Antara Kita:

Muna-English Dictionary. By RenÈ van den Berg, in collaboration with La Ode Sidu. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996. [xxx] + 709 pp., maps, illustrations, reverse index. Reviewed by Paul Michael Taylor, Smithsonian Institution.

This brief review of van den Berg's excellent dictionary of the Muna language, spoken in Southeast Sulawesi, will focus on some ways it may be of broader use to regional specialists, even those not directly working with Muna or Muna texts. The compiler admits to sometimes overstepping the boundary between dictionary and encyclopaedia by including as much information as was available to him within many lexical entries. The volume is a sequel to his Muna grammar published in the KITLV's Verhandelingen series in 1989. He is also preparing a Muna-Indonesian dictionary (and in fact the computer database from which this is drawn was trilingual), but the Muna-English has been published separately here due to limits of space and cost. The subsequent phase will be the publication of a corpus of Muna texts. He estimates there are 230,000 speakers of Muna, speaking several dialects on Muna (=Wuna) island and on the west coast of neighboring Buton island. The compiler does not take long to review the four prior linguistic and lexicographic sources on the Muna language; clearly the information in them has been corrected and incorporated in this work.

The compiler's methods of gathering so many lexical items are described in detail. An initial filing card system for lexical items was developed in his earlier linguistic fieldwork. These were then supplemented by three methods: (1) gathering traditional literature (prose and poetry), which provided context for the words used in them; (2) lists of semantic domains (birds, weapons, kinship terms, etc.); and (3) a computer generated blank dictionary, which proved especially useful because of the simple syllable structure of Muna. This program (used by the Summer Institute of Linguistics) generated some 19,000 possible words (based on phonological rules of the language), from which Muna speakers could pick the words that actually do exist, after which the meaning of these words can be determined. This combination of techniques makes it very probable that a good sample of the lexical richness of the language is represented in this dictionary.

The phonology and mode of transcription are clearly described. Since the dictionary is organized by root words, the summary of grammatical information is especially helpful in stripping off affixes of words to arrive at their roots; and in explaining the parts of speech (and the morphological verb class) noted for each entry. This is clearly set up to make the dictionary useful for reading Muna texts, whenever Muna texts do in fact get published. Some words belong to marked registers and are distinguished as such; the registers are: literary, refined, coarse, and palace language (the last of which is now obsolete).

Any dictionary is an on-going project. In this one, the ethnobiological information is still minimal; but at least the terms themselves (translated as “kind of tree” etc.) will serve as a challenge to future ethnobiologists. This dictionary is also drawn from just one dialect (the northern or “standard” dialect from Watuputih village, 5 km from the district capital Raha), though there is said to be considerable dialect variation in other parts of the island. But in many domains such as marriage customs, games, or death and burial rites, the lexical entries (with their excellent choices of sample sentences) serve as intriguing ethnographic vignettes. Particularly useful are the 16 pages of illustrations (p. 621-637) of houses, boats, fishing equipment, weaving and musical instruments, and other material culture, with detailed lexical information. These drawings by La Ada, a former teacher who helped develop the dictionary, are especially valuable because they include many items (such as musical instruments) that have become obsolete. The dictionary concludes with a Reverse Index, from English to Muna. The compiler, his publisher, and all those who assisted him are to be congratulated for producing this thorough and well-made dictionary.