WWU Professor Edward Vajda co-authors new Yeniseian dictionary

Professor of Modern and Classical Languages Edward Vajda has co-authored a new Yeniseian dictionary. Vajda, who teaches Russian, linguistics, and Eurasian studies in Western’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Heinrich Werner, the world's foremost expert on Yeniseic (Yeniseian) languages, sought to create a comparative-historical Yeniseian dictionary that is readily accessible to English speakers. "Comparative-Historical Yeniseian Dictionary," published by Lincom Europa, includes not only interpretations by Vajda and Werner, but also observations and commentaries made previously by others who have published results pertaining to Yeniseian etymology or lexical history. In addition to published lexical data, Vajda and Werner have also incorporated the results of the latest fieldwork on Ket. Dictionary entries include both modern forms attested in a single Yeniseian language as well as reconstructed protoforms representing an older stage of Yeniseian as supported by the extant comparative material.

Hear Vajda in a recent podcast interview here.