From Words to Dictionaries: Stasys Keinys at 80

ALVYDAS UMBRASAS

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

On 20 September 1936, Stasys Keinys was born in the village of Pakalupis, Viekšniai rural district, Mažeikiai County, one of the most prominent Samogitians working in the field of language science. The splendid milestone of his 80th birthday is an occasion to look back at the past and take pleasure in the present. It is also an occasion to commemorate the work of this esteemed linguist and good teacher.

St. Keinys began his journey in language science at Vilnius University (then Vilnius State University). In 1954, after graduating from Viekšniai Secondary School, he enrolled to study Lithuanian language and literature. Five years later, he successfully completed his studies. His acquaintance with language science and with the distinguished linguists who taught at the university shaped his interests for the rest of his life. Under the supervision of Vincas Urbutis, then a young lecturer teaching word formation and later to become the foremost specialist in Lithuanian word formation, he wrote his diploma thesis on the neologisms of the journal Mokslas ir gyvenimas. Soon, St. Keinys too began to pursue word formation seriously—in 1963–1966.

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he studied in the postgraduate program at the same university and, under V. Urbutis’s supervision, wrote and defended in 1968 his doctoral dissertation in the humanities (then a Candidate of Philological Sciences dissertation), Types of Formation of Lithuanian One-Word Terms. Immediately after his postgraduate studies, he took up teaching, beginning to teach language courses at Vilnius University’s Kaunas Faculty of Humanities, where he worked until 1975 (in that year he was awarded the title of docent). As he himself has said, those first years of teaching were a good school, helping him understand many aspects of language and proving useful in his later career as a scholar, since to explain something to others, you first have to work it out for yourself.

A significant change in St. Keinys’s scholarly career came in 1974, when, invited by Jonas Kruopas, who was responsible for terminology work, he joined the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature. More precisely, one could say that he returned, since he had already worked briefly at the Institute immediately after graduating from university, before his postgraduate studies. Here he took up terminology, terminography, and other work in earnest. Among other things, he also undertook organizational work: for a good 15 years he served as deputy chair of the Terminology Council under the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences (until the Council was dissolved at the beginning of independence); at the Institute, he also headed the Department of Contemporary Lithuanian Literary Language (1987–1989), and later the Department of Language Culture and Terminology (1989–1991).

Nor did he abandon teaching: in addition to the aforementioned Vilnius University, he later worked intermittently at the Šiauliai Pedagogical Institute, Vytautas Magnus University, and Vilnius Pedagogical University. At different times, he taught students at various levels and in different specializations spelling, accentology, dialectology, an introduction to Baltic philology, word formation, morphology, terminology, language usage and standardization, and supervised numerous diploma theses. His accumulated experience found expression in articles, books, and dictionaries. The books for students can be seen as a kind of summation of his teaching: Formation of Words in Standard Lithuanian (1999), published by Šiauliai University, and Morphemics of Standard Lithuanian: Theory and Practice (2009), published by Vilnius Pedagogical University.

Terminology is the field in which St. Keinys’s contribution is most visible. After joining the Institute of the Lithuanian Language and Literature, and drawing on the groundwork of his dissertation, he published substantial, major study articles on issues of term formation (in Issues in Lithuanian Linguistics and other publications), essentially covering all the most important aspects of term formation. At the same time, he wrote continually on the correctness of terms in various fields, criticized shortcomings in the precision and expression of terminology, proposed new terms, and so

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He also devoted considerable attention to the history and development of terminology, examining the contributions of various prominent figures to terminology. Many of his most important publications have been collected in the volumes Dabartinė lietuvių terminologija (2005) and Lietuvių terminologijos raida (2012), whose combined length is about 950 pages. Also highly significant is Terminologijos abėcėlė, published in 1980—a textbook from which virtually all young terminologists learned the fundamentals of terminology. St. Keinys is also the founding father of the annual journal Terminologijos: he was the responsible editor of its first issue (titled Terminologijos vagos (1994)), contributed greatly to the journal’s establishment, and published a dozen or so scholarly articles in it.

