Review of : Pinson , Thomas M . 2012

Until 2012, there existed no full-fledged dictionary of Naxi. This major gap in the field of Sino-Tibetan linguistics was filled by two remarkable publications in quick succession: A Naxi-Chinese-English Dictionary by Thomas Pinson, and A Dictionary of Colloquial Naxi (《纳西语常用词汇》) by He Jiren, edited by Zhao Qinglian et al. (2013). Both dictionaries were published by Yunnan Minorities Publishing House (Kunming), but were produced independently. The present review focuses on T. Pinson's book. Dialect abbreviations are the same as those provided on p. 39 of the dictionary (initials of the place names in Chinese Pinyin), with the addition of FK, for Fengke (奉科乡善美行政村; Naxi: Fvlko); for simplicity, tone marks used here are ˥, ˧ and ˩ for High, Mid and Low tones, instead of the contour stylization used by the author: 55, 33 and 21, respectively. The author set himself the ambitious goal of producing a dictionary of Naxi as currently spoken in the Lijiang plain, and accomplished this important project through " more than 16 years of work on the Naxi language " (p. 2 of the Introduction), from 1995 to 2012. This 700-page volume is much more extensive in coverage, and more precise in detail, than the initial Naxi-Chinese-English Glossary with English and Chinese Indexes (Pinson 1998). The dictionary is presented as a practical reference work, with Chinese-Naxi and English-Naxi indexes. Its many strong points include plentiful examples, brief discussions of grammatical and phonological issues within some of the lexical entries, and an indication, for nouns, of the most commonly associated classifier. The author consistently focuses on the spoken language, resisting the attraction of the Naxi written tradition, which has been at the centre of much of the work conducted on Naxi to date (in particular Li Lin-ts'an, Chang K'un & Ho Ts'ai 1953; Rock 1963; Fang Guoyu & He Zhiwu 1995). No attempt is made to incorporate data from other sources into the dictionary. This has major advantages in terms of consistency. Concerning vocabulary coverage, on the other hand, some traditional cultural terms are absent from the dictionary, for instance 'mortar' and 'pestle', even though small mortars and pestles for pounding hot peppers or medicines are still in use, and foot-powered pestles were still widespread in the area at a relatively recent point in time. In future lexicographic work of comparable scope, it would be useful to check that cultural terms specific to the area are all included. …