Chantyal Dictionary and Texts.

• Author: Miller, Roy Andrew
• Position: Review

Chantyal Dictionary and Texts. By MICHAEL NOONAN, with R. P. Bhulanja, J. M. Chhantyal, [and] Win. Pagliuca. Trends in Linguistics, Documentation, 17. Berlin and New York: MOUTON DE GRUYTER, 1999. Pp. 615. DM 298.

Most of the Chantyal, a "relatively small group [in Central Nepal] numbering no more than 10,000," today speak only Nepali; but apparently this is a fairly recent linguistic development, to be dated "some time in the 19th century," and "approximately 2[,]000 or so ... still speak the Chantyal language" (p. [1]). Noonan has studied this linguistic remnant since 1988, but this is his first major publication; still forthcoming are a Chantyal Grammar and a volume of Chantyal Discourses (p. 611).

It is far from clear why Noonan decided to begin with this curiously arranged volume, which pace its title is actually an English-Cnantyal dictionary fleshed out with a short selection of texts (pp. 533-603). Its arrangement, alphabetical by English glosses, suggests that it may have begun as an interpreter's or translator's handbook rather than as a linguistic study. This would also explain the occurrence of obvious translation-equivalents, the ad hoc coinages friendly informants anxious to placate linguists all too often supply (e.g., 'cellar', p. 83; 'right!', p. 337; 'hamstring', p. 196; 'scrotum', p. 352). Noonan's frequent invocations of "basic meaning" or "basic sense" (e.g., 'eat', p. 132; 'rash', p. 327) mostly involve nothing more subtle than an attempt to decide upon the most convenient English gloss; sometimes also his remarks about meaning are more redolent of a manual for teaching English to the Chantyals than of serious linguistic inquiry: "Ch. limpa ... 'tasty, sweet'; means 'good' when said of food or drink," p. 404). Some care has been expended on identifying Nepalese botanicals; but its results are marred by linguistic naivete concerning the nature of the process involved: whether Nepali bajh is 'oak' or 'Echinocarpus sterculiaceus' is hardly a problem of how it is to be "translated," pace p. 283. Nor is invoking "idioms" (p. 132) and "idiomatic sense" (p. 109) without further elaboration very illuminating. An appended Chantyal-English index (pp. 495-532) helps; but one still wonders why the whole thing was not arranged the other way around.

All this is particularly puzzling because Noonan's dictionary, even as it now stands, is deeply concerned with etymological questions. The author attempts to separate the (presumably borrowed) Nepali lexical elements that now dominate the language from the (presumably inherited and according to Noonan, "TibetoBurman") Chantyal forms that survive...