The Monolingual Lusoga Dictionary Faced with Demands from a New User Category

Abstract

Abstract:In this article, a case is presented of an existing dictionary that is aimed at users with a minimum of primary 7 education, now faced with demands from users in primary 1-3. The reason for this demand is the result of the fact that Lusoga is currently being implemented as a medium of instruction in Uganda, in an environment where there is hardly any literature to serve the intended purpose. A review of the existing literature in and on Lusoga shows that the monolingual Lusoga dictionary -Eiwanika ly'Olusoga (WSG) -is the only reference work with essential information, in Lusoga, that can initiate the teaching of Lusoga at the elementary level. Although the information in the WSG may fit the purpose at hand, that information is mainly presented as a summary, with statements of conclusions only. Explanations to ease its access to the new user are thus missing. Findings from a pilot study conducted by the National Curriculum Development

Corpus-driven Bantu Lexicography Part 3: Mapping Meaning onto Use in Lusoga

“…The team at the University of Pretoria has since furthered the field of BCL, as may be seen in studies on Northern Sotho (Taljard 2006, de Schryver and Taljard 2007, Taljard 2012, Taljard and de Schryver 2016. Meanwhile at BantUGent (i.e., the UGent Centre for Bantu Studies), an increasing number of research articles includes aspects of BCL, as seen in studies on Lusoga (de Schryver and Nabirye 2010, Nabirye and de Schryver 2011, Nabirye 2016), on Cilubà (De Kind and Bostoen 2012, Dom et al 2015, on Kirundi (Bostoen et al 2012, Mberamihigo 2014, Lafkioui et al 2016, Mberamihigo et al 2016, Nshemezimana 2016, Devos et al 2017, Misago 2018), on Swahili (Devos and de Schryver 2013), on Kikongo (De Kind et al 2013, Bostoen and de Schryver 2015, De Kind et al 2015, and on Luganda (Kawalya et al 2014, Kawalya 2017, Kawalya et al 2018. Not all of these studies are truly corpusbased, let alone corpus-driven, as some of them are closer to being 'corpusillustrated' (Tummers et al 2005) or even tend to use their corpora as fish ponds:…”

“…For reasons of space, and given that we also need to translate our material, we will limit our current analysis for Lusoga to just one verb. For an idea of the issues involved in undertaking a study of the Lusoga noun using a corpus, see de Schryver and Nabirye (2010), which contains a section on the semantic import of the noun in Lusoga. The Lusoga verb chosen for the present case study is the motion verb -v-.…”

“…Any comparison between a manual effort and a corpus-driven one is always unfair, as the corpus tends to 'win'. In doing so, one often forgets about the heroic efforts that went into the manual effort in the first place (Nabirye 2008, 2009a, Nabirye and de Schryver 2010, 2011. The following, therefore, is only for illustrative purposes.…”

From Corpus to Dictionary: A Hybrid Prescriptive, Descriptive and Proscriptive Undertaking

“…The most crucial requirements for the successful implementation of this policy are the training of mother-tongue educators and the production of reference works for the target audience. Nabirye and De Schryver (2010) identified two target audiences for Lusoga: the primary-school teachers and their pupils. For these two audiences, Lusoga is supposed to be used both as the medium of instruction and as a subject in primary 1-3, but only as a subject in primary 4-7.…”

Lusoga (Lutenga)

“…Lusoga only featured for the first time in the Ugandan language policy in 2005 (NCDC 2006: 5). Despite its role as a medium of instruction in primary education since 2005, Lusoga is still an oral language and remains largely undocumented (Nabirye & De Schryver 2010: 327–328).…”