News Lexicographical
21/July/2017
Since March (should have been the beginning of the year but I had a health problem and the final tweaking of the Mampruli took more time than it should (file too big for my installation) I have been working on the Kusaal (Agole) dictionary. A change of orthography means there is a lot of work to adapt previous versions and some of the input texts. On the other hand the whole Bible has been published, so there is an abundance of exemplary material carefully checked for updated spelling.
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23/May/2020
So, that's the way it goes! I had hoped to complete the Kusaal in 2 years, but in fact it has been over 3. I am now on the very last stages of outputting formatted versions. The Kusaal Development Project have received four versions with only correct spellings in the new orthography - a simple wordlist and three dictionaries, Basic, Mega and Maxi- with increasingly more fields in each entry. I am just finalising the fullest version including historical and idiosyncratic spelling found in the texts of the corpus on which we have drawn for examples. This will be made available through this site.
Along the way, while waiting for co-compiler Michael Awimbilla to be able to catch up wich checking entries, I have made a version of the Burkina Faso Kusaal (Toende) dictionary of Urs Niggli to match the style of my dictionaries and with thesaurus keys so that it can be integrated with the Comparative dictionary- both co-languages will be on the Kusaal page which at the moment is just a dummy. Also made a bit of progress with my similar working-up of Geoffey Hunt's Hanga (I've been working on that longer and it has rather more of my work in it.
I have decided that as I am 81 and the northern/western Western Oti/Volta languages present more difficulties, I will go ahead and prepare a comparative dictionary of just the southern/eastern languages to start with.
2024
Peter Oatley of the Webonary team has come on board as co-curator of this website, assisting in the final stages of completion of the Comparative Dictionary and assuring ongoing maintenance of this website when I am no longer available or able to manage it.
After various delays during which I was able to make a version of the Birifor Dictionary to post here I finally reached the stage projected at the end of the previous post by August of this year.
29 Jan. 2025
The last tidyings and insertions of links in the Semantic version were completed before the end of January and the version published to this site here / ici on Tuesday 28th.
This project will no longer be my top priority for use of time, but I will aim to check and adjust any loose ends over the coming months. The main thing I would really like to do is to get to the Bodleian Library for a few sessions with Mukarovsky's 'Study of Western Nigritic' to collate any of his reconstructed forms into entries in our dictionary etymologies where relevant.