ZITA ŠIMĖNAITĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

ANTANAS LYBERIS’S LIFE AND WORK: LEXICOGRAPHY

(On the 100th anniversary of his birth)

A. Lyberis witnessed the establishment of the editorial office of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language and the development of the Lithuanian lexicographic school. In 1932, while he was still a student, Juozas Balčikonis invited him to help organize and expand Kazimieras Būga’s card index. He recorded words for the Dictionary’s card index in his native Eriškiai and other places, and prepared dictionary texts. A. Lyberis gave a detailed account of the editorial office’s work from 1932 to 1942 in the article “The Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language and its workers,” written for the editorial office’s fiftieth anniversary (Our Language 1, 1981, 5–17). J. Balčikonis assembled a team of lexicographers tasked with beginning work on the great Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, and A. Lyberis worked productively at the outset. In the Preface to volume I of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language, published in 1941, the editor named him among the closest collaborators of the editorial office, “without whose conscientious work and dedication” the dictionary could not have appeared. A. Lyberis continued the account of the dictionary’s preparation in the article “Work on the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language” (Language Culture 43, 1982, 4–13). Together with his teacher Juozas Starkus, he discovered part of the Dictionary’s card index, which had been hidden in Kaunas during the war; they found it in the basement of St. Anthony’s Church in Žaliakalnis (“At last, the entire card index has been found.” – Our Language 2, 1972, 30–31).

A. Lyberis’s 1959 dissertation, The Dictionary of Lithuanian Synonyms and the Principles of Its Compilation, is the first theoretical work devoted to problems involved in compiling Lithuanian dictionaries. The title of the dissertation abstract is: I. Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian and the Principles of Its Compilation. II. The Dictionary of Lithuanian Synonyms and the Principles of Its Compilation. It states that the work submitted for defense consists of two parts: 1 – the text portion (letters: b, c, č, f, g, h, i, j, k, n, o, p, š, z, ž – 59 author’s sheets in all) and introduction to the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian, published by the Lithuanian SSR Academy of Sciences in 1954; 2 – The Dictionary of Lithuanian Synonyms and its theoretical introduction. Thus, A. Lyberis was awarded his degree for the principles underlying the compilation of two new Lithuanian dictionaries.

A. Lyberis was a linguist engaged in both the theory and practice of dictionary-making. Over fifty years of active work, he contributed to the most important Lithuanian dictionaries: the academic Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language and the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian. From 1941 to 1986, he prepared and edited as many as 14 volumes of the academic Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (I₁, I₂, II₁, II₂, III–VIII, X, XII–XIV). In 1965, he and other lexicographers received the Lithuanian State Prize for their work on the dictionary. A. Lyberis was the text author and editor of the first two editions (1954, 1972) of the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian. For the first edition, he selected words from the card index and wrote most of the text (Napalys Grigas wrote part of it). Zofija Kėzytė recalls that the still-unpublished dictionary’s

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manuscripts were used by writers of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language. The first contributors had the hardest task: they had to provide not only the corpus of the first prescriptive Lithuanian dictionary and select usage examples, but also identify the principal (most important) meanings of words and explain them. Later, the foundational corpus of this dictionary became the basis for new editions and was used by compilers of new bilingual dictionaries.

Kalbininkas yra pirmojo Lietuvių kalbos sinonimų žodyno (1961) autorius, aprašęs 720 sinoniminių žodžių lizdų. Vėliau parengė išsamesnį Sinonimų žodyną (1981), kuriame aprašė 5200 sinoniminių žodžių grupių. Šio žodyno 2-ąjį pataisytą leidimą, redaguotą Jono Paulausko, 2002 m. išleido Lietuvių kalbos institutas.

A. Lyberis’s first reviews, published in Naujoji Romuva, concerned the Writings of Jonas Jablonskis (1935) and Leonardo Dambrauskas’s Language Adviser (1939). While working at a research institute, he also attended to the needs of schools. He early recognized the great importance and relevance of spelling and correct-language matters to schools. The Lithuanian Spelling Dictionary for Schools, prepared by A. Lyberis in 1956 (co-author N. Grigas), went through six editions, while the Dictionary for Learning Lithuanian Spelling and Accentuation, published in 1983 (co-author Pranas Kniūkšta), went through 13 editions (most recently reprinted in 2009).

The Lithuanian–Russian dictionaries prepared by this lexicographer are still being published today: ten different editions have appeared, the latest in 2009. In 1956, he and V. Kosuchin published a Lithuanian–Russian dictionary for schools containing about 2,200 words; in 1985, with Kazys Gaivenas and V. Šernas, he published School Lithuanian–Russian Dictionary, which the Šviesa publishing house reissued under the title Concise Lithuanian–Russian Dictionary (1989, 2002, and on CD-ROM in 2003). The Lithuanian–Russian Dictionary, published in 1962, contained about 37,000 words; the 1971 edition, about 50,000; and the 1988 edition, about 65,000. The last version was reissued three more times (2001, 2004, 2008) and on CD-ROM (2004).

In 2009, the Lexicography Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language compiled and published a collection of A. Lyberis’s works, Theory and Practice of Lexicography. It contains articles on research into lexicography, synonymy, vocabulary, and accentology; the abstract of his dissertation; recollections by family members, colleagues, and students; and a bibliography of his works. The book draws on materials from the archive donated to the Institute by his daughter, Jūratė Lyberytė-Lukoševičienė. The Institute’s library holdings were also supplemented by a collection of more than 200 linguistics books.

The dictionaries prepared by Antanas Lyberis continue to thrive in the 21st century: they are an invaluable support both to dictionary compilers and to language professionals.

Z. ŠIMĖNAITĖ. Antano Lyberio gyvenimas ir darbas – leksikografija

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