The lexicographic treatment of days in sepedi, or when mother- tongue intuition fails

Abstract

Since May 2001 the Sepedi National Lexicography Unit officially started the actual dictionary-writing of a pioneering Explanatory Sepedi Dictionary (PyaSsaL). The compilation is undertaken within the theoretical framework of Simultaneous Feedback, is fully corpus-based, and follows an onomasiological approach to the Sepedi lexicon. In this article the various compilation aspects are examined and illustrated by means of one onomasiological sub-field, namely the days of the week. It is shown how a balanced combination of mother-tongue intuition, data from existing (bilingual) dictionaries, fieldwork results, corpus queries, and grammarians' conjectures can and should lead to a sound lexicographic treatment.

Keywords: sepedi national lexicography unit (nlu), simultaneous feedback (sf), pretoria sepedi corpus (psc), onomasiological approach, days of the week, mother-tongue intuition, fieldwork, questionnaires, interviews, grammarians' conjectures, noun classes, repetitive inserted texts