Romanian Dictionary Research Articles

Some remarks on the lexicographical entry for ierodiacon

In the present study, we aim to provide a critical analysis of the treatment of the word ierodiacon (hierodeacon) in several Romanian dictionaries. Following the investigation of a substantial number of documents, we also intend to show that there was a period in the history of the Romanian language in which a neutralization of the semantic opposition “married deacon (diacon de mir)” / ”monk deacon (diacon călugăr)” took place in some contexts, the term ierodiacon being used for both meanings. This phenomenon was not recorded in the historical dictionary of the Romanian language (relevant for the example under discussion being the old series, DA, coordinated by S. Pușcariu) nor in any other Romanian dictionary that we are aware of. At the end of the study we intend to add some theoretical reflections on the semantic evolution of ierodiacon, also referring to the way in which the entry for this term could be structured in the historical dictionary of the Romanian language.

Dicționar de etno-horonimie românească

The article aims to revisit the subject of a Romanian dictionary of ethnonyms and choronyms, starting from the dictionary conceived by Eugen Munteanu within the project "Romanian Ethnonymy. A historical dictionary of peoples and countries names in Romanian” (financed by CNCS, project no. 1394, 2006-2008). After presenting the principles of the dictionary, by comparison with the dictionary of ethnonyms proposed by Constantin Dominte (2005), the difficulties of such work are discussed, an entry written within the framework of the project is reproduced and some modifications are proposed.

Teaching Slavonic in 17th century Romania: teaching material by Staico, professor at Târgoviște

The aim of this study is to present, based on the Rom. ms. 312 from the Academy Library in Bucharest, the teaching material used by a teacher of Slavonic in the second half of the 17th century. Rom. ms. 312 BAR is well-known particularly because it contains the largest dictionary belonging to the group of the first bilingual Romanian dictionaries. The elaboration of these dictionaries should be considered in relation to the political and cultural context of the reign of Matei Basarab, in a period in which Wallachia was influenced by the cultural prestige of Kyiv and of the metropolitan Petru Movilă, who influenced the cultural development of the Romanian Principalities. Matei Basarab wanted to restore the dominance of the Slavonic language and culture, by encouraging the development of schools, among other measures. The necessary linguistic tools were provided by Kyiv, namely the Slavonic-Ruthenian lexicon and Meletius Smotrytsky’s Slavonic grammar (1619). These tools, besides being used as such in schools, provide models for the first Romanian dictionaries and the first Slavonic grammar translated into Romanian. Six Slavonic-Romanian dictionaries have survived, all written in the second half of the 17th century (except for one dating from 1649) in Wallachia, based on the Slavonic-Ruthenian lexicon published by Pamvo Berynda in 1627, which these six works adapted both in terms of the number of entries and the content of the Romanian definitions. Except for the lexicon issued in 1649, the others seem to be modified copies based on a single version. Two manuscripts containing the first Romanian bilingual lexicons also include copies after the same Romanian redaction of the Slavonic grammar. The Rom. ms. 312 comprises the lexicon, part of the grammar, and other lexicographical components, organized as additions to the main word lists. There are several studies on the content of Rom. ms. 312, yet previous research only presents it from a general perspective without much detail on its components. We shall demonstrate that its content is also more complex than that of the other lexicons, indicating and presenting its parts: the first list of words taken from the Slavonic-Ruthenian lexicon; a second list which is independent of it, but which can also be found in three of the other lexicons included in the group; three thematic lists and two lists without a specific theme, plus a dictionary of proper names translated into Slavonic, which has never been studied. Furthermore, we also present opinions on the author of the grammar included in this lexicon. A comparative analysis of the Slavonic grammar of Rom. ms. 312 and the one in Rom. ms. 3473 from the Romanian Academy Library allowed us to advance the hypothesis that these are copies of a previous writing, which was not preserved.

On “The Fabrick of the Tongue”. Language Metaphors Used to Advocate Descriptivism/Prescriptivism in English and Romanian Dictionaries

"On “The Fabrick of the Tongue”. Language Metaphors Used to Advocate Descriptivism/Prescriptivism in English and Romanian Dictionaries. There has been considerable scholarly interest in the relationship between language and national identity. The topic is vast and multi-faceted, but in this paper we are especially interested in the manner in which the perceived interdependence between ‘mother tongue’ and ‘fatherland’ has often prompted policies intended to protect the former, and therefore the latter, of whatever was regarded as harmful influence. In particular, we intend to survey some lexicographical work undertaken in Great Britain and (what is now) Romania between the middle of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th century in order to compare decisions on prescriptivism or descriptivism in dictionaries, and the reasons behind them. While some background information will be necessary, our main focus will be the language metaphors which lexicographers and other people who brought a contribution to dictionary making resorted to in order to support their arguments in favour of or against prescriptivism/descriptivism. Keywords: language metaphor, lexicography, dictionary, descriptivism, prescriptivism, purism "

Words of Japanese origin in Romanian dictionaries of recent words

In this study, we discuss the status and features of the words of Japanese origin in Romanian, based on Romanian dictionaries of neologisms and recent words. Several studies on different types of dictionaries of European languages show that, in recent decades, most borrowings into Western languages from a language outside the Western cultural space come from Japanese. A careful analysis demonstrates that this tendency can be also identified in the recent lexical dynamics of the Romanian language. First, we outline the context and objectives of the paper and discuss some terminological issues. This is followed by a short historical background and a presentation of the Romanian dictionaries used to collect the corpus. Quantitative information is provided regarding the data from each dictionary. Finally, we proceed to a qualitative analysis of the data.

