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Chantyal Dictionary and Texts. By MICHAEL NOONAN, with R. P. Bbulanja, J. M. Chhantyal, [and] Wm. 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. 111). 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-Chantyal 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., `eaf, 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...