Making Dictionaries

Many indigenous American languages face imminent extinction, and the dictionary, often the only written documentation of these languages, stands as a powerful tool in preserving them. These essays, written by leading scholars in Native American language studies, provide a comprehensive picture of the theory and practice of Native American lexicography. The contributors discuss the technical, social, and personal challenges involved with the complex task of creating a dictionary of a Native American language. The book is also the first of its kind to address both standard and new issues surrounding the challenging task of transforming oral languages in general into written dictionaries. Making Dictionaries will be an invaluable source for those involved with all aspects of documenting and understanding endangered languages and for the increasing number of native communities engaged in language reclamation and preservation efforts.

William Frawley is Dean of the Columbian College of Arts and Science at George Washington University, where he is also Professor of Anthropology and Psychology. Prior to that he was Professor and Chair in the Department of Linguistics and Director of Cognitive Science at the University of Delaware, where he was also Faculty Director for Academic Programs and Planning and Director of the University's Office of Undergraduate Studies. His previous books include Vygotsky and Cognitive Science: Language and the Unification of the Social and Computational Mind (1997). Kenneth Hill is Research Associate in the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology and in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. His previous publications include Hopi Dictionary/HoÏikwa Lavytutuveni: A Hopi-English Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect (1998), for which he was editor-in-chief. Pamela Munro is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is coauthor of Chickasaw: An Analytic Dictionary (1994), among other publications.

I. FORM AND MEANING IN THE DICTIONARY
1. Theoretical and Universal Implications of Certain Verbal Entries in Dictionaries of
the Misumalpa Languages
Ken Hale and Danilo Salamanca
2. Morphology in Cherokee Lexicography: The Cherokee-English Dictionary
William Pulte and Durbin Feeling
3. Lexical Fuctions as a Heuristic for Huichol
Joseph E. Grimes
4. Entries for Verbs in American Indian Language Lexicography
Pamela Munro
5. Multiple Assertions, Grammatical Constructions, Lexical Pragmatics, and the Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottowa Dictionary
Richard A. Rhodes

II. ROLE OF THE DICTIONARY IN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES
6. Issues of Standardization and Community in Aboriginal Language Lexicography
Keren Rice and Leslie Saxon
7. A Dictionary for Whom? Tensions between Academic and Nonacademic Functions of Bilingual Dictionaries
Leanne Hinton and William F. Weigel
8. Language Renewal and the Technologies of Literacy and Postliteracy: Reflections from Western Mono
Paul V. Kroskrity

III. TECHNOLOGY AND DICTIONARY DESIGN
9. An Interactive Dictionary and Text Corpus for Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Nahuatl
Una Canger
10. What's in a Word? The Whys and What Fors of a Nahuatl Dictionary
Jonathan D. Amith
11. The Comparative Siouan Dictionary
David S. Rood and John E. Koontz

IV. SPECIFIC PROJECTS AND PERSONAL ACCOUNTS
12. Writing a Nez Perce Dictionary
Haruo Aoki
13. On Publishing the Hopi Dictionary
Kenneth C. Hill
14. Writing a User-Friendly Dictionary
Catherine A. Callaghan
15. The NAPUS (Native American Placenames of the United States) Project: Principles and Problems
William Bright
16. Alonso de Molina as Lexicographer
Mary L. Clayton and R. Joe Campbell

Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index