Vers un dictionnaire orthographique bambara

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a project of standardization of the Bambara orthography on the basis of an annotated corpus of texts (The Bambara Reference Corpus). First, all lexemes in the Bamadaba dictionary which had spelling variants were checked for their frequences in the Corpus. Then the variants were sorted, and standard graphic variants for a great number of lexemes were established. As a final step, a list of lexemes for which statistics were insufficient was drawn up, and a group of experts representing different Malian linguistic institutions discussed this list and selected the variants which could be accepted as standard. At the same time, general spelling rules of Bambara were revisited and edited wherever necessary.

Keywords

• spelling dictionary
• Bambara language
• corpus linguistics
• standardization of language