A Dictionary of Buin, a language of Bougainville

Description

Pacific Linguistics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, 2003. — xiii + 355 p. — ISBN 0858835118.This dictionary and grammar are an edited version of the manuscript left by the late Donald C. Laycock when he passed away in 1988. He left the mostly complete manuscript of dictionary entries in alphabetical order and the manuscript of an incomplete elementary grammar of the Buin language, both with handwritten corrections and additions. The manuscript of the dictionary was accompanied by his wife Tania's illustrations. All the dictionary entries except for those which start with T and U, English-Buin reversals, and an index organised according to semantic fields were on computer files as well. Don also left open-reeled tapes with most of the vocabulary items in the dictionary recorded in the voice of Paul Raukai Rorugagi (his main informant) from Paariro Village. The data in the dictionary were collected in 1966-67 when Don conducted fieldwork with Tania in this village.Buin is spoken in the southeastern part of Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. It is one of the eight Papuan languages on the island. According to the 2000 census, the population of the Buin LLG (Statistical Local Level Government area), where Buin is the major language, was 26,469. The language appears to have several dialects among which Uisai, spoken in the northeastern part, is most distinct. Don distinguishes five dialects (northern, northeastern, southern, eastern, and western) in his dictionary in addition to the central dialect on which the data in this dictionary are based.