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A Dictionary plan of Yilumbu What is the purpose, nature and typology of the planned dictionary? Who are the target users of the planned dictionary? What are their needs and reference skills? Are the answers to these questions can help lexicographers to produce better dictionaries? These are questions that Paul Achille Mavoungou raises in his book.Drawing upon what already exists, Mavoungou presents a survey of lexicographic activities in Gabon, a number of macro- and microstructural problems as well as various types of devices to enhance the accessibility of the data in the planned dictionary. Explaining the need to have both lemmatic and non lemmatic addressing procedures that will shift the focus from the source to the target languages, Mavoungou also discuss the mediostructure and textual condensation in the planned dictionary. The evidence he gathers indicates that explicit and consistent cross- referencing, the non-use of substitution symbols, explicit labelling, etc. are best suited to capture the needs and reference skills of the target groups.

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Paul Achille Mavoungou is a senior lecturer in the Department of linguistics at Omar Bongo University in Gabon. He is a specialist in lexicography and in Bantu languages

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