Irena Ermanytė. „Antonimų žodynas“

176 | RECENZIJOS (p. 400); ušpilto·s (p. 397) = uš'p'ilto·s; vadō·ve (p. 414) = vadō·ve; atē·jo (p. 414) = atē·jo; tō·ks (p. 430) = tō·ks; lē.idž'u (p. 457) = lé.idž'u; púokštė (not in the dictionary); pel·ti (p. 462) = pel·ti; acisē·zdavo (p. 467) = acisē·zdavu; ē·da (p. 479) = ē·da; ža·si·tez (p. 484) = ža·s'i't'es; riedam (p. 508) = riedam; pasirė·d'e. (p. 532) = pasirė·d'e.; kō·ta (p. 543) = kō·ta.; atlē·kt (p. 559) = atl'ē·kt; reng'uōs'i (p. 565)= ren'g'uōs'i; pasiryžimas (1) (p. 569) = (2); rodýti (p. 570) = rōdyti, rōdo, rōdė; perhaps something else has gone unnoticed. There have certainly been fewer errors in this work; we are approaching the standard of an exemplary scholarly text: compiling such a dialect dictionary is very difficult work, which the authors of Volume I did not manage to complete. There are oversights and other minor errors here, so they could easily have been pointed out (during preparation for publication) and corrected. Does everything belong to the dialect, given that the concept “dialect word” is undefined, although the entire dictionary volume seems to be unified by the definition “inherited word”? The following would not be dialect words or forms: literātas (p. 88), sulōsiu (=sulōši) (p. 97); neišmaišt·tu. GrS = neišmaišt·tu. (apparently such metatony does not occur there); instead of blē·cvas (p. 452); daugumō· (=daugiausia) rīnko· [to transport] tarnā·uto'jus visūs JNK (p. 559), etc. This is not much either, and the references would be very useful and necessary. Now we will await the full wealth of the last dialect group, the basis of the standard language. The third volume should also indicate any unpleasant errors and shortcomings. The proper compilation and recording of dialect vocabulary dictionaries is an immensely important matter—dialects and old writings are great treasures of the nation’s language, of interest to many Indo-Europeanists. There are also unresolved questions, for example, concerning the palatalization of consonant clusters: m'iṅkšt'i or otherwise, al'ks'n'is or otherwise. Vytautas Antanas Vitkauskas Lietuvių kalbos institutas P. Vileišio g. 5, 10308 Vilnius, Lietuva Received 2005 06 09 Irena Erm anytė Dictionary of Antonyms Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2003, xxiii + 584 p., ISBN 9986-668-52-2 The Dictionary of Antonyms is the result of long and demanding work requiring extensive expertise and meticulous care. Its author, Irena Ermanytė, is an experienced lexicographer who spent many years writing and editing the extensive Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language and published a school Dictionary of Lithuanian Antonyms (1985), so her linguistic abilities and scholarly integrity can be trusted completely. The dictionary under review belongs to the category of specialized dictionaries, since it presents lexical units of a single type: pairs or chains of words whose meanings are diametrically opposed, that is, antonyms. Drawing material from the multi-volume Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language and supplementing it with examples from fiction and journalism, this work seeks to present both systematic and contextual antonyms and to explain evidence from standard Lithuanian, dialects, and old writings. Thus, before us is a substantial lexicographic work containing information not only about systematic relations among words in contemporary Lithuanian, but also about oppositional relations formed in particular texts, which in various ways affect the language system as a whole. RECENZIJOS | 177 1. The structure of the “Dictionary of Antonyms” is almost traditional: it begins with three sections (“Introduction,” “Dictionary Structure,” and “Abbreviations”), followed by the dictionary corpus itself, in which antonyms are presented in nests arranged alphabetically according to one of the antonyms; at the end are a list of phraseological units derived from antonyms and an index of antonym nests. That the dictionary was written on the basis of an adequate theoretical foundation in lexical semantics is evident from the contents of the “Introduction.” It sets out, with supporting arguments, what underlies antonyms as two members of an opposition, what determines the opposition between these words (the root, derivational formants, or context), what logical factors link antonyms in language, and how stylistic figures based on antonyms are formed. Reading the introduction raises just one question: does the dictionary itself bear out all the propositions postulated in the theoretical section, and was it