Complex aspects of hate speech and their problematic representation in dictionaries ..

The paper discusses an official response provided by the spokesperson of the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC), addressing previous criticism by a popular Romanian journalist of several statements by Patriarch Daniel, the head of the ROC. Taking its cue from previous research by van Dijk (1995), the paper examines the lexical choices in the representation of an outgroup in the text, which include the abundant use of derived words based on a rich range of negative prefixes, most of which are salient to Romanian speakers. Emphasizing the role played by these evaluative prefixes to create “epithets” which target the group represented as holding views different from those of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the paper argues that the text, which does not include direct insults, and which relies on “sarcastic irony” (Dynel 2016), emerges as an instance of covert hate speech. The paper goes on to discuss the role of Romanian dictionaries in identifying instances of “overt” and “covert” hate speech.

Gendered Epithets in Two Prominent Romanian Dictionaries

Abstract The present paper seeks to investigate the representation of a relevant number of gendered epithets in two prominent Romanian dictionaries, the most recent edition of DOOM (2021, Third Edition) and the current edition of DEX (2016, Revised Edition based on the first and second editions). Taking into account the prescriptive dimension which both these dictionaries share and the fact that they both retain their status as significant reference books in present-day Romania, the paper examines the way in which these current dictionaries choose to describe these words, arguing for the significance of the “metadata” (Nunberg, 2018; Pullum, 2018) component in the lexicographical representation of lexical items which can function as gendered insults.

Les débuts de la lexicographie multilingue roumaine: ressorts pragmatiques et influences culturelles

The Beginnings of Romanian Multilingual Lexicography: Pragmatic Sources and Cultural Influences. The beginnings of Romanian multilingual lexicography are deeply rooted in the first religious texts translated from Slavonic on the territory of the Romanian Principalities. The first dictionaries were aimed at fulfilling practical needs, being conceived as annexes to Slavonic or translated religious literature circulating at the time on the Romanian territory. This study provides an analysis of the first Romanian lexicographic projects, identifying their prototypes and describing the pragmatic background that these lexicographic initiatives were based on. Many of these works have sadly been lost, while others have been just partially preserved in private libraries. In these conditions, for the reconstruction of the Romanian lexicography belonging to that specific period, we resorted to two categories of sources: the notations and testimonies of the authors of the first lexicographic projects, and studies on the old Romanian lexicography. As they were not based on the rigorous scientific conception of a proper lexicographic school, the first Romanian dictionaries reflect the initiative of some scholars, revealing both their perspective on the role of such lexicographic tools and the stage of development of the Romanian language at the time.

Lexicography and the history of culture (The case of Teodor Corbea’s Romanian–Latin Dictionary)

This study aims at pointing to the cultural dimensions of lexicography, both by revealing the cultural content of lexicographic works and the authors’ cultural horizons and by searching for a precise cultural motivation for compiling dictionaries. One such particular exercise is applied to Teodor Corbea’s Latin–Romanian Dictionary, elaborated between 1691–1702. Our study focuses on the encyclopædic character of this work and its relations with the Greco-Roman culture. It also analyses the Latin–Romanian similarities and the way the Romance character of the Romanian language is reflected.

Analysis of incantation vocabulary of Vlachs (Romanians) from Eastern Serbia on the subject of lexical borrowings

The article discusses the lexical borrowings from the Serbian language in the incantations of Vlachs (Romanians) from Eastern Serbia and is based on the authors’ field materials. Incantation vocabulary analysis is carried out on the example of two texts recorded from native speakers of Oltenian dialect of the Romanian language from the villages of Zaječar and Negotin. There is an incantation called Întorsura mare (literally „Great return“, this incantation aims at removing damage and returning it to the person who caused it); the spell De noroc (Good luck) is meant to attract good luck. During the field research were recorded other incantations, mainly aimed at curing various diseases: the incantation of toothache or ear inflammation (De năjit), boils (De buboaie), inflammation of the glands (De gâlci), mercury poisoning (De argint viu, lit. “Of live silver”) etc. The informants from whom the incantations were recorded are elderly women, all of whom completed at least primary school, but do not know the written form of their native language, because they studied in Serbian. The texts of incantations have a stable character (exclude the variability of the components). However, some borrowings from the Serbian language, which are part of modern lexical duplicates and are not recorded in Romanian dictionaries, are still preserved in the texts of the incantations

The development and validation of the Romanian version of Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 (Ro-LIWC2015)

