National Scientific Conference Science, Culture and Education on the Eve of Dawn, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Laurynas Ivinskis’s birth

DIANA ŠILOBRITAITĖ

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

On 25–26 November 2010, the National Scientific Conference Science and Culture on the Eve of Dawn, dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Laurynas Ivinskis’s birth, was held at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. It was organized by the Institute’s Centre of Terminology.

The conference lasted two days. Papers were presented on the first day.

Most of the papers focused on L. Ivinskis and his terminological, lexicological, lexicographic, and literary work. Five speakers discussed L. Ivinskis’s terminological work and assessed the significance of his contributions to the Lithuanian language. Albina Auksoriūtė surveyed the Lithuanian names for minerals, plants, and fungi that L. Ivinskis had compiled and coined. The speaker emphasized that L. Ivinskis often coined scientific terms himself, since he was the first to write in Lithuanian about certain subjects in astronomy, geography, botany, and other natural sciences.

Palmira Zemlevičiūtė examined the origins and formation of one-word disease names in L. Ivinskis’s calendars. The speaker noted that the very first of L. Ivinskis’s calendars contained a section on the treatment of diseases, offering advice on how to treat infectious, surgical, traumatic, respiratory, digestive, ear, throat, and other human ailments. She observed that most of the one-word names examined are words of Lithuanian origin.

Robert Stunžinas discussed construction terms in L. Ivinskis’s calendars. The speaker noted that most of the terms in L. Ivinskis’s practical-advice sections are Lithuanian, consisting mainly of words from everyday speech that have acquired terminological status; however, loanwords (Slavicisms and Germanisms) and hybrids also occur.

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Zofija Babickienė examined the formations in L. Ivinskis’s 1861 calendar (derivatives formed with suffixes, prefixes, and endings, as well as compounds).

Jonas Klimavičius spoke about L. Ivinskis’s neologism nuokana. According to the speaker, this neologism is a derivative formed by Laurynas Ivinskis with an ending from Lithuanian Samogitian nu-kánóti ‘to torment, kill, murder’, which was adopted by Povilas Matulionis and passed on to modern nomenclature.

Ona Kažukauskaitė spoke about the relationship between L. Ivinskis’s lexicographic work and his lexicological studies.

Tomas Petreikis surveyed the distribution of L. Ivinskis’s Metskaitliai in Samogitia. In the history of their distribution, the speaker distinguished two key stages: from 1846 to 1851, L. Ivinskis was the compiler and publisher of the Metskaitliai; from 1855 to 1864, he was only the compiler.

Danutė Petkevičiūtė spoke about L. Ivinskis’s admirable character. Drawing on archival material discovered recently, the speaker presented new biographical facts that shed further light on L. Ivinskis’s character. She also drew attention to facts in the monograph Laurynas Ivinskis (1988), published a couple of decades earlier, that need correction.

Antanas Ivinskis discussed genealogy and personal traits in detail. He noted that documents on the nobility of families preserved in the Lithuanian State Archives provide material for the genealogy of Laurynas Rokas Ivinskis, compiler and publisher of the first Lithuanian calendars, while the origins of this family are revealed in reference works on noble and knightly families, heraldic books, and various encyclopedic publications prepared by Polish authors.

Ilona Čiužauskaitė surveyed L. Ivinskis’s literary career. The speaker emphasized the importance of the first Lithuanian calendars and highlighted the principal features of his journalism, creative writing, and translations. She noted that L. Ivinskis was perhaps the first in Lithuanian literature to raise questions of language culture, advocating the avoidance of affectation and the pursuit of simplicity of thought.

Džiuljeta Maskuliūnienė analyzed L. Ivinskis’s literary works, journalistic texts, and translations, and presented a general model of his didactic works.

Four speakers discussed other significant figures of the pre-dawn period and their work. Danguolė Mikulėnienė provided interesting information about the prominent Lithuanian dialectologist Jonas Juška. The speaker stated that J. Juška drew on his own travel experiences when describing Lithuanian dialects. She noted that J. Juška’s classification of Lithuanian dialects does not rely on

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solely according to the administrative-territorial principle characteristic of earlier Lithuanian grammars.

In her presentation, Vilija Sakalauskienė reviewed the words in Antanas Juška’s Lithuanian–Polish dictionary and concluded that A. Juška was the first to begin recording words of spoken language from dialects and to organize such rich spoken-language semantics.

Birutė Triškaitė discussed the manuscript entries made by the compiler of Clavis Germanico–Lithvana in Danielius Klein’s hymnal, Naujos giesmių knygos. The aim of her presentation was to demonstrate that the copyist of these manuscript hymns was the compiler of the German–Lithuanian dictionary Clavis Germanico–Lithvana, prepared in Lithuania Minor, whose identity has yet to be agreed upon.

Vilma Zubaitienė spoke about the non-lexicographic sources of Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann’s Lithuanian–German dictionary, Wörterbuch der Littauischen Sprache (1851). In addition to the main sources cited in the dictionary’s preface, the presenter also identified other sources—grammars and printed and manuscript collections of songs.

On the second day of the conference, an excursion was organized to places in Žemaitija associated with the memory of L. Ivinskis: the calendar museum in Kuršėnai, the Samogitian Diocese Museum in Varniai, and the Oginskiai Museum of Cultural History in Rietavas. A collection of conference abstracts and a program were also published, a promotional poster was printed, and an exhibition dedicated to L. Ivinskis was held at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language.

Received 2010-12-20

Diana Šilobritaitė Lietuvių kalbos institutas P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius E. paštas [email protected]

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