necessary to include in the dictionary’s introduction everything known to its author, who defended her doctoral dissertation specifically on antonyms? This question could be answered precisely only by analyzing in detail the antonym pairs themselves and the examples illustrating their use. But even without closer examination, doubts arise about the relevance to this dictionary of certain arguments put forward. The concepts of “function” and “derivativeness” are understood here in a very peculiar way, as applied to such antonym pairs as near – far (road), high – low (tree), deep – shallow (lake), or dawn – dusk, be born – die, overture – finale. It is quite clear that the two members of each of these oppositions share some feature of meaning, which one member has to a greater degree and the other to a lesser degree, and that this shared feature of meaning allows the words to be grouped into certain types of lexical-semantic paradigms; but what has function to do with this, and how does “derivativeness” relate to it? It is also doubtful whether the influence of intonation on the semantic relationship between an antonym pair can be reflected in a dictionary at all. Thus, although the dictionary’s theoretical introduction is, in essence, well argued, its propositions could be formulated somewhat more precisely, with lexicography in mind rather than general reflections on antonyms. The “Dictionary Structure” section explains how the material is arranged. This section is rather fragmentary; the principles for presenting the data are not adequately set out. For example, it merely explains how the synonymous series of the second member of verb antonyms is presented (the verb without a prefix is given first, followed by prefixed verbs in alphabetical order), but says nothing about how synonymous series for other parts of speech are presented. It is stated that antonym meanings are not usually explained by means of synonyms, but it is quite unclear how those meanings are explained—whether the explanations are taken from somewhere or devised by the author herself. This section defines what constitutes antonym pairs and indicates how they are numbered. But as soon as one begins to browse the dictionary text itself, it becomes apparent that numbering antonym pairs with petit numerals and meanings with raised numerals is highly questionable. First, this creates certain visual difficulties; moreover, it seems that distinguishing meanings is more important than distinguishing the antonym pairs themselves. Petit numerals before a headword are sometimes used to number not only a pair involving a word used with the same meaning—that is, the same lexeme (a)—but also a pair involving the same word used with a different meaning (that is, a different lexeme), which forms an antonym pair with another word (b). Presenting facts of different kinds in the same way introduces needless confusion and becomes a puzzle for users. Cf.: a) 1 to stroke to brush gently with the hand – to bite to hurt or injure with the teeth 2 to stroke to brush gently with the hand – to beat, thrash to cause pain with blows 3 to stroke to brush gently with the hand – to pull hair to hurt by pulling out hair b) 1 calm one that brings no change – stormy one that is unsettled, changeable 2 calm one who is not easily irritated or angered – irritable one who is easily irritated 3 calm peaceful, without bloodshed – bloody involving bloodshed 178 | RECENZIJOS Such numbering of antonym pairs is particularly confusing when the first word in a pair is polysemous and several antonyms are found for each lexeme; then it is unclear what the numeral denotes—a pair of antonyms or a lexeme. For example, in presenting the antonyms of the adjective alive, five numbers are marked, but what do they identify—is it only five pairs of antonyms? Or perhaps the dictionary’s author considers this adjective monosemous if its meanings are not numbered in bold type, as is done in other entries: 1 alive having life – dead, mortal destined to die, mortal 2 alive having life – dead, deceased not having life 3 alive in which organic processes occur – lifeless in which organic processes do not occur 4 alive active, alert – slow, placid moving slowly, unhurried 5 alive actively expressing oneself – motionless passive, expressing oneself sluggishly and cf.: 1 liquid having the property of flowing – solid resistant to bending 2 liquid 1. containing a lot of water – thick 1. containing little water 2. flowing well – 2. flowing poorly 3. grown in patches, sparsely – 3. without gaps, dense In some cases, the numbering of pairs raises questions about the order in which antonyms are presented. For example, it is unclear why some pairs are numbered starting with figurative meanings: 1 uplift fig. spiritual strengthening – depression, exhaustion fig. spiritual weakening 2 uplift fig. spiritual strengthening – decline fig. marked spiritual deterioration 3 ascent detachment from the surface – descent reaching the surface while moving rapidly 4 rise increase in level – recession decrease in level 5 rise obtaining better results – decline obtaining worse results Unnecessary numbering also occurs, apparently overlooked during editing, e.g.: 1 to proclaim (and where is 2?). 