at work. There were simply no conditions for introducing various innovations. K. Ulvydas enjoyed promoting matters of practical language use. He always spoke very persuasively and engagingly. As a result, he was continually invited to various groups to give lectures. Lithuanians in the United States, too, had listened to his eloquent speeches. Even after retiring, K. Ulvydas maintained his ties with the staff of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. He was a member of the editorial board of “Kalbos kultūra” and was elected to the Institute’s academic council almost until his final years, where his authoritative voice was always valued. In February 1996, K. Ulvydas was awarded the Order of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas. Through his work, he also erected an enduring monument to himself. May he rest in peace in the soil of Vilnius.

Jonas Paulauskas

IN MEMORY OF ANTANAS LYBERIS AND HIS WORK

In the great “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language,” the two-letter abbreviation Er added to many words and sentences is a modest but enduring monument to two linguists from the village of Eriškiai (Panevėžys District). One was the renowned educator Juozas Balčikonis, a continuer of the work of Jonas Jablonskis and Kazimieras Būga; the other was his relative, Antanas Lyberis. In choosing his path in life, the latter was undoubtedly influenced by the words and growing authority of his older fellow countryman.

Indeed, after graduating from Panevėžys Gymnasium in 1928, A. Lyberis decided only a few years later (in 1932) to continue his studies at Vytautas Magnus University, choosing classical philology. He graduated in 1939. Like many young people studying at the time, A. Lyberis had to earn a living while still a student. Soon after he began his studies, he was invited to work at the editorial office of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, which the Ministry of Education had tasked J. Balčikonis with establishing and leading at the end of 1930. For A. Lyberis, the editorial office was like a second university, providing theoretical knowledge of lexicography and practical skills in dictionary-making. There he had to learn to collect words from spoken language and various written sources, organize the rapidly expanding card file inherited from K. Būga, get used to writing dictionary entries, read proofs, and perform other tasks. In the “Foreword” to the first volume of the “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language,” published in 1941 and covering words beginning with A–B, editor-in-chief J. Balčikonis named “the closest collaborators of the editorial office, without whose conscientious work and dedication this volume of the dictionary could not have appeared.” A. Lyberis was among these collaborators.

Later, A. Lyberis would speak many times, with warmth and interest, to younger generations of linguists about other members of the dictionary editorial staff of that era as well—Napalys Grigas, Elzė Mikalauskaitė, Jonas Mikeliūnas, Juozas Senkus, Zenonas Uoselis, Kostas Vosylius, and others. The years of war and occupation scattered the small group of staff of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language

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editorial office. In 1942, A. Lyberis also left Kaunas. He began working as a teacher at Prienai’s “Žiburys” Gymnasium and, in 1946–1947, served as the school’s principal. During the difficult and complex years of war and the postwar period, he saw many cohorts of students into adult life. Among them were the linguist Jonas Kazlauskas, the poet Justinas Marcinkevičius, the writer Vytautas Bubnys, and many well-known teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, economists, and other specialists.

His work at the school did not distance A. Lyberis from the important concerns of Lithuanian language scholarship at the time. In 1950, he helped the Institute of the Lithuanian Language organize its first dialectological expedition in the environs of Prienai, led by J. Balčikonis and B. Larinas. During the expedition, the “Program for Collecting Materials for the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language” (published in 1951; second edition, 1956) was tested in practice. A. Lyberis’s assistance proved very useful to the organizing committee of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, which was searching for the part of the card file for the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language that the Institute’s director, A. Salys, had rescued from the horrors of war and hidden in a safe place (see Mūsų kalba, 1972, No. 2, pp. 26–31).

From 1947 onward, A. Lyberis was not only a teacher but also a full-time employee of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language (from 1952, the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature). He often took part in meetings of the compilers and editors of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language in Vilnius, while in Prienai he wrote or edited dictionary text written by other colleagues, using card-file boxes he had brought back with him, and read proofs. In the final decades of his life, by then living permanently in Vilnius, A. Lyberis was one of the principal compilers of the great “Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language.” His name—as a member of the editorial board, writer of entries, or contributor to other tasks—appears in 12 volumes of the dictionary. In 1965, he and six other lexicographers received the State Prize of Lithuania for volumes III–VI of the dictionary.

