Evalda Jakaitienė, Sturla Berg-Olsen. „Lietuvių–norvegų kalbų žodynas“

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA XLVI (2002), 193-212 REVIEWS Reviews EVALDA JAKAITIENĖ, STURLA BERG-OLSEN, LITHUANIAN- -NORWEGIAN LANGUAGE DICTIONARY. Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2001, 628 p. 0. The reviewed dictionary is the first bilingual dictionary of this language combination. The main authors of the dictionary, Prof. Evalda Jakaitienė and Sturla Berg-Olsen (Oslo), have also involved in the preparation of this work a group of staff of the Department of Lithuanian Language of Vilnius University, doctoral students and students of this and the Department of Scandinavian Studies. This work is not merely a new bilingual dictionary for mainly practical purposes. The dictionary is not distinguished by its volume (about 22,000 Lithuanian words and their equivalents in Norwegian), but by the fact that the authors worked according to a consistent concept of lexicography and did not avoid innovations that encourage a slightly different look at some language facts. The words were selected based on the principle of their frequency of use, therefore in the dictionary we will find the main vocabulary of the Lithuanian language and the most commonly used terms in certain areas in everyday speech. A striking innovation is the consistent presentation of the names of the inhabitants and individuals of almost all countries of the world by nationality. Although the frequency of use of some of them, e.g.: Beninese, Botswanan, Burundian, Ghanaian, Honduran, and the singular presentation, e.g.: Finn, Finno-Ugric, Hebrew, Hittite, Indo-European, alongside the plural presentation of members of the same lexical-semantic group, judėjai, sovietai, etc., may raise doubts, nevertheless, in the absence of any dictionary in which these names can be found, the chosen path is only welcome. However, it is regrettable that the authors, having compiled lists of the most important Lithuanian place names and names, presented separately, for some reason abandoned the names of the most important foreign countries and place names. Unfortunately, there is not even a folk name Lithuania, especially knowing how much we, Lithuanians, have to worry about which dictionary to check the pronunciation of this folk name (in most Lithuanian dictionaries, even in the Pronunciation Dictionary of Pronouns published by the Lithuanian Language Society (Vilnius: Kultūra, 1994) this word is not available! ). In the dictionary we also find more widely used or proposed new borrowings and new creations, which are not found in many other monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, e.g.: surfboard, sausage, cereals, boots, flyer, hamburger. However, the authors somehow forgot the airport, although they provided both other variants of this word, aerodromas and aerouostas. 2.Hitherto, words traditionally regarded as word forms are presented as independent lexems, more precise references to their part of the language. This applies to some active and passive, named and unnamed participants, e.g.: devoted, respected, residential, tense, immature, free, bulletproof, waterproof, inhabitable, unspeakable, unknown, grown up, worn, demonstrative, wary, past, deciding. Gali- 194 | RECENZIJOS I can only doubt a few examples: is it really more common to use the non-noun pronoun nedegamas, —this form is indicated as a title word, —than its noun form nedegamasis? The same can be said about the adjective gimtas as compared to gimtasis. When indicating the part of the language of such words, the authors carefully insured themselves by providing a partic/adj certificate, showing that these are adjectively used participants. It is quite understandable that by calling these words adjectives (in lexical meaning and syntactic relationships they are adjectives!) it would be a breach of the traditional theoretical basis of language division used in Lithuanian morphology. From a lexicographical point of view, a new look has also been given to the conjugative forms of verbs and prepositional verbs with conjugative suffixes: some forms of independent lexical meaning in this dictionary seem to be presented as independent lexicons for the first time in Lithuanian lexicography, e.g.: atsistatydinti, derintis, įsitraukti, įsižeisti, mokytis, mylėtis. This has both theoretical and practical significance. Although in the newer Lithuanian grammar, conjugated verbs with non-conjugated equivalents are called vedic verbs, i.e., they are recognized as independent lexems, they are still presented in dictionaries as forms of non-conjugated verbs. Thus, the authors of this dictionary consistently adhere to the theoretical approach, according to which conjugative verbs are primarily an action category. The presentation of the above mentioned active and passive participants and recidivistic verbs in independent lexicons is also valuable