A Critical Evaluation of the Paradigm Approach in Sepedi Lemmatisation — The Groot Noord-Sotho Woordeboek as a Case in Point

Abstract

This article gives a critical evaluation of the paradigm approach of the Groot Noord-Sotho Woordeboek to the lemmatisation of verbs and nouns derived from verbs. The verb stem  roba 'break' with its complicated system of derivations will be taken as a case in point. The paradigm presented for -roba will be evaluated in terms of structure, occurrence in Sepedi corpora and dictionaries, actual use by mother-tongue speakers, user-friendliness, contextualisation versus decontextualisation in relation to the cross-referencing system and space utilisation. Bringing together, and lexicographically treating all these forms for a single verb surely is a lexicographic achievement. The question, however, is to what extent such an approach is useful in respect of forms likely to be looked up by dictionary users, whether all of these forms actually exist, how user-friendly the approach and presentation is, if comment on semantics is sufficient and consistent and whether such a lumping approach actually saves space in contrast to entering derivations as main lemmas in a splitting approach.