Lexicography

The nineteenth entry is la lemmatizzazione, and it is worth more to an English reader as a warning about grammar than as a term of the trade. Lemmatising means choosing which single form of a word stands at the head of an entry and sending every other form to it. In English that decision costs the reader almost nothing: nouns take « -s », verbs have four or five shapes at most, and somebody who meets « walked » finds « walk » by dropping two letters. Italian asks for the work to be done before the dictionary is opened. A verb is entered under the infinitive, so vado, andrò and vada all belong to andare, and two of the three do not even start with the same letter. An adjective is entered under the masculine singular, so belle is found under bello. A noun is entered in the singular, so le uova hides under l’uovo. The page can only reward a reader who has already guessed the lemma, and that guess is grammar rather than lexicography: it has to be learnt somewhere else first.