Terminology and terminography have always gone hand in hand. Through advice and reviews (commissioned by publishers and the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language), St. Keinys has helped improve the quality of many terminology dictionaries; he has also co-authored many such dictionaries himself. Of importance to linguistic scholarship is the Kalbotyros terminų žodynas (1990), compiled with Kazimieras Gaivenis—the first Lithuanian explanatory and translation dictionary in this field of substantial size (278 pp.). Also among dictionaries intended for linguistic purposes is Terminologijos taisymai (1992), prepared with co-authors K. Gaivenis, Angele Kaulakiene, and Jonas Klimavičius; it presents in dictionary form more than 3,000 nonstandard terms from various fields and recommended substitutes for them. Terminology dictionaries worth noting include the explanatory, translation, and also systematic Socialinės apsaugos terminų žodynas (1999), prepared with co-authors; the substantial translation dictionary Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas (2000); and the explanatory translation dictionary Žemės ūkio augalų selekcijos ir sėklininkystės terminų žodynas (2010). His work organizing railway terminology stands out in particular. Soon after independence was restored, St. Keinys was nominated to serve on the Commission for the Restoration of Independent Lithuanian Railways, operating under the Ministry of Transport, to help organize terminology; later, he became deputy chair of the State Railway Transport Terminology Commission established by that ministry. Since Russian had long been used almost exclusively in the railway sector, Lithuanian terminology was sorely lacking and had not been systematized. There was no shortage of work for the terminologist: with Nijolė Juškaitė he compiled the Russian–Lithuanian and Lithuanian–Russian translation Geležinkelininko žodynėlį (1992), containing over 1,700 terms, followed by a larger volume (over 3,800 terms), the Rusų–lietuvių kalbų geležinkelių transporto žodyną (1997). With the same co-author and Kazys Sakalauskas, he also published the Aiškinamąjį geležinkelių transporto terminų žodyną (2006), which explains about 2,000 terms and

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provides their English, German, and Russian equivalents. Many new terms were coined in the dictionaries, and the terminologist also proposed some interesting neologisms, for example, iešmynas, kelynas, stabdas. Railway terminology was organized not only in dictionaries: St. Keinys also wrote regularly for the newspaper Geležinkelininkas, publishing well over 40 articles and shorter pieces on language matters there. He wrote about the language of this field elsewhere too, for example in Gimtojoje kalboje. In recognition of his contribution to organizing railway terminology, the scholar was awarded the Honorary Railway Worker badge in 2000.

One of St. Keinys’s areas of interest is bibliography. In 1981, together with K. Gaivenis, he published a bibliographic index on terminology, Библиографический указатель литературы по вопросам литовской терминологии (1945–1980). Later, at his initiative, a section devoted to annotated bibliographies of terminology dictionaries was launched in Terminologijos vagose (Terminologijoje), and it continues to this day. Jolanta Gaivenytė-Butler worked on it for a long time, and Adelė Noreikaitė later joined her. Together with these co-authors, St. Keinys published an annotated bibliographic index covering 1900–2005, Lietuvių kalbos terminų žodynai (2008). This very useful publication catalogues and briefly describes terminology-reference works published over more than 100 years (501 dictionaries), and includes a subject index. St. Keinys also compiled bibliographies of Jonas Kruopas (1998) and Vincentas Drotvinas (2016) with co-authors, and edited the bibliographic index of K. Gaivenis’s works (2003). It should be noted that St. Keinys is interested in bibliography not only as a source of information, but also from the perspective of the language and terminology of the field. He was the specialist editor of the Bibliotekininkystės ir bibliografijos terminų žodyno (four parts published from 1990 to 1999), contributing substantially not only to this dictionary but also to the creation and improvement of library-science terminology standards. From 1996 to 2006, he was a member of the editorial board of the journal Tarp knygų, where he published about 20 articles and reviews on library terminology and other language issues. He also has several publications in the earlier journal Bibliotekų darbe.

His accumulated experience enabled the linguist to take up not only terminography but lexicography more broadly. St. Keinys was editor-in-chief of the third edition (1993) of the Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodyno. The dictionary had been in preparation for three years, beginning in 1986; its review and publication then took a further period of time. For this edition, many entries from the previous edition were removed because they were outdated, narrowly used, or reflected a changed assessment of linguistic norms; many new ones were added, and definitions were refined. St. Keinys says that he has read this dictionary like a novel, from the first page to the la-

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skutinės raidės, ir ne vieną kartą. Jis yra ir šio žodyno ketvirtojo (2000, elektroninis 2002), penktojo (2003, elektroninis), šeštojo (2006, elektroninis) ir septintojo (2012) leidimų vyriausiasis redaktorius. Nuo ketvirtojo leidimo žodynas įgavo elektroninį pavidalą, 2003 m. paskelbtas internete. Penktasis leidimas (antrasis elektroninis) 2004 m. parodoje Infobalt buvo pripažintas geriausiu metų elektroniniu leksikografijos leidiniu. Už šį žodyną 2005 m. St. Keinys apdovanotas Felicijos Bortkevičienės atminimui skirta Kalbos premija.

