saňu vi:ri Lexicon
Presented here are approximately 1,000 words and grammatical formatives of the
saňu vi:ri lexicon, which I recorded in Kâmdesh, Nuristân in 1968. The data were dutifully supplied by Mahmad Asen of Wâmâ, who was spending a brief period in Kâmdesh visiting relatives. As my time with him was short, I was not able to verify all the elicited forms for phonemic accuracy, and many questions remained unresolved at the time of his departure.
Entries in the lexicon may be found using the index to the right. The lexicon is indexed
semantically by categories and alphabetically by phonemes.
- Entries within a semantic category are grouped by major grammatical category: nouns first,
followed by adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.
- Entries under each phoneme are alphabetized according to the order given at the top of each phoneme's page. The alphabetic order differs from language to language, but it follows the Sanskritic practice of vowels before consonants, both ordered according to position of articulation and subsequently by degree of vocal-tract stricture.
A lexical entry contains the following parts:
- The phonemic form.
- A part of speech designator. Designator codes include:
| ? = interrogative | Ql = qualitative |
| D = directional (with further subcategories) | Qt = quantitative |
| L = location (with further subcategories) | T = transitive |
| Man = manner | Tm = temporal |
| Mod = modal | St = speaker-hearer status. |
| N = noun | V = verb |
| Pn = pronoun (with further subcategories) |
- The English gloss.
- The morphological analysis of the form, in brackets. Subscripts indicate major grammatical categories; superscripts distinguish homonyms.
- The etymology of the form, if known, in boldface brackets. This includes the language from
which the form is derived, followed by the etymon and English gloss. Etyma from Old-Indo-Aryan that appear in R. L. Turner's Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages are indicated using the entry number in that work, prefixed by "T." A parenthesized comment on the etymology may follow, within which a "+" following a Turner number indicates that the current form was not included in Turner's entry and should be added; a "-" indicates that the current form was incorrectly included in the specified entry.
- Optional examples of the entry.