Francisco Navarro Artiles’s lexicographical work
Francisco Navarro Artiles studied Canarian vocabulary by collecting testimony and examining word lists and texts. His contribution can be traced in Nicanor Artiles González’s chapter “Sobre la vida y la obra de Francisco Navarro Artiles”, included in the Homenaje edited by Carmen Díaz Alayón and Marcial Morera in 2004 (pp. 19, 24–25).[1]
Speech in Fuerteventura as a source
The chapter describes how Navarro Artiles combined teaching with research in Fuerteventura and spoke with herders, farmers and fishers. He gathered information directly from them and checked word forms with his informants. This account documents a specific fieldwork practice, without turning it into a general theory of the primacy of oral tradition (p. 19).[1]
This attention to vocabulary took a lexicographical form in “Vocabulario de Fuerteventura”, written with Fausto Calero Carreño and published in the Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares in 1965 and 1966. Nicanor Artiles González describes it as a dictionary-format study covering the letters A, B and C (p. 25).[1]
Methods and sources: Lienda
Lienda (Vocabulario de las Islas Canarias) began appearing in instalments in La Provincia on 27 January 1985. The chapter in the Homenaje explains that it brought together Canarian dialect word lists, evidence from written sources and the results of numerous surveys conducted by Navarro Artiles. The source supports this combination of material, rather than the claim that the words collected had circulated exclusively in speech (pp. 24–25).[1]
Historical documentation also appears in his notes to the Actas del Cabildo de Fuerteventura, published in 1966: these supplied definitions of words in the document that had fallen out of use or were absent from readily accessible word lists (p. 25).[1]
Teberite and vocabulary of Guanche origin
Teberite. Diccionario de la lengua aborigen canaria (1981) represents a particular strand of his work. Nicanor Artiles González presents it as a compilation of words from earlier lists, living tradition and historical texts. It also included words considered Guanche by other authors and discussed their attribution (p. 24).[1]
Maximiano Trapero offers a critical assessment in Estudios sobre el guanche, chapter I, section 7.4. He highlights the alphabetical arrangement of Wölfel’s material and access in Spanish to data published in German, but points to a lack of updating and the reproduction of errors from that source (p. 94). This is Trapero’s assessment, which helps establish the dictionary’s scope and limitations.[2]
Legacy and relevance
These works show a concrete contribution to documenting vocabulary: speakers’ testimony, dialect material and historical sources assembled in word lists and studies. The link between oral evidence and lexicography is documented in this work, especially in Lienda, where surveys are combined with earlier word lists and written evidence (pp. 19, 24–25).[1]