St. Keinys published his first article on language matters in 1966 in the journal Mokslas ir technika (incidentally, it is one of the oldest journals still being published). The article Darybiniai sinonimai terminologijoje was printed across several issues. It is easy to calculate that this year we can mark not only his birthday anniversary: 50 years have passed since that first article—a very meaningful and productive 50 years in the scholar’s life. Articles and shorter pieces poured forth—often ten or even twenty a year. The author of these lines, who had only recently begun working in the Terminology Department of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language (now the Terminology Center), recalls the routine five-year assessment of senior research fellow St. Keinys, held in the department about 15 years ago. Reviewing his work, the scholar said that he had published about 100 items over the previous five years. That number was impressive then and remains so today. He is an example to follow. His articles show that he always wanted current language issues to reach as wide an audience as possible. He wrote not only in periodicals intended for linguists and teachers, but also in a range of other newspapers and journals—both for specialists in particular fields and for the wider public, including regional publications. The scholar cares about correct, fluent language, free of unnecessary foreign words, and about its terminology; consequently, he wrote extensively for publications concerned with practical language use—about 40 contributions in Kalbos kultūroje, and even more in Gimtojoje kalboje (especially if we include publications in Mūsų kalboje as well). His scholarly research appeared in journals such as Baltistica, Kalbotyra, Lietuvių kalbotyros klausimai, Linguistica Lettica, Lituanistica, Terminologija, Žmogus ir žodis, and others. Over several decades, larger and smaller publications were scattered across various journals and newspapers, some now defunct and others still running, including Aitvaras, Diena, Fizikų žinios, Gimtasis kraštas, Justitia, Kalba Vilnius, Kauno tiesa, Kultūros barai, Kurier Wileński, Lietuvos aidas, Lietuvos pionierius, Literatūra ir menas, Mokykla, Mokslas ir gyvenimas,.

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Mokslo Lietuva, Mūsų gamta, Naujasis dienovidis, Pergalė, Savininkas, Sportas, Šviesa, Tarybinė mokykla, Tarybinis mokytojas, Tiesa, TV antena, Vakarinės naujienos, Vienybė, Žemės ūkis, Эхо Литвы and others. Altogether, more than 40 titles of various scholarly and non-scholarly periodicals. Incidentally, perhaps the greatest number of publications appeared in the newspaper Kauno tiesa (about 55). They were published in the 1960s and 1970s, that is, mostly when he was teaching in Kaunas at the beginning of his career. These include various corrections of errors, reviews, surveys, and so on.

It is intriguing to take a look at St. Keinys’s language using software tools. For this purpose, the Lithuanian articles collected in the linguist’s selected volume Lietuvių terminologijos raida (2012) were used¹. A text of approximately 130,000 words was selected. Footnotes (which mainly provided bibliographic information), abstracts in other languages, and words printed in italics (usually not the author’s own text, but material being examined) were removed from this corpus. Processing the abridged text computationally shows that more than 20,000 different word forms were used in all (case forms, verb forms, and so on). When those forms were processed with the morphological tagger published online by Vytautas Magnus University’s Centre of Computational Linguistics, the result was approximately 9,000 distinct words (lemmas)². The author’s texts thus have a considerable lexical richness. For comparison, the dictionary of Kristijonas Donelaitis’s writings compiled by Jonas Kabelka has just 3,278 headwords, while Viktoras Alekna has meticulously calculated that Salomėja Nėris used 7,246 words in her work. The ten most frequent word forms in the collection of articles by St. Keinys are as follows: ir (5574), kalbos (1767), lietuvių (1273), yra (1047), J. (974), kad (911), buvo (891), iš (859), terminologijos (821), terminų (767). The conjunction ir (‘and’) predominates as expected, and other studies likewise show it to be the most frequent word in texts. The other words clearly reveal the subject of the linguist’s research. It is interesting that the abbreviation J. is very frequent. This indicates that people whose first name begins with that letter are mentioned very often. One of them is easy to guess: the surname of Jonas Jablonskis is mentioned in the articles about 450 times.

¹ Thanks to Adele Noreikaitė, who allowed me to use the articles she had prepared on her computer. A few articles printed in the collection in languages other than Lithuanian were not examined. The data obtained were processed using the programs Word, Notepad, AntConc, Access.

