Abstract
This article gives a perspective on Sesotho lexicography and a critical analysis of the macrostructures and microstructures of three selected Sesotho dictionaries. The monolingual paper dictionary Sethantso sa Sesotho , the bilingual paper dictionary Southern Sotho–English Dictionary and the Sesotho online Bukantswe v.3 are evaluated. Their virtues and shortcomings as reference works will be viewed against dictionaries of high lexicographic achievement in order to establish to what extent they fulfil the most basic requirements of macrostructures and microstructures. The inconsistencies addressed in this article reflect the need for Sesotho lexicographers to use corpora in dictionary compilation in order to enhance the quality of entries on both microstructural and macrostructural levels. It will be argued that much more research and description of lexicographic issues is required to bring Sesotho lexicography on a par with its sister languages, Sepedi and Setswana and with good dictionaries for major languages of the world. After decades in existence, currently available Sesotho dictionaries are in dire need for revision and new dictionaries aimed at specific target users should be compiled.
Highlights
Sesotho lexicography receives very little attention in the literature, compared to e.g. its sister languages Sepedi and Setswana
Most modern Sepedi and Setswana dictionaries utilise frequency counts from corpora as an aid to decide on inclusion or omission of lemmas for newly compiled or revised dictionaries
This survey of dictionaries is focused on general dictionaries which according to Nkomo (2010: 372) "... have a very important role to play in the development, acquisition and use of indigenous African languages"
Summary
Sesotho lexicography receives very little attention in the literature, compared to e.g. its sister languages Sepedi and Setswana. For Sepedi, numerous studies have been done on problematic macrostructural and microstructural aspects such as lemma selection, treatment of lemmas and the utilisation of electronic corpora to enhance lexicographic quality. Most modern Sepedi and Setswana dictionaries utilise frequency counts from corpora as an aid to decide on inclusion or omission of lemmas for newly compiled or revised dictionaries. De Schryver and Prinsloo (2000a) give a detailed discussion of the shortcomings in African language dictionaries on the macrostructural level due to inadequate lemma offerings, mostly as a result of including lemmas in the dictionary "as they cross the compiler's mind" rather than by means of a specific selection strategy such as frequency lists from corpora. Benchmarking the quality of these Sesotho dictionaries will be done against dictionaries of high lexicographic achievement on the basis of a number of basic requirements of macrostructures and microstructures
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