2. When evaluating the dictionary’s content, it is first important to determine whether the scope and ambitions of the work under review correspond to the current state of the language. Therefore, something should be said about the selection of material for the dictionary. The introduction states that the material was collected from living speech, volumes I–XX of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (LKŽ), Lithuanian literary classics, various writings, and periodicals. The dictionary’s author can only be praised for finding and systematizing linguistic facts and their illustrations, since carrying out such work required considerable care and expertise. Nevertheless, quite a few questions arise about the selection of headwords. One of them is this: why, in compiling a dictionary today, were corpus data not used, why were neologisms from recent decades not selected, while extremely rare dialect words were included (magùs, momà, totà, šapara?, skirmõs, senýkščias – dabarykščias, nušìlti – nušaltì), as well as complete nonce formations (aukštù-kas and žemùkas, kãbis and nelãbis, kušančiàsis and slinkančìsis, pardõsas, parduõksnė, parduõlė and pìrksnė), and variants of the same words that differ in no essential respect (alongside aukštyn, chiefly dialectal forms are given: aukštỹ, aukštỹna, aukštỹnai, aukštỹniui, aukštỹnuo)? It is not very clear why non-agreeing adjective forms are given as headwords and treated as separate antonym pairs when agreeing adjectives of exactly the same meaning are listed alongside them (apparently, the rules governing the boundaries between a word and its forms are being violated here). Or again: why are some potential derivatives included as headwords in the dictionary while others are ignored? For example, the adjectives ankstõkas – vėlõkas are included, but words formed in exactly the same way, gerõkas – blogõkas, jaunõkas – senõkas, are not; only a few adjectival or verbal abstracts are included, for example: lankstumas – inertiška- RECENZIJOS | 179 ness; linksmumas – liūdnumas; ilgadieniškumas – trumpadieniškumas; išaukštinimas – nužeminimas, pažeminimas; kėlimas – gulimas and a few others. But why include them at all when their base words, with exactly the same meaning, are given alongside? After all, the well-known lexicographic practice seems to be not to list regular mutational derivatives as headwords, that is, derivatives that merely move into another part-of-speech class but retain the same meaning of a quality or action. The author’s reasons for listing as headwords even those prefixal derivatives that differ from unprefixed verbs only in aspectual meaning are unclear, for example: papilnėti – patuštėti, paplatėti – susiaurėti, paplatinti – pasiaurinti, susiaurinti (wouldn’t the contrast between the unprefixed verbs suffice in these cases?). It is doubtful that words regarded as language errors need to be included as headwords, for example: atidaryti ‘to open (one’s eyes)’; kūdas, kudlotas, etc. When evaluating the antonym pairs presented, one fundamental question also arises, long debated by theoreticians of lexicology: when do words acquire an opposite meaning through negation? The introduction does not discuss this question, and antonym pairs in which the second word is the first word’s negative variant do not resolve the problem, e.g.: printed – unprinted (why not handwritten?), tactful – tactless (why are brazen, impudent, rude not enough?). Such reflections and a clear statement of the author’s position would help not only researchers in lexicology but also dictionary users. 