Preserving Endangered Knowledge in a Dictionary: The Case of Ket

Abstract:Describing culture-specific vocabulary is a rather challenging part of lexicographic work, especially in the case of languages considered to be endangered. As a rule, such languages are understudied and not sufficiently documented, which greatly complicates the presentation of ethnocultural realia in a dictionary. We describe the main problems related to presenting ethnocultural material encountered in the course of making the Comprehensive Dictionary of Ket, a highly endangered Yeniseian language. They include cultural differences in categorization of extralinguistic reality, the presentation of ethnocultural information in a dictionary entry, and the loss of ethnocultural knowledge in the language community.