from a practical point of view. This dictionary will be extremely enjoyed by Scandinavian users, who have not learned the Lithuanian language so much that, for example, the meaning of the words atsidavęs, neišbrendamas or sprendžiamasis could be checked only after first determining the basic verbs, i.e. atsidavė (to give up, to give up), neišbrenda —išbrenda (to emerge, to emerge) and sprendžia (to decide, to decide),—these words were so far considered as verb forms and are not included in separate headings. Compared with other monolingual or bilingual dictionaries of Lithuanian language, this work contains a greater number of contemporary pronouns and adverbs, which are raised by the title words, e.g.: bet kada, bet kaip, bet kas, bet koks, bet kiek, bet kur, bet kuris, daug kaip, daug kas, daug kur, kur kas. This presentation more accurately reflects the theoretical status and usage of these lexemes. 3.Some complement forms and variations of the root word forms are given by the title words, e.g.: we, you, you in, you, you in, your (forgotten by him), I, me, me, me, me, me, me in. Unfortunately, this principle, which is beneficial for foreign speakers, is not consistently observed everywhere: for example, the two and three-vowel forms of numerals, which are equally difficult for foreigners, are presented only in one slot with their basic form. It is a pity that the dictionary does not reflect the functional differences between the lexicons you (2nd person singular) and you (2nd person plural, politeness pronoun), although in one example there is a hint of their difference: Thank you for the letter. Following the practical approach of providing some of the supletive forms and the forms of varied root words as headwords, it would be possible to go even further: to highlight the most varied forms of the root verbs as headwords, for example: lįsti, lenda, lindo; stop, stop, stop, stop. Such verbs are as much a problem for foreigners as the so-called irregular verbs of Scandinavian (and generally Germanic) languages for Lithuanians, which are usually listed as headings in dictionaries or at least in additional lists. 4. Detailed grammatical information about the title words. Here we find not only the references to the part of the language traditionally presented in Lithuanian lexicography, the pronunciation of nouns, the basic forms of verbs, but also references that, it seems, we will not find in any of the so far prepared 195 Lithuanian dictionaries: the genitive forms of all nouns, the plural forms of some pronouns and numerals, references to the transitive and grammatical conjugation of verbs, and preposition-controlled verbs. Such information will be of great benefit not only to Scandinavians learning Lithuanian, but also to Lithuanians learning Norwegian, who will be able to check the grammatical conjugation of some verbs in this dictionary, e.g.: represent + someone, correspond + something, etc. A great service from the authors of the dictionary and for Norwegian language learners —comprehensive grammatical information on Norwegian equivalents: all Norwegian equivalents of Lithuanian headings, except for single syllables, are conjugated, the pronunciation of incorrectly pronounced words is shown, indicators of gender and plural are shown next to nouns, endings of verbs’ basic forms are provided and even the grammatical management of verbs is indicated! Even the best bilingual Norwegian (and Scandinavian) dictionaries rarely provide so many references at once. Detailed grammatical information about the title words is an expression of the authors’ concept of lexicography: after all, the semantics of words, especially verbs and adjectives, must be expressed not only by precise metalinguistic definitions, synonyms, equivalents in another language, but also by the grammatical connection of those words. The description of the semantics of words is the most time-consuming and insight-requiring stage of the preparation of any dictionary. The authors of the thesis tried to consistently show the central layer of Lithuanian lexical semantics: dialectal and rare meanings of words in the current common language were abandoned, thus saving space for very valuable examples of word use. Somewhere else this principle is not observed, for example, it was hardly appropriate to give the very rare 3-th meaning of the verb worshipping "to carry, carry, carry', or the 7-th meaning of the verb going out "to marry —about women'. In addition, here and there are indicated already at present, seemingly, obsolete (historical) meanings, e.g.: district 2. (‘the smallest administrative or territorial unit’), —in Lithuania districts as an administrative unit no longer exist, —but at the same time some widely used meanings are forgotten, e.g., environment in the terminological meaning of ‘the whole of living and non-living nature and anthropogenic elements of the territory- ’, etc. On the other