Contextualização para a Compreensão do Processo de Compilação do Dicionário Monolingue Nyungwe

This article is entitled "Contextualization for Understanding the Process of Compiling the Monolingual Nyungwe Dictionary (unpublished)". It arises from the need to explain the mechanisms for the elaboration of the referred dictionary for two reasons: i) for its pioneer character and ii) for its methodology, which is also pioneer. Clearly, this monolingual dictionary functions as an identification document for this semi-known language. From the start, the central question was how to compile a dictionary of this nature in these contexts? Hence, the methodology adapted to an oral language, without written tradition, would be to grab a little bit of everything: interdisciplinarity, facts, culture, history, orality, the little writing that exists in and about nyungwe, other languages, common sense, to support the hypotheses and arguments chosen in the attribution of the sense and / or meaning of each word and in its ability to explain itself. The recurrent ideophones played this metalinguistic role, combined with present and past facts, with the corpora now created and with the support of Nyungwes speaking informants, allowed a basic consensus to be reached on the meaning or sense of the word in question. The study concluded that this methodology not only applies to ideophones but is extensible to words in common or other usage in nyungwe. And, it is likely that, in general, the methodology may be replicable to other African / Bantu languages, especially those fom Mozambique, under identical conditions as those of Nyungwe. The result of its application was the production of a dictionary with about 400 pages, the first of its kind in nyungwe. This is just the beginning. It needs to be improved. And many others as well are necessary.