3. The dictionary’s author showed excellent linguistic insight in seeking antonymic counterparts. She revealed that Lithuanian has words which, because of their wealth of meanings and the variety of contexts in which they occur, can form numerous antonym pairs (e.g.: dárbas forms eight, džiaugsmas eleven, kálnas thirteen, kélti seven, kélti nine, and viršūnė six pairs, and so on). Most antonym pairs are illustrated with sentences that bring out both systematic and incidental relations of opposition and reveal the variety of stylistic figures based on antonyms. Particularly interesting are examples showing that even meanings of the same words can be antonymous, e.g.: brėkšti can mean both ‘to grow dark’ and ‘to dawn’; čiáupti ‘to open one’s mouth’ and ‘to shut one’s mouth’; atristi ‘to bring closer by rolling’ and ‘to remove by rolling’; išgarbinti ‘to praise, exalt’ and ‘to revile, humiliate’; kásti ‘to make a hole’ and ‘to fill in a hole’. Thus, the dictionary entries demonstrate the considerable resources of our language for expressing complex relations of opposition. In a dictionary of such extensive scope, however, certain shortcomings in the systematization of the material are quite frequent. They are illustrated, for example, by the sometimes ill-judged choice of members in antonym pairs: a) the pairs do not conform to the declared conception of antonymy when words belonging to different parts of speech are juxtaposed as antonyms: dressed – naked person, freed person – slave, wise – ignoramus, free person – slave, wealthy – beggar, those in the right – swindler, etc.; b) it is debatable whether words belonging to the same part of speech but to different semantic types can be considered antonyms—for example, verbs where one denotes an active action while the other denotes an involuntary process or even a state: to squeeze into – to squeeze out; to live – to commit suicide; or adverbs, one of which denotes a location and the other a direction: homeward – elsewhere (After spending several weeks elsewhere, he returned home); a different case would be at home – elsewhere; c) sometimes an arbitrary pair-member is selected for a headword (perhaps because only such an illustrative example was found?), while potentially much more precise antonyms are overlooked. For example, to withstand is paired with to beat as its antonym, but what about to press, to weigh down(?); only emigrant, departing person are listed as antonyms of newcomer, arrival, but what about native, local, one of our own(?); the antonym of unbuttoned is supposedly only closed (but what if the reference is to an unbuttoned coat?); why is only one antonym, blackness, given for the word whiteness, and what about yolk? Only one antonym was found, and that one is rather odd, for the adjective satisfied, namely angry (– You give it yourself, – Damulė softened her tone, more satisfi 180 | RECENZIJOS than angry), but would not the oppositional relationship of this word to the participles disappointed, gloomy, figuratively sour be more evident? At least several antonyms have been selected for the noun kvãpas: dvókas, smárdas, smárvė; yet kvãpas is by no means always a pleasant smell; the word usually denotes the general property of a substance that affects the sense of smell (a smell can be pleasant or unpleasant), and the dictionary example does not at all show that the words listed are antonymous to kvapui (And there will be a stench instead of a good (!) smell). It is understandable that the number of antonyms selected was greatly limited by the examples available (the author tried to provide examples containing both members of the opposition), but is it really better for users to find in the dictionary only those antonyms that happened to be at hand for the author, and not be able to find word pairs familiar to everyone? It is therefore regrettable that only two pairs with laimėti are listed: laimėti – pralaimėti and laimėti – prarasti, but what of laimėti – pralóšti, laimėti – nepavykti, laimėti – prakìšti? Only one antonym of the verb žudyti is listed, namely gimdyti, whereas its synonym užmušti is given a quite different antonym, pasigailėti; but can pasigailėti not also be an antonym of žudyti, and vice versa? There are quite a few inaccuracies of this kind (cf. also: teisinis – beteisis, tikinti – neigti, užklaus­ti – atkirsti). All such inaccuracies prompt doubts as to whether the dictionary author's approach of selecting antonyms based more on incidental texts than on systematic lexical relations is sound. The dictionary does indeed contain quite a number of pairs that are in no way systematic antonyms and between which language has established not antonymic, but rather hyponymic or co-hyponymic relations, for example: dainà – raudà, úošvė – úošvis, 2 lápas – spyglỹs, tekėti – vesti, válgyti – gérti, brólis – sesuõ, tė́vas – mótina and so on. It is understandable that such words can become contextual antonyms, but the examples provided do not demonstrate such