Stýft og hvatt - beteckningar for öronmärken på får och deras lexikografiska relevans

Abstract

In Iceland, the ownership of all sheep is indicated by a system of marks cut in the ears of the sheep. The names of these marks can be regarded as a closed lexical subsystem in the Icelandic language, a subsystem defined by its clearcut relations to phenomena in the "real world" rather than by purely Iinguistic features. In the present paper, the morphology of this lexical subgroup is described. Furthermore, the lexicographic relevance of subsystems established on encyclopedic grounds, primarily, is discussed with respect to the role such subsystems play in dictionaries of ordinary language.