hand, the volume of the recently created Lithuanian language textbook does not yet allow to draw definitive conclusions about the frequency of lexical meanings and most often it is necessary to rely on the semantic structure of words presented in the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian Language or larger bilingual Lithuanian dictionaries and the linguistic intuition of the authors themselves. The dictionary compilers demonstrate their knowledge of the theoretical basis of lexical semantics, linguistic intuition, and lexicographic skills. Almost every part of the dictionary that begins with a new letter contains words whose semantic structure is presented more accurately than in other works of Lithuanian lexicography. It is better to distinguish homonyms, e.g.: 1 derėti ("to negotiate a price"), 2 derėti ("to give fruit") and 3 derėti ("to agree"); 1 waste (‘about time Waste’) and 2 waste (‘to vanish, to end’); 1 gaubti (‘to enclose’) and 2 gaubti (‘to act to form iSkiluma’). Corrected the semantic structure of many verbs by using Roman numerals I and II to regroup their meanings, e.g.: fear I (something) and fear II (for something); burning I (‘being exposed to fire’, etc.) and burning II (‘making it burn’); add I (‘to lay’, etc.) and add II (‘to beat’); work I (‘to act’, etc.) and work II (‘to produce’- ); go I (‘judéti’) and go II (‘turéti obligations’). The authors of the dictionary indicate that in this case they use Roman numerals to distinguish the “transitive and intransitive usage” of the same verb. Nevertheless, Roman numerals actually sometimes denote unambiguous homonyms, and this can be seen from the paradigmatic, syntagmatic, etc. analysis of verbs, e.g.: dėti I (‘to lay down’, etc.) and dėti II (‘to beat’); go to 196 | REVIEWS (‘judéti’) and go II (“to have duties”); turn out I (“turn to remove” etc.) and turn out II (“stray aside”); call I ('cancel') and call II ('can shout'). These inconsistencies in the semantic presentation of words and other inaccuracies do not diminish the value of the dictionary. The fact that the authors of the dictionary have already clarified the semantic structure of a large number of words shows the authors’ determination to prove that the preparation of Lithuanian dictionaries based on modern lexicography is not a Sisyphus- ’s work, having a concept of lexical semantics and lexicography and a huge textbook — all it takes is time and diligence. The discussed innovations of the first Lithuanian-Norwegian dictionary show that the authors are no longer satisfied with repeating the lexicographic experience of other languages: this dictionary lays the foundations of the modern concept of lexicography in Lithuanian lexicography. At first glance, the modest bilingual dictionary ranks among the best works of Lithuanian lexicography in terms of the quality of the grammatical and semantic information provided about words in both languages. The theoretical ideas of lexicography could be drawn from it by the compilers of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language Dictionary, preparing a new edition of the dictionary, as well as by editors of Lithuanian and other foreign language dictionaries. Dalia Barauskaitė Mikkelsen Received 2002 07 03 Dommervaenget 26 C, 1.tv. 4000 Roskilde, Denmark [email protected] ONDREJ SEVCIK, BOHUMIL VYKYPEL, EDS., GRAMMATICUS. STUDIA LINGUISTICA ADOLFO ERHARTO QUINQUE ET SEPTUAGENARIO OBLATA. Brno: Masarykova universita, 2001, 234 p. The title alone provides sufficient information about the AnlaB, from which the fellowship present for discussion appears. Sufficient reason for reviewing it in this journal is not only the fact that the revered jubilee, Prof. Adolf Erhart, former holder of the chair of comparative linguistics at the University of Brienz, has always devoted special attention to Baltic studies (as evidenced by his studies of Lithuanian and comparative Baltic linguistics, cf. Erhart 1956, 1984), but also the exceptionally strong representation of Baltic issues in this volume. At the beginning, let us give a brief overview of the content of the book. The etymological problem is strongly represented. Eva Havlovi (,,Ie. kofen *ala germanskė nazvy pro ‘vék’, pp. 56-63), Helena Karlikova (,,K staroslovénskému substantivu sppde“, pp. 99-104), Boris Skalka (,,St[aro]sl[ovėnskė] seta/seti semper provocans®, pp. 144-148) and Pavla Val¢dkova (,,Regarding P[roto-]S[lavic] *ėde“, pp. 201-205) have contributed to special studies in this field. In some articles, special attention is paid to a sub-division of the Indo-European lexicon or to the lexicon of one of the Indo-European language branches. It is the Studies by Vaclav Blazek (Indo-European kinship terms in *-o,ter”, pp. 24-33) and Ilona JanySkova (,Etymologie nazvū tisu ve slovanskych jazicich- “, pp. 91-98). In addition to the Indo-European, the Dravidian and Altaic etymology is also represented (Jaroslav Vacek,