Seminar Series: Abstract

11.00am
June 05 2009
Seminar Room C

On the treatment of plant and animal names in bilingual dictionaries: Lessons from Oceania
Andy Pawley (Linguistics, RSPAS)

It is an inconvenient truth that gathering and processing data to make a fairly comprehensive general dictionary of a language from scratch is a huge undertaking, many times larger than that doing a grammar – it is an enterprise akin to making a first encyclopaedia of a little known world. But such a work will be a treasure for future generations. Funding bodies committed to documenting endangered languages thus face a dilemma: they cannot afford to fund large dictionary-making projects but in terms of long term value they cannot afford not to. What does it take to make a good first dictionary? I will reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of dictionaries of languages belonging to the large Oceanic branch of Austronesian in their treatment of terms for plants and animals, and on lessons to be learnt from this exercise. Finally I will return to the question of how long-term projects to make large, high quality dictionaries of endangered languages can be funded. Must these be left to dedicated missionaries and senior scholars who have tenured posts and can afford to spend part of their time year after year chipping away at a dictionary?