Marius Sala, Ion Dãnãilã * Lexicography at the "Iorgu Iordan" Institute of Linguistics

A new interruption, lasting for seven years, occurred up to 1959, when Iorgu Iordan was joined by two other editors-in-chief, namely Al. Graur and I. Coteanu. Thereafter the work has been carried out in three centers: Bucharest, Cluj and Jassy. Letters M, N, O, P, R, S, ª, T, Þ have been published so far, in 18 volumes, listing 80,693 words and variants. In 1994, the leadership of the Romanian Academy have included Dicþionarul limbii române (DLR) among the four works that have priority. Its compilation should be finished by 1998. At this moment, letters U, V, Z, D are finished, while E and L are in progress.

In the end, DLR, a depository dictionary of the Romanian language, will have 32 volumes with some 14,000 pages and 175,000 words and variants. As it comes out from this chronological survey there are two phases in its achievement: one up to 1949, the next from 1959 to the present. There are certain differences between the two parts but not so big as to hinder us from considering them portions of the academic dictionary.

But what is Dicþionarul limbii române (DLR)?

For the specialists in computerized lexical depositories it is important to know what is contained in the word inventory of DLR. Being a general dictionary of the Romanian language, it lists all the words that exist or existed, as proved by texts and supplemented by information put forward by specialists in regional dialects or popular parlance. S. Puºcariu adopted a halfway attitude between the completeness advocated by his predecessor A. Philippide and the omitting of neologisms as done by B. P. Hasdeu.

As a general historical dictionary, DA was largely open to old words, popular and regional, accepting even terms of this nature without specified meaning. With regard to neologisms, Puºcariu had at first a purist view about them, accepting only recent borrowings expressing a concept for which there was no unequivocal term in Romanian, but gradually he changed his mind and, in the preface to the second volume states the necessity of being less restrictive with neologisms. However, DA though rich in old, regional and popular words besides the current vocabulary, failed to register many terms that have since then gained a firm position in our language (such as abrupt, agil, balerin, fecundaþie, felin, formidabil, imortaliza, etc.). With all its shortcomings, DA is the richest Romanian lexicographic work (according to Mircea Seche's calculation it should have reached in the end 100,000 words).

The new academic dictionary (DLR), that started in 1959 form the letter M is much richer (estimated to contain at least 150 000 headwords, having a file of six million handwritten quotations, twice as many as Puºcariu's).

It is more open to technical and scientific words on condition that they meet a strict selection criterion, namely their presence in the general literary language or in popular parlance, in other words "if they occurs in at least two different language styles". Therefore, technical terms limited to only one well-defined field have not been considered.

Besides the size of the inventory, let us also mention the fact that in the latter part each word is treated in an independent entry giving up the nest-system used in DA. There are differences also in the way of defining a term: no encyclopedic information is given any longer, the definition being formulated using strictly linguistic explanatory elements. Two other distinctions have been advocated by the authors of DLR, namely, that they have renounced (alas!) to give the French translation of the meaning(s) of a Romanian word, and that the space allotted to etymological considerations - very large in DA has been reduced to a minimum by reason of solutions given in the meantime to many controversial etymologies on the one hand, and because they will be dealt with in the projected Dicþionarul etimologic al limbii române (DELR). Bridging the present to the past, the depository dictionary of the Academy will be finished in a few years. I have tried to survey its history.

In order to give a new dimension to this continuity the moment has come for the Romanian Academy to decide on an updated version of Puºcariu's work. The occasion has just arisen through the Micul dicþionar academic al limbii române (MDA) now in progress at the Institute of Linguistics - a dictionary conceived such as to render in a condensed form the 32 volumes of Dicþionarul limbii române, the word list of DA will be enriched with words from dictionaries published in our century: I.-A. Candrea, Gh. Adamescu, Dicþionarul enciclopedic ilustrat „Cartea Româneascã", 1926-1931; A. Scriban, Dicþionaru[l] limbii româneºti, 1939; F. Marcu, C. Maneca, Dicþionar de neologisme, 1966; from among those produced on our institute I would like to mention: Dicþionarul limbii române literare contemporane, 4 vols., 1956-1957; Dicþionarul limbii române moderne, 1958; Dicþionarul explicativ al limbii române (DEX), 1975, 1976.

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