P E R S O N A L I T I E S

VYTAUTAS VITKAUSKAS

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

THE BROAD AND EXTENSIVE WORK OF LINGUIST JONAS PAULAUSKAS

The linguist Jonas Paulauskas, widely known in Baltic studies, would now have celebrated his 85th birthday and more than 50 years of service.

Jonas Paulauskas was born on January 9, 1923, in Jurbarkas. He attended Jurbarkas Gymnasium. Though he had been a good mathematician at school, at Kaunas University* he chose to study the Lithuanian language (to the astonishment of the whole town), because there was a great shortage of specialists in that field at the time. He had learned German and Latin well, was hardworking and disciplined, and came from a poor family.

* He studied at Kaunas University from 1945 to 1949. He completed his studies at Vilnius University in 1950. – Ed.

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J. Paulauskas’s principal and only workplace was the Institute of the Lithuanian Language (and Literature), in the Dictionary Editorial Office. Professor J. Balčikonis himself hired him. He tested his dialect and pronunciation (which the professor liked very much), and grumbled a little about his hurried handwriting, but this was no obstacle. When, on August 15, 1950, the future linguist sat down at a desk in the Dictionary Section’s room, he remained there for many years. He patiently learned the intricacies of lexicography and well understood the shift in the scope of the great Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (LKŽ).

The young lexicographer’s first assignments were proofreading volume III of the LKŽ and trips to the Dzūkija dialect-speaking areas—to investigate them for the Atlas of the Lithuanian Language and collect words for subsequent volumes of the LKŽ. After looking around and settling into his workplace, and seeing that scientific inquiry was encouraged there, he chose a challenging dissertation topic: “The Functions of Verb Prefixes in Contemporary Standard Lithuanian.” The dissertation defense was calm and dignified; the opponents raised no theoretical objections—they debated only the correctness of certain sentences—and unanimously awarded him the degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences (now a doctorate). The dissertation was published in 1958 in volume III of Literature and Language and used, with minor revisions, in volume II of the academic Grammar of the Lithuanian Language, published in 1971. Even today, lexicographers rely on this work and learn from it how to write dictionaries and descriptions of dialects.

J. Paulauskas was the only dictionary-maker to work on every volume of the LKŽ: he wrote the text and later edited the volumes. He devoted particular care to checking the data from the most important sources of this multivolume work—dialects and old writings. In his view, a dictionary’s value should be determined by the reliability of its material and its scholarly presentation; whether the first examples in an entry came from important sources or were slogans promoting socialist ideas and shaping people’s consciousness was unimportant. People would sort out what was genuine, and everything would fall into place of its own accord. And so it proved: ideological content of the Soviet kind diminished in later volumes of the LKŽ.

Alongside his ongoing work on the LKŽ and his plan to prepare a dictionary of Lithuanian phraseologisms, which Lithuania had not yet had, J. Paulauskas wrote and published many articles on language culture and various issues of terminology, especially legal terminology, in the press (including in Latvia and other countries). His Dictionary of Lithuanian Phraseology appeared in 1977. Interest was immense—the dictionary received as many as 20 reviews (in Latvia, Russia, and Germany). The work continued, the dictionary was continually improved, and more lexicographers were brought in. The Lithuanian Republic State Science Prize was awarded for the Dictionary of Phraseology (prepared with female colleagues) in 2001. This dictionary is now a handbook for Lithuanian lexicographers.

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Jonas Paulauskas accomplished a great deal; his work could be listed and listed again. He was a member of the editorial board for the 2nd and 3rd editions of the Dictionary of Contemporary Lithuanian. Of particular importance were the dictionaries he compiled: the Systematic Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language (1987) and the Systematic Dictionary of Lithuanian Phraseology (1995), intended for schools. And then there were the insightful, engaging dictionaries for primary-school pupils (with G. Kirvaitis, 1992) and teenagers (1997). J. Paulauskas’s contributions to Lithuanian lexicography were recognized with more than one award and even the Order of the Cross of Vytis, III Class—something like the crowning achievement of all his work.

The reserved, calm linguist was an example to everyone of working diligently and thoughtfully, and not sitting idle. In difficult moments, he knew how to bring people together for serious and responsible work. Because of staff turnover in the Dictionary Department, editing of the final volumes of the Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language had to stop. We talked with J. Paulauskas about what to do—whether to halt the work, given that both funding and considerable public attention had been devoted to it. I remember it as if it were today: “Let’s take on some of the work, contribute more, and bring it home to edit.” And so we did: Volume XVIII came out on time, and no one even noticed the disruption.

Jonas Paulauskas died in Vilnius on December 12, 2003. His faithful wife, the distinguished scholar of linguistics Aldona Paulauskienė, devoted her whole life to caring for her husband and shielding him from household chores, creating every opportunity for him to pursue his work in linguistics.

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