Miskito/Lexicon

Explanation
The table below is an initial lexical "source inventory". It represents a preliminary inventory of possible candidates for inclusion in the eventual lexicon (vocabulary) of the course. It is the not necessarily the case that a given item will end up in the course: that will be decided on an item-by-item basis as the development of the course unfolds. Thus, in the process of developing the lessons the present inventory serves as a checklist.

The present list was produced in a rather primitive manner through intuitive judgments about likelihood of each word's usefulness or importance. That is why it only represents a preliminary inventory! The procedure followed was to go through a Miskito-Spanish dictionary selecting some entries and copying these into a Word file. In the next step, the words selected were copied manually into a second file containing a four-column table (as below): the first three columns (Miskito, Spanish, part of speech) were taken from the source dictionary entries, and the fourth column (semantic field) was added.

Using Microsoft Word's sorting functions, from this tabulation we can mechanically generate four tables, ordered alphabetically by each of the four columns, giving us a Miskito-Spanish list, a Spanish-Miskito list, a list ordered by parts of speech and a thematic (semantic) list. Once these lists have been produced they may be used to review the resulting inventory checking for possible "defects". For example: using the thematic list we couild see what items have been entered for the semantic category "animals" and see whether this set of items looks like a sensible, balanced selection, whether any obvious items have been overlooked, whether any item has been accidentally placed in the wrong category, etc. etc. Referring back to the source dictionary, we can then attempt to correct and improve the inventory.

The reason why this table lists Spanish rather than English glosses is simply that it was decided to copy the glosses fairly mechanically from the source dictionary at this point. Translating the glosses might possibly have introduced a margin of error or confusion because of different possible translations and the possibility of misunderstandings. Authors using this list will therefore need some knowledge of Spanish to use this resource (sorry about that).

Warning: There may still be mistakes or inappropriate choices in this list, which is only intended as a rough checklist and working aid. Therefore the information shown here should never be taken on trust when developing the lessons, but rechecked against fuller sources (especially the source dictionary).