² Of course, errors in lemmatization and other forms of computational recognition could not be avoided, but precise numerical accuracy was not the aim here; moreover, the counts also include, for example, given names and surnames, as well as some non-Lithuanian words (only those written in Cyrillic were excluded), and words that are not the text’s author’s own, that is, words quoted or discussed.

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(the genitive form Jablonskio is among the fifty most frequent word forms). The surnames of Juozas Balčikonis and Jonas Kruopas are mentioned in the articles almost 200 times each. These are people about whom St. Keinys wrote and authorities whose work he drew on. When discussing matters of language, the scholar generally avoids overusing international terms, and does not hesitate to seek out rarer Lithuanian words or coin new ones, for example: kūrinių aiškinsena, nežinomų dalykų alkulys, dak taruoti grįžo tęsti darbų, žmogaus išprusa, išprūsiu nesipuikavo, naujienybės su iki-, trūko patyresnio redaktoriaus, netrūksta skatulių.

St. Keinys is not only a Lithuanian-language scholar and educator who contributed considerably to the training of Lithuanian-language teachers for general education schools, but also a terminologist who devoted much attention to educating future terminologists. Almost the entire present-day Terminology Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language consists of St. Keinys’s students. Nearly all the employees who joined the Terminology Centre over the past couple of decades (including those who did not stay) were recommended by him and encouraged to enter the field of terminology. Under St. Keinys’s supervision, doctoral dissertations in terminology were defended by Albina Auksoriūtė (Lauryno Ivinskio terminologijos darbai, 2000), Palmira Zemlevičiūtė (Lietuvių medicinos terminologijos raida XIX amžiaus pabaigoje – XX amžiaus pradžioje, 2009), Robertas Stunžinas (Statybos liaudies terminai, 2011), Asta Mitkevičienė (1918–1940 metų lietuvių literatūros mokslo terminai, 2015); he also contributed to the preparation of the dissertation by the author of these lines and was a member of its defense committee. In one of his articles, St. Keinys says: “We can only hope that the first century of the third millennium will not become an age of decline for our terminology and language itself; that people who look askance at our traditional ways of creating terminology, at safeguarding its vitality and distinctiveness—and that of the language itself, that is, their strength—and who regard these things as outdated and obsolete, will understand that the greatest aims of linguistic and terminological work and policy are to preserve and strengthen our language, its role, to cherish its distinctiveness, and to develop it and its terminology consistently and purposefully, making it as flexible and comprehensible to all people as possible. We must not only hope for this, but also strive together toward it. The Lithuanian language and its terminology must retain their Lithuanian spirit.” Thus, we, his students, can only follow this wish, while to you, Teacher, we wish strength and good health as you tend and nurture the tree of terminology and prepare works from which we can continue to learn.

Many happy returns!

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LITERATŪRA

Bliūdžiuvienė N. Bibliotekininkų bičiulis. – Tarp knygų, 1996, Nr. 9, p. 33–34.

Geležinkelio terminijos kūrimas: [pokalbis su lietuviškų geležinkelio terminų sudarytoju bei normintoju, kalbininku Stasiu Keiniu]. Kalbėjosi V. Leščinskas. – Geležinkelininkas, 2001, kovo 16–31, p. 6. http://www.lki.lt.

Knyga, kurios laukėme du dešimtmečius: [A. Stirbytės pokalbis su „Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos žodyno“ 3-iojo leidimo vyr. red. St. Keiniu]. – Tiesa, 1993, lapkr. 18, p. 9.

Krištopaitienė D. Kristijono Donelaičio raštų leksika ir jos redagavimas. – Senoji Lietuvos literatūra, 2004, Kn. 18, p. 252–265.

Rimkutė A. Terminologas Stasys Keinys. – Terminologija, 2006, Nr. 13, p. 246–249.

Stasys Keinys. – Sabaliauskas A. Lietuvių kalbos tyrinėjimo istorija: 1980–2010 m., Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2012, p. 239–242.

Stasys Keinys: bibliografijos rodyklė. Sudarė A. Noreikaitė, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas, 2006.

Zemlickas G. Salomėja Nėris: gyvenimo ir kūrybos vingiais (1). – Mokslo Lietuva, 2004, gruod. 2–22, p. 1, 10–11.

Gauta 2016-10-10

Alvydas Umbrasas

Lietuvių kalbos institutas

P. Vileišio g. 5, LT-10308 Vilnius

E. paštas [email protected]

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