Antano Lyberio gyvenimas ir darbas – leksikografija

Z. Šimėnaitė. The Life and Work of Antanas Lyberis – Lexicography 359 ZITA ŠIMĖNAITĖ Institute of Lithuanian Language ANTANO LYBERIO LIVING AND WORK – LEXICOGRAFY (100th anniversary of birth) A whole century has passed since the birth of Antonas Lyberis (1909–1996), one of the most famous lexicographers of the second half of the 20th century. For five decades we have been using various dictionaries of the Lithuanian language prepared by him. On the occasion of his 70th anniversary (1979), when A. Lyber was awarded the title of a deserving cultural figure, he said: “My work and life are linked to lexicography. I have been doing this for over 40 years. I grew up with it, I got used to it and I can't be without it. Some find vocabulary work dry and uninteresting. For me, it was never dry or uninteresting. Besides the everyday nature of my work, I always found a lot of poetry in it.” Antanas Lyberis was born on November 6, 1909 in Uriškiai, Panevėžys district. In 1939, he graduated from Vytautas the Great University in classical philology. During the war and post-war years he taught at Prienai Gymnasium, was its director (1946-1947), and from 1947 he worked for almost three decades in scientific institutes – until 1952 in the Lithuanian Language Institute, then in the Lithuanian Language and Literature Institute. 360 LANGUAGE CULTURE | 82 A. Lyberis was a witness to the development of the Lithuanian Dictionary and the formation of the Lithuanian lexicographic school. In 1932, when he was still a student, Juozas Balčikonis invited him to help with the work of organizing and filling in the Kazimieras Būga library. He wrote down words from his native Ėriškiai and other places, prepared dictionary texts. A. Lyberis described in detail the period of work of the dictionary’s editorial staff in 1932–1942 in the article “The Lithuanian Language Dictionary and its workers”, dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of the editorial staff (Mūsų kalba 1, 1981, 5–17). J. Balčikonis assembled a group of dictionaries, which was destined to start the work of creating a great dictionary of Lithuanian language, and A. Lyberis worked productively at the beginning of this work. In 1941, the editor of the LKŽ I volume Prakalba listed him among the closest collaborators of the editorial staff, "without whose honest work and dedication" the dictionary could not have appeared. A. Lyberis continued the history of the LKŽ writing in the article „The work of the Lithuanian language dictionary“ (Kalbos kultūra 43, 1982, 4–13). Together with his teacher Juozas Starkus, he discovered part of the dictionary hidden in Kaunas during the war. In the basement of St. Anthony's Church in Žaliakalnis (Finally, the entire archive was found. – Our language 2, 1972, 30–31). In 1959, A. Lyberis wrote his dissertation Lithuanian thesaurus and its compilation principles, which is the first theoretical work devoted to the problem of creating Lithuanian dictionaries. Title of the paper: I. Dictionary of contemporary Lithuanian language and its compilation principles. II. 1998-1999 The Lithuanian language synonyms dictionary and the principles of its composition. It states that the thesis submitted for defence consists of two parts: 1 – part of the text of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language Dictionary published by the Ministry of Education of the Lithuanian SSR in 1954 (letters: b, c, č, f, g, h, i, j, k, n, o, p, š, z, ž – a total of 59 author’s arcs) and an introduction; 2 – Thesaurus of Lithuanian language synonyms and theoretical introduction. Thus, A. Lyberis was awarded the scientific degree for the principles of compiling two new dictionaries of the Lithuanian language. A. Lyberis is a linguist who has worked on theoretical and practical dictionary work. During his fifty years of active activity he worked on the most important dictionaries of the Lithuanian language: the Academic Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language and the Contemporary Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language. Between 1941 and 1986 he prepared and edited 14 volumes of the Lithuanian Academic Dictionary (I1, I2, II1, II2, III–VIII, X, XII–XIV). For his work on the dictionary he was awarded the Lithuanian State Prize in 1965 together with other dictionary writers. A. Lyberis is the author and editor of the text of the first two editions (1954, 1972) of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language Dictionary. For the first edition, he selected words from the card library, wrote most of the text (part of the text was written by "Napali Grigas". Zofija Kėzytė recalls that the unprinted dictionary Z. Šimėnaitė. The life and work of Antanas Lyberis – lexicography 361 manuscripts were used by LKŽ text writers. The most difficult task was for the first group: they had to present not only the corpus of the first normative dictionary of Lithuanian language, select examples of usage, but also distinguish the main (most important) meanings of words and explain them. Later, the basic corpus of this dictionary became the basis for new editions and was used by the editors of new bilingual dictionaries. He is the author of the first Lithuanian thesaurus (1961), which describes 720 synonymous words. In 1981, he published a more comprehensive Thesaurus of Synonyms, describing 5,200 synonymous words. The 2nd revised edition of this dictionary, edited by Jonas Paulauskas, was published in 2002 by the Lithuanian Language Institute. The first reviews of A. Lyberis, published in Naujoji Romuva, were dedicated to Jono Jablonskio Raštai (1935) and Leonardo Dambrausko Kalbos patarėjas (1939). While working at the Institute, he also took care of school affairs. Early on he understood that spelling and correct language are very important and relevant for school. The Lithuanian Spelling Dictionary for Schools prepared by A. Lyberis in 1956 (co-author N. Grigas) has been published in 6 editions, and the Lithuanian Spelling and Pronunciation Dictionary for Education (co-author Pranas Kniūkšta), published in 1983, has been published in 13 editions (the most recent reprint was in 2009). The Lithuanian-Russian dictionaries prepared by the dictionary writer are still published today: 10 different editions have been published, the latest one in 2009. In 1956 he published a Lithuanian-Russian dictionary for schools with V. Kosuchinas, which contained about 2200 words, and in 1985 he published a Lithuanian-Russian school dictionary with Kazis Gaivenas and V. Šerna, which was repeated by Šviesos publishing house under the title Short Lithuanian-Russian dictionary (1989, 2002 and CD, 2003). The Lithuanian-Russian dictionary, published in 1962, had about 37 thousand words, in 1971 – about 50 thousand, in 1988 – about 65 thousand words. The last version was repeated three more times (2001, 2004, 2008) and on CD (2004). In 2009, the Centre for Lexicography of the Lithuanian Language Institute compiled and published a collection of A. Lyberis’ works, Leksikografijos teorija ir praktika. It publishes articles on lexicography, synonymy, lexis, accentology, the author's dissertation, as well as memories of relatives, colleagues, students, bibliography of his works. The book uses material from the archive, which was donated to the Institute by his daughter Jūratė Lyberytė-Lukoševičienė. The LKI library collections were also supplemented by a collection of over 200 linguistic books. The dictionaries prepared by Antanas Lyberis are still alive in the 21st century: they are a great support for both dictionaries editors and language practitioners.