The Lemmatization of Copulatives in Northern Sotho *

Abstract

For learners of Northern Sotho as a second or even foreign language, the copulative system is probably the most complicated grammatical system to master. The encoding needs of such learners, i.e. to find enough information in dictionaries in order to actively use copulatives in speech and writing, are poorly served in currently available dictionaries. The aim of this article is to offer solutions to the lemmatization problems regarding copulatives in Northern Sotho and to propose guiding entries for paper and electronic dictionaries which could serve as models for future dictionaries. It will be illustrated that the maximum utilisation of macrostructural and microstructural strategies as well as the mediostructure is called for in order to reach this objective.Prerequisites will be to reconstruct the entire copulative system in a user-friendly way, to abstract the rules governing the use of copulatives and to isolate the appropriate lemmas. The treatment of copulatives in Northern Sotho dictionaries will also be critically evaluated, especially in terms of frequency of use and target users' needs.

Corpus-driven Bantu Lexicography Part 3: Mapping Meaning onto Use in Lusoga

“…The 'lemmatisation of ...'-formula may be found in the numerous corpusbased lexicographic studies for the various word classes and other word sets of Northern Sotho, including: reflexives (Prinsloo 1992), verbs (Prinsloo 1994, Prinsloo and Gouws 1996, de Schryver and Prinsloo 2001, adjectives (Gouws and Prinsloo 1997), nouns de Schryver 1999, Bosch andPrinsloo 2002), days (de Schryver and Lepota 2001), loan words (Nong et al 2002), copulatives (Prinsloo 2002), terms de Schryver 2002, Taljard and, adverbs (Prinsloo 2003), demonstrative copulatives (de Schryver et al 2004), concords and pronouns (Prinsloo and Gouws 2006), and kinship terms (Prinsloo 2012, Bosch 2012, Prinsloo 2014b). The opposite also occurs, namely when a primarily microstructural aspect impacts the macrostructure, again with examples for Northern Sotho: left-expanded microstructures (Gouws and Prinsloo 2005), reversibility (de Schryver 2006), communicative equivalence (Prinsloo 2006), and paradigms (Prinsloo 2014a).…”