Speaker
Description
Lexicography in the South Asian context often involves working with communities who live in areas with high degrees of endemism in both flora and fauna. According to the Botanical Survey of India, there are four biodiversity hotspots (viz. Himalaya, Indo-Burma, Sundaland, and Western Ghats and Sri Lanka) in South Asia. It is therefore inevitable that there will be lexical items collected for which description in a lexicography project would be challenging, but for which differentiation is important. For example, while the markhor (a large wild goat with corkscrew-like horns) and domestic goat are both goats in a broad sense, their significance to and interaction with humans vary greatly, and to describe both as ‘goat’ would be imprecise. This paper discusses the methodological challenges and solutions in addressing certain blind-spots in a lexicographic study on Mankiyali with special reference to flora and fauna. Mankiyali is a highly endangered Indo-Aryan language spoken in a remote area of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province; documentation research on the language began only in 2018. This study proposes a multidisciplinary approach to Mankiyali lexicography using botanical surveys, terrestrial and avian fauna surveys, and ethnomedical studies for producing a lexical database which is comprehensive and useful from an academic, scientific, and community-based perspective. Initial linguistic surveys of South Asia undertaken during the Linguistic Survey of India (1894-1928) typically include a significant number of lexical items referring to local flora and fauna. These lexical items are presented in a very broad sense and without specific identification, which unfortunately limits its usefulness for multiple applications. An integrative and holistic approach to lexicography making use of modern technology-based tools must therefore be included so as to avoid the necessity of, for example, describing flora as, “a certain kind of plant”.
