The data entered here have been collected from the book of Claude LERCARI, Textes Sichëë (Nouvelle-Caldonie) : Esquisse phonologique, lexique (1994, Paris: INALCO).
This book provides a phonological and lexical sketch of the Sichëë language, spoken by the tribes on the see side between the Moindou and Bourail villages located on the Main Land ('Grande Terre') of New Caledonia.
The lexicon this book presents is not a dictionnary. It presents Sichëë words translated and define in French, althought the lexicon is not as fine-grained as other scientific lexicons mainly because of the language vitality (this languages, if not extinct already, is severely in danger).
Methodology used here to enter the lexical data :
The synonymy has been reduced by going through both lexicons.
When both simple words and compound words are possible in Sichëë to translate a word in the list, we have opted for the simple words (i.e made by only one lexical unit).
When a word in the list can not be translated by a single general item in Sichëë, some semantic specifications for each one of them have been provided in the 'author annotation' column.
The phonological description Claude Lercari provides is quite clear regarding the consonants and oral vowels systems. However, the nasal vowels system presents an ambiguity : it is not clear which degree of aperture vowel is nasalised. For instance the two oral vowels [e] and [ɛ] with two different degrees of aperture are clearly distinguished, but only one nasal vowel - noted [ê] in the source document - that could be the nasal equivalent of either [e] or [ɛ] is presented. As we do not know clearly which degree of aperture is more likely to have the nasal vowel - the aperture of [e] or [ɛ] -, the words with a [ê] vowel in the source document will transcribed the [e] nasalised and the [ɛ] nasalised. The two possible transcriptions will be then signaled with a slash.
Note that the problem is the same with the two oral vowels [o] and [ɔ] ending up in a single naslasiled vowel we could transcribe either [õ] or [ɔ̃]. The two possible transcriptions will be then signaled with a slash between the two possible transcription for the words with those vowels.