Browsing by Author "Lee, Sang Yong"
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- ItemA theoretical model for a dictionary of the endangered Sherpa language(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2017-03) Lee, Sang Yong; Gouws, R. H.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Afrikaans and Dutch.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: According to Ethnologue (2015) every year an average of 6 languages are disappearing from this world, and 1,531 languages among 7,102 are classified as ‘threatened’ or ‘shifting’. These languages are the endangered languages. This is a reason, why linguists need to help to protect the language ‘species’ like the protection directed at other types of categories like wild life, animals, fishes, etc. in order to preserve the species. There are a few ways to preserve the languages, which are under the danger of becoming extinct. Hinton (2001) pointed out that the most important thing to do for the endangered languages is to document the knowledge of the speakers of these languages as thoroughly as possible. Tsunoda (2005) described the theory of the holistic approach as the best way to document one language. As a method of holistic approaches dictionary compiling is a synthetic result of all grammatical analysis, and a great repository of vocabulary items. The purpose of this thesis is to present a model for a dictionary of the endangered Sherpa language as an example of how a dictionary for endangered languages can be planned and compiled. For this purpose, attention is given to the situation of endangered languages in the world, with a focus on the importance of compiling dictionaries to revitalize the languages. The situation of the Sherpa language is explained as a sample case of some problems of documentation. Aspects of lexicography theories, i.e. dictionary typology, the theoretical approach to standard-preserving dictionaries, the general theory of Wiegand, and the function theory are discussed. Data collection is treated but it is shown that before getting involved in data collection, the language study should be done in order to ensure a clear distinction between the different dialects and variants. Two kinds of data collection are then discussed, i.e. data collection by means of a lexicographic corpus and by employing semantic domains. The structures of the envisaged Sherpa Dictionary as a model for the endangered languages are then discussed. The structural description of the Sherpa Dictionary, i.e. the outer texts (front matter and back matter), and the central list with the emphasis on the macro- and microstructure are discussed. In this thesis, I tried to distinguish the method of dictionary compilation for the endangered languages from the method of dictionary compilation for languages that are not under the threat of extinction. This thesis will present guidelines for the envisaged Sherpa Dictionary, and will hopefully also be a model for dictionaries of other endangered languages.