunctive writing system, that is, a system whereby relatively short linguistic words are joined together to form long orthographic words with complex morphological structures. This has led to the so-called 'stem tradition in dictionary making for Zulu, as well as for most other Bantu languages. Given this lemmatization approach has been found to be inadequate for young learners (who fail to isolate stems), the development of a new approach was imperative for them, but until recently deemed impossible to implement. In this paper it is argued that it is now perfectly possible to reverse the unproductive trend, and to opt for the lemmatization of full words for all but one of the word classes in Bantu. This revolution is made possible thanks to the recent availability of relatively large corpora, with which the really frequent citation options may be pinpointed. Rather than a mission statement, this paper offers the result for all word classes. To do so, an actual guide to the use of a Zulu dictionary is re-represented and annotated

Lexikos at eighteen: an analysis

At eighteen, Lexikos became a major player in the field of linguistics, by being awarded an Impact Factor. This article presents a double analysis of the foundation that led to this success. On the one hand a thorough statistical study is undertaken with regard to all contributors and their contributions to Lexikos. To this end a metadata database was designed, with the aim to answer the question: 'Who publishes what type of material from where and when?' On the other hand a content analysis is carried out which focuses on the actual topics (i.e. 'keywords') in Lexikos. To this end an all-inclusive text corpus containing all the Lexikos material was built, with the aim to answer the question: 'What are the major trends in Lexikos?

An analysis of The Oxford Guide to practical lexicography (Atkins and Rundell 2008)

Since at least a decade ago, the lexicographic community at large has been demanding that a modern textbook be designed - one that Would place corpora in the centre of the lexicographic enterprise. Written by two of the most respected practising lexicographers, this book has finally arrived, and delivers on very many levels. This review article presents a critical analysis of its features

A new way to lemmatize adjectives in a user-friendly Zulu-English dictionary

Traditionally, Zulu adjectives have been lemmatized under their stems only. In this research article, art in-depth analysis is undertaken to make a case for the lemmatization of all frequent adjectival forms with their adjective concords rather. It is shown that the supposed explosion in size of the dictionary may be contained within a corpus-driven Sinclairian framework. The advantages of such a word-like treatment far outnumber the generalizations that have hitherto characterized the lexicographic treatment of adjectives in Zulu. The Study is supported by ample dictionary extracts from a Zulu-English dictionary project aimed at junior users. Comparisons with existing dictionaries and textbook data are also made

An analysis of practical lexicography: a reader (Ed. Fontenelle 2008)

Intended as a companion volume to The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography (Atkins and Rundell 2008), Fontenelle's book aims to bring together the most relevant papers in practical lexicography. This review article presents a critical analysis of the success thereof, both in quantitative and qualitative terms