Die makrostrukturele vergestalting van affikse en tegnostamme in Afrikaanse vertalende woordeboeke

Abstract

English Title: The macrostructural embodiment of affixes and technostems in Afrikaans translation dictionaries

English Abstract

The history of Afrikaans dictionaries shows that in the past the focus was chiefly on the inclusion of words as lemmas in the macrostructure. Although the Afrikaans lexicon mainly consists of words, there occur two other types of lexical items in the lexicon as well, namely sublexical items (e.g. affixes and stems) and multilexical items (e.g. expressions and idioms).

In this article the inclusion and presentation of sublexical items in Afrikaans translation dictionaries, that is, standard translation desk dictionaries with Afrikaans and English as language pair, are emphasized. The two dictionaries under discussion are Groot Woordeboek/Major Dictionary (MD) and Tweetalige Woordeboek/Bilingual Dictionary (BD) which belong to this category. The discussion encompasses a critical evaluation of the inclusion and presentation of sublexical lemmas according to present-day metalexicographical approaches. The theoretical discussion concentrates throughout on practical lexicography and articles are therefore evaluated according to theoretical principles.

From the investigation of the macrostructural embodiment of sublexical lemmas in BD and MD, it becomes clear that a wider variety of stems than affixes are included in these dictionaries. Where affixes are included, they are treated more scantily than stems. There is also a need for the inclusion of comprehensive instructions for the user in both dictionaries.

Keywords: macrostructure; affixes; technostems; sublexical items; translation dictionary; desk dictionary