Abstract
Negation in Sepedi is a complex matter — a variety of negative morphemes are used across complicated verbal and copulative structures and these morphemes are not interchangeable. Dictionary users in a text production situation need to be guided to the correct compilation of negative constructions. In most cases negative morphemes are not lemmatised in Sepedi paper dictionaries or if they are, the lexicographic treatment is inadequate. This paper provides an inventory of negation from which an abstraction of the negative morphemes is given. This is followed by a critical evaluation of Sepedi dictionaries and suggested model entries for lexicographic treatment of negative morphemes.
Highlights
For negation in isiZulu, Bosch and Faaβ (2018: 1) state that "as an important instrument of language use, one would expect aspects of negation to be dealt with in dictionaries"
Prinsloo and Gouws (1996) attempted to reduce the negation strategies into a single socalled ga/sa/se convention. This convention has since been implemented in several dictionaries, e.g. Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary (ONSD) and Popular Northern Sotho Dictionary (POP)
The negation rules indicated in tables 1 to 3 are intended for a step-by-step build-up of the negative morphemes which will be regarded as lemma candidates
Summary
For negation in isiZulu, Bosch and Faaβ (2018: 1) state that "as an important instrument of language use, one would expect aspects of negation to be dealt with in dictionaries". Traditional dictionaries reflect a strong word-bias, not focusing on items smaller than words such as morphemes, or multiword items, literally taking the alternative term for lemma, i.e. headword as the norm This issue, falls beyond the scope of this article, cf Gouws (1989) and Gouws and Prinsloo (2005) for a detailed discussion. The aims of this article are to (a) give an overview of negation in Sepedi, presented as example driven rules, (b) extract the negation rules, (c) determine the frequency of use of negative morphemes in a Sepedi corpus, (d) critically evaluate the treatment of negation in Sepedi dictionaries and (e) compile model entries for Sepedi paper dictionaries These model entries will firstly incorporate all the negative morphemes that have to be lemmatised and secondly, give a detailed scope of all the types of information and lexicographic conventions that have to be considered in the treatment of these lemmas
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