antonymy (Having a living father and mother; Only a harmonious upbringing by father and mother can set children on the right path; While eating and drinking, he enjoyed himself, that is, he says it tastes good to him; He laid out a feast for them—they ate and drank), or else they make one doubt whether the indicated pair is antonymous, for example: 1 stovėti – griūti (It is not what is creaking that collapses, but what is standing); it is difficult to discern an antonymic relation between the verbs sakyti and girdėti either (cf. I heard a mighty voice in heaven saying). Some pairs are not illustrated with examples at all, making it even more difficult to perceive their members as antonyms, for instance: dýgti – ìrti, dýgti – nykti, erótiskas – platòniškas, gamìnti – naudóti, gársinti – tylėti, gaũbti – skėsti, skléisti, išanalizuoti – susintetinti, lė́stis – stìngti, and so forth. Sometimes, conversely, one finds entries overloaded with uninformative illustrative examples (see the entries aktyvùs – pasyvùs, anksčì – vėlai, artė́ti – tóltì, aukštyn – žemyn, bál­tas – júodas, čia – ten, etc.). 4. The value of a dictionary's content is largely determined by the semantic data in its entries. The explanations provided here of antonyms' meanings and shades of meaning make this dictionary much easier to use. The author offers not exhaustive definitions, but brief explanations which, moreover, are entirely sufficient for users to identify easily the semantics of both members of an antonym pair. It is regrettable that the methodology for providing explanations of meanings and the features of the author's chosen metalanguage are nowhere discussed in greater detail. Nevertheless, the author's concerted efforts to systematize conventional explanations, taken mainly from Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodyno (for example, efforts to use the same explanatory model for words of the same grammatical type or lexical-semantic group), and to create original definitions (especially for figurative or symbolic meanings) are clearly evident. Thus, a genuinely substantial amount of work has been done for the benefit of users. Of course, it cannot be overlooked that in some respects it has not been entirely successful. Even a selective evaluation revealed inaccurate explanations of meaning, which either allow an excessive number of antonym pairs to be created or prevent genuine antonyms from being identified. For example, it is unclear on what basis dainuoti – verkti and dainuoti – raudoti; dosnūs have been separated into distinct entries. RECENZIJOS 181 – gobšus and dosnūs – spulūs; or whether slightly different explanations of meaning, devised by the author herself, suffice to justify speaking of several antonym pairs. The two pairs apsistoti ‘to stop somewhere, find accommodation’ – išvykti and apsistoti ‘to stop somewhere, find accommodation’ – pasitraukti are distinguished quite unnecessarily; the explanations of meaning differ only slightly (išvykti is explained as ‘to set out on a journey, travel away’, whereas pasitraukti is explained as ‘to go, travel away’), and this really should not warrant doing so. The explanations of the nouns atokaita, saulėkaita and their listed antonyms are puzzling. The first word is explained as ‘a place facing the sun’, while the second is explained as though it named a hyponym of the first, ‘a sunny place’; and although the semantic scope of the first word is much broader, it is given only one antonym, pavėsis, whereas the second is given as many as three: pavėsis, paukšmė and ūksmė. Sometimes exactly the same meanings are described in different words, which greatly hinders readers from understanding how the listed antonyms relate to the first word. For example, in the first pair with grįžti, sugrįžti, the verb nueiti is explained as ‘to go somewhere on foot’, whereas in the pair with pareiti it is explained differently: ‘to walk away’. Are such explanations justified? Do the explanatory words really reveal different meanings? Could the sentence illustrating the first pair, A liar has a broad road to go away, but a narrow one to return, not be changed to A liar has a broad road to go away, but a narrow one to come back? Surely the meanings of nueiti do not differ so much that they need to be explained in entirely different ways? The author certainly deserves praise for avoiding explanations of meanings solely by means of synonyms. One could mention only one or two explanations that might be replaced by more convincing ones, for example: įsiminti ‘to remember’, pamiršti ‘not to remember’, žvalūs ‘lively, nimble’, gyvas ‘active, alert’. Here and there, the author's approach to figurative meanings raises doubts. It is unclear whether these are described from a historical perspective (treating any motivated meanings as figurative) or a synchronic one (treating as figurative only those with an additional connotative shade). Such doubts arise upon finding the label prk. beside the noun naujokas in the sense ‘a person just beginning some work’, beside the adjectives vaisingas and bevatis in the senses ‘producing good results’ and ‘producing no results’, and beside the verbs kairėti and dešinėti in the senses ‘to adopt left-wing views’ and ‘to become right-wing’. Since words used in clearly figurative senses to express a symbolic opposition are also marked with a special sign (a dot to the right of the first member of the antonym pair), one may question the need for the label prk. altogether. But if the label is used, there is certainly no shame in leaving some meanings so marked without illustrative examples, for instance: minkštas figuratively ‘merciful, sensitive’ – kietas figuratively ‘merciless, harsh’. It is very unfortunate that occasional explanations of meaning contain language errors: ilginimas ‘making longer (= longer) in terms of space’, trumpinimas ‘making shorter (= shorter) in terms of space’; ilgumas ‘being longer (= longer) than something in terms of space’, trumpumas ‘being shorter (= shorter) than something in terms of space’. 5. Since material for the dictionary was collected not only from lexicographical works but also from various texts, some terms were included, alongside which, as usual, the fields of use are indicated. In some places, however, terminological labels are unfortunately missing. For example, the economics and finance terms aktyvas – pasyvas are not marked (although it is explained that this pair, when used with another meaning, belongs to linguistics); it is not stated that the terms stačiaštabis – gulsčiaštabis, stačiavarpis – lenktavarpis belong to botany, dažninis – kartinis to linguistics, and integruoti – diferencijuoti to mathematics. Perhaps it was assumed that the latter two pairs are used not only in linguistics and mathematics? But why, then, are their meanings explained as terms? 6. A small part of the dictionary consists of the section “Phraseologisms Derived from Antonyms.” The list and illustrative examples introduce one of the possible types of phraseological combinations. These phraseolo- 182 | RECENZIJOS The components of idioms have lost their usual lexical meanings, and thus their antonymy is not preserved here either; that is, an antonym pair formally forms part of the idiom, but it does not express opposition because it is subordinate to the meaning of the phrase as a whole, e.g.: nei pakartas nei paleistas ‘of a hopeless situation’, and vilkas sotus, ir avis sveika ‘interests are compatible’, vienas pirštas burnoje, kitas uodegoje ‘of someone struggling to make ends meet’, etc. The section is brief, but may be useful to researchers of Lithuanian phraseology, who will find in one place fixed word combinations of the same structural type. The “Index of Antonym Sets” enhances the overall lexicographic quality. It precisely indicates on which page of the dictionary each antonym pair can be found. All the members of the antonym pairs are listed alphabetically as the index’s headwords, making it easy to find information on each of them, which may be considerably dispersed in the main body of the dictionary. The dictionary’s layout is simple and clear (apart from the numbering problems mentioned above) and, overall, meets the requirements of modern lexicography. The criticisms expressed in this review show how difficult it is to compile a good, large-scale dictionary, and how much knowledge of problems in lexicology and lexical semantics, as well as meticulousness, such a task demands of a linguist. Irena Ermantyė is an outstanding specialist in her field, although even she found it difficult to avoid errors and inaccuracies in such a vast undertaking. Nevertheless, her work Antonimų žodynas is a source of genuine satisfaction. It is a truly valuable work of Lithuanian lexicography. It draws on the author’s substantial theoretical studies and offers interesting facts about Lithuanian vocabulary. It will be useful both to future researchers of semantic relations between words and to all those who find the distinctiveness of the Lithuanian language interesting and valuable. Evalda Jakaitienė Department of Lithuanian Language Vilnius University 5 Universiteto St., 01122 Vilnius, Lithuania Received 2004 12 02