The "Dictionnaire français–yipounou/ yipounou–français" of the Église Évangélique du Sud-Gabon (CMA) 1966*

Abstract

The promotion and development of a language involves a wide usage of dictionaries and reference works. The native languages of Gabon are no exception. Although lexicography is still a young discipline in the Gabonese domain, remarkable works have been produced by nonlexicographers. They have therefore left a considerable amount of data available for the development of modern lexicography in Gabon. The different lexicons and dictionaries compiled during this time offer an important treatment of the Gabonese languages. Or, seen from another angle, everything should be done, considering the state of these works, to revise them. For some of the Gabonese languages like Yipunu, Fan and Myene, lexicons, dictionaries, grammars and even encyclopedias already exist. However, several questions remain pending: Why are these dictionaries
not used? Is it possible for the non-native speaker to learn the language by means of a dictionary? Is it possible for the native speaker to have quick and easy access to the wanted information? This article therefore have as main aim to give tentative answers to these questions by examining the Dictionnaire français yipounou/yipounou–français of the CMA.

Keywords: access structure, back matter, bilingual dictionary, central list, corpus, dictionary, front matter, homonyms, homographs, inclusion policy, lexicographic treatment, lexicography, macrostructure, microstructure, polysemous senses, target users, reversibility, revision, sources, translation dictionary, translation equivalent