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Accepted Paper:

Folklore in a Caribbean English Creole dictionary: inclusion and extraction  
Lise Winer (McGill University)

Paper short abstract:

The Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago includes “folk culture” by lemmatization (especially phrases) and rich citation. The paper addresses types, sources and limitations of data. Extraction strategies are also addressed.

Paper long abstract:

The Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad & Tobago (Winer, 2009) is the first historical scholarly dictionary of the vernacular and local standard language of this twin-island Caribbean nation. It contains about 12,200 entries, including 2500 for flora and 2200 for fauna.

Because of the relative scarcity and inaccessibility of sources of cultural and linguistic information on Trinidad and Tobago, an early decision was to make the dictionary tend towards an encyclopedia rather than a glossary. A deliberate effort was made to include as much "cultural content" as possible, such as customs and areas which do not easily limit themselves to single lexical items. Consideration was also given to often negative attitudes surrounding the vernacular language.

This paper discusses first the process of inclusiveness. A conscious decision was made to try to include as much "folk knowledge and culture" as possible, in two ways: first, by lemmatization - especially phrases (proverbs) - and second by citation. The paper addresses types of folklore data included, types of sources and limitations of data, focusing on entries in the letter M.

The second process addressed is extraction. What retrieval keywords and strategies can folklore-seeking users of the DECTT use to locate relevant entries and citation information? Must this wait until the digitalization of the work? Are there keywords in the definition(revision?) process that could help rationalize and streamline this process?

Panel P07
Laography and lexicography, or finding folklore in the dictionaries
  Session 1