Dictionary of the Great Andamanese Language: English-Great Andamanese-Hindi

On the brink of extinction, the Great Andamanese language, one of the oldest in the world, had been crying out for concerted effort for salvage and documentation. This multilingual interactive dictionary is a maiden effort to capture the last remnant data. The dictionary comes with a meticulously designed CD-ROM of the entire dictionary backed by original sound recordings of Great Andamanese speakers. The development of the Great Andamanese linguistic structures followed a completely different trajectory from the languages of agrarian and pastoral societies. Among a people whose distinct life pattern influenced the emergence and development of grammatical structures and vocabulary, the documented entities in this dictionary give an invaluable insight into the ancient cognitive world of the Great Andamanese people. The conceptual structures embedded in lexical items emerge as reflections of the collective mental representation of ideas and objects by the members of the speech community. To call this pioneering work of scholarship a mere 'Dictionary' is to underestimate its significance. Professor Anvita Abbi, the foremost scholar of this 'sixth family' of Indian Languages, has been motivated by the urgent need to document this rapidly perishing language before it is obsolete. About the Author Anvita Abbi is Professor of Linguistics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi . A distinguished research in languages of the Indian subcontinent, she has carried out first-hand field research on all six families of language found there. She has occupied positions of Guest Scientist at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology , Leipzig Germany and Visiting Professorships at Universities. Publisher's note.