Abstract
Abstract: It is an established view in lexicography that the most important function of early dictionaries was to provide information on the meaning of words of a particular language. Over the years, tendencies have emerged with modern dictionaries providing detailed linguistic information resulting in more informa-tive dictionaries. This article discusses the presentation of grammatical information, pronunciation, tone marking and usage labels and the structure and content of the back matter in the prospective Advanced Nde-bele Dictionary (henceforth AND), which will be a successor to Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele (2001), the first-ever monolingual dictionary in Ndebele.1 It is therefore the inclusion of this additional information that is exam-ined in this article. The AND is still restricted to the planning stages. The work that has been done on the dictionary has been confined to academic articles about the dictionary's structure and content. The current article is a third instalment on the AND following on Khumalo 2003 and 2007.
Highlights
Monolingual lexicography in Zimbabwe was initiated by the African Languages Lexical Project, known by its acronym as the ALLEX Project
Unlike its forerunner, the AND will provide grammatical information for each lexical item, including phonetic transcription, tone marking and etymology. It is the inclusion of detailed grammatical information, pronunciation, tone marking and usage labels and the structure and content of the back matter in the AND that is critically examined in this article
The AND will present more grammatical information such as tone marking for each headword, which was not provided in the ISN
Summary
Monolingual lexicography in Zimbabwe was initiated by the African Languages Lexical Project, known by its acronym as the ALLEX Project. Work in the ALLEX Project, established in 1992 and institutionalised as the African Languages Research Institute in 2000, has culminated in the publication of two monolingual Shona dictionaries, Duramazwi reChiShona ( DRC) (Chimhundu 1996) and Duramazwi Guru reChiShona ( DGC) (Chimhundu 2001) and a general medium-sized Ndebele monolingual dictionary, Isichazamazwi SesiNdebele ( ISN) (Hadebe 2001) (see Chabata 2007: 281). These dictionaries were completed in phases, with phase one being the pioneer DRC followed by phase two, which saw the production of both the DGC and the ISN. It is the inclusion of detailed grammatical information, pronunciation, tone marking and usage labels and the structure and content of the back matter in the AND that is critically examined in this article
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