Today, performing automatic language analysis to extract meaning from natural language is one of the top-notch directions in social science research, but it can be challenging. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 (LIWC2015; Pennebaker et al. 2015) is one of the most versatile, yet easy to master instruments to transform any text into data, meeting the needs of psychologists who are not usually proficient in data science. Moreover, LIWC2015 is already available in multiple languages, which opens the door to exciting intercultural quests. The current article introduces the first Romanian version of LIWC2015, Ro-LIWC2015, and thus, contributes to the line of research concerning multilingual analysis. Throughout the paper, we describe the challenges of creating the Romanian dictionary and discuss other linguistics aspects, which could be useful for new adaptations of LIWC2015. Also, we present the results of two studies for assessing the criterion validity of Ro-LIWC2015. The first study focuses on the consistency between the Romanian and the English dictionaries in analyzing a corpus of books. The second study tests whether Ro-LIWC2015 can acquire linguistic differences in contrasting corpora. For this purpose, we analyzed posts from help-seeking forums for anxiety, depression, and health issues, and leveraged supervised learning to address several classification problems. The selected algorithm allows feature ranking, which facilitates more thorough interpretations. The linguistic markers extracted with Ro-LIWC2015 mirrored a number of disorder-specific features of depression and anxiety. Given the obtained results, this research encourages the use of Ro-LIWC2015 for hypothesis testing.

The variability of synonymic oppositions chior–orb, vechi–bătrîn, copac–pom, mal–țărm and their lexicographic treatment

The analysis of a series of synonymic oppositions in Romanian aims at pointing to their variation on a diachronic and diatopic level, the relationship between these two levels, as well as how these linguistic realities are treated at a lexicographic level, especially in modern dictionaries of synonyms. The modern dictionaries of synonyms do not pay enough attention to the relationship between synonyms, as their lexicographic entries mainly consist of ordering the synonyms of the title word and occasionally adding examples. This is known as the ``cumulative” method, and it is favoured by an inadequate definition of the synonymic relationship. Therefore, following the analysis of four pairs of synonyms belonging to the basic Romanian vocabulary we have concluded that the approach of synonymic oppositions in two representative Romanian dictionaries of synonyms is merely approximate and at times inappropriate. The structure of the lexicographic entries in these dictionaries often shows an inadequate knowledge of words history and how it is reflected as a variation at the dialectal level. The exemplification method is as well inadequate because the authors deliberately provide examples that are irrelevant for the identification of the differences between the synonyms.

The image of the poet Mihai Eminescu in the literary dictionaries

Mihai Eminescu is known as the Romanian national poet, the most important writer of the XIXͭʰ century in Romanian literature, whose writings have been intensely interpreted since his poetic debut. Therefore, this paper proposes a study of the way the literary dictionaries build the image of “the national poet”. This identity construct is significant to our investigation because it influences the interpretation of the poet figure through history. In order to have a wider view of the problem, we consulted a series of literary dictionaries and, also, dictionaries for students use to see how the figure of Eminescu is taught in schools. Moreover, we did not put aside foreign dictionaries, which bring a more objective perspective to the issue. The majority of Romanian dictionaries alter the poet’s portrait in favor of a “national construct”, created partly by the use of rhetoric figures. Another way of composing him a deformed image is accomplished by writing subjective and opaque interpretation of his poems. Consequently, such hermeneutics focuses on developing a myth that reflects mainly the way Romanians as nation want to be recognized and remembered.

The Indo-European Voice of Barbarians

In our essay we shall focus on the analyses (cum grano salis) of a limited number of words from the introductory pages of the novel Barbarians (such as gorgan, grui, crap, fală, sfadă, etc.). Here, more than elsewhere the author makes use of a good amount of rather strange words in his stylistic attempt to conceive the realm of the Dacians. We shall make an analysis of the etymology of these rather uncommon words as designated in Vinereanu's Etymological Dictionary of Romanian Language (2008) (unlike the traditional Romanian dictionaries, a different vision). From the (probable) linguistic discrepancies and stylistic preferences, findings will be drawn and novelties will be suggested, concerned with Romanian language and culture.

Taxonomy and structure of the Romanian personality lexicon.

We identified 1746 personality-relevant trait-adjectives in a Romanian dictionary, of which 412 were classified as descriptors of dispositions by 10 judges. Self-ratings were collected from 515 participants on those 412 adjectives, and the ratings were factored using principal components analysis. Solutions with different numbers of factors were analysed. The two- and three-factor solutions, respectively, confirmed the Big Two and Big Three of personality traits. A five-factor solution reflected the Big Five model with a fifth factor emphasising Rebelliousness versus Conventionality. The five-factor solution was related to the International Personality Item Pool-Big Five scales, and the highest correlations were indeed between the corresponding factors and scales. A six-factor solution was indicative of the six-factor model as expressed in the HEXACO model, yet with a weak Honesty-Humility factor. Additional analysis with self-ratings from 218 participants on marker-scales for the six-factor solution and on the six scales of the HEXACO did not produce a clear one-to-one correspondence between the two sets of scales, confirming indeed that the six-factor model was only partially found.