A. Lyberis was one of the compilers and editors of another work of great importance for practical language use, the “Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian” (1954; second edition, 1972).

While still in Prienai, A. Lyberis began studying word synonymy. He wrote and, in 1959, defended his candidate’s dissertation (now a doctoral dissertation), “A Dictionary of Lithuanian Synonyms and Its Principles of Compilation.” Two years later, his “Dictionary of Lithuanian Synonyms” was published. In the introductory article to this first dictionary of its kind in the history of Lithuanian lexicography, the author wrote: “The vocabulary of the Lithuanian language is very rich and varied. In addition to the oldest Lithuanian words, which are close to the Proto-Indo-European language, Lithuanian has an enormous number of words that arose in various periods from ancient roots. Yet the richness of Lithuanian lies not only in the quantity of words, but also in the diversity of their meanings, their expressiveness, and the abundance of synonymous means.” In an effort to demonstrate these features of Lithuanian clearly, this dictionary presents 720 synonym groups. Twenty years later (1981), A. Lyberis published a much more extensive “Dictionary of Synonyms,” containing about 5,200 synonym groups comprising more than 27,000 words and phraseological expressions.

A. Lyberis did not forget young people pursuing their studies, either. Together with N. Grigas, he compiled

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He edited and published “A Lithuanian Spelling Dictionary for Schools” (6 editions appeared between 1956 and 1980); with Pr. Kniūkšta, “A Learner’s Dictionary of Lithuanian Spelling and Accentuation” (4 editions appeared between 1983 and 1996); with V. Kosuchin, the school dictionary “Lithuanian-Russian Dictionary” (1956); and with K. Gaivėnis and V. Šernas, “A School Lithuanian-Russian Dictionary” (1985). A. Lyberis also compiled a larger “Lithuanian-Russian Dictionary” intended for a wider readership. Its first edition (1962) contained about 37,000 words, and its second, revised and expanded edition (1989), about 65,000.

A. Lyberis began contributing to “Naujoji romuva” while still a student (his first publication, which appeared in 1935, introduced the public to J. Jablonskis’s collected works being published by J. Balčikonis). Later, in scholarly publications and periodicals, he published numerous articles on Lithuanian lexicography, lexicology, terminology, language culture, and other subjects, as well as significant reminiscences about the history of Lithuanian linguistics and individual linguists.

On November 6, 1996, A. Lyberis marked his 87th birthday after nearly six years of suffering from a serious illness; November 22 was the last day of his life. At Vilnius’s Karveliškės Cemetery, a large gathering of relatives, students, colleagues, and friends bade farewell to the linguist, who had accomplished much and left behind the fruits of fine work, and to a teacher and person whose memory is cherished. Antanas Lyberis and his works have become part of the history of Lithuanian linguistics.

Kazys Morkūnas

IN MEMORIAM RŪDOLFAS GRABIS (1906-1996)

The year 1996 was a year of painful losses for Latvian linguistics: Marta Rudzýte, professor at the University of Latvia, left her much-loved field of scholarship far too soon; Valdis Zepas, a Latgalian who had grown up in exile and was a professor at the University of Wisconsin, died before completing the work he had begun; and, having celebrated his ninetieth birthday in fine style, Rūdolfas Grabis, whose valuable works had adorned his earthly journey, also brought it to a close on December 17. He was one of the most eminent Latvian language researchers of recent decades.

R. Grabis was born on August 11, 1906, at “Gribži” in the former Kūduoms parish (Cēsis district). He graduated from the University of Latvia in 1934. His teachers there included Ana Abele, Ludis Berzinis, Janis Endzelynas, and other leading Latvian philologists of the time.

In 1931, the Latvian Philologists’ Society journal “Filologu biedrības raksti,” edited by J. Endzelynas, published the first substantial work by R. Grabis, then a student: a description of his native dialect (“Kūduoma pagasta izloksnes apraksts”). In 1935, the same journal published another dialectological article by R. Grabis, “Notes on the Dialects of Straupe Parish” (“Piezīmes par Straupes draudzes izloksnēm”).

R. Grabis taught at Riga secondary schools and lectured at the Riga Teachers’ Institute.

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