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On the Most Innovative Outer Access Structure of any Bantu Dictionary: The Lexique kikongo–français by Charles Polis (1938)

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Gilles-Maurice de Schryver at Ghent University
Gilles-Maurice de Schryver
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In this article a little-known dictionary manuscript from the 1930s, the Lexique kikongo-français by the Jesuit missionary Charles Polis, is analysed in great detail. Section 1 expounds on the goal and raison d'être of the study, Section 2 introduces the manuscript, its author as well as the Kikongo variety dealt with, Section 3 presents the inner workings of the Lexique on macro-, micro-and mediostructural levels, Section 4 gives a lexicographical appreciation based on a large selection of the entries, Section 5 joins the international debate on the exact nature of a dictionary's macro-structure, access structure and access route, and Section 6 compares Polis's work with a dictionary from the same region and period. Conclusions are offered in Section 7, chief among them the fact that Polis designed the most innovative outer access structure of any Bantu dictionary.
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On the Most Innovative Outer Access Structure of any Bantu Dictionary: The Lexique kikongo–français by Charles Polis (193
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... documented in the 20 th and 21 st centuries), 40 of which eventually ended up in the KLC (de Schryver et al. 2015). Figure 12 shows that part of the tree with the KLC-languages. ...
... The material was found partly on the floors, on the racks and in big chests. The archive is quite interesting, with correspondence between missionaries, typescripts of language courses (mainly Kiyombe, spoken in the region), one of the typescripts by Charles Polis (Polis 1938;de Schryver 2015), and the (complete?) card catalog compiled by the Belgian Missionary Leo Bittremieux for his Kiyombe dictionary Mayombsch idioticon (Bittremieux 1923(Bittremieux -1927, see Figure 20. ...
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