Zbornik radova Filozofskog fakulteta u Splitu (Dec 2020)
Juxtaposing Croatian Military Terminology of the Two Ground-breaking 19th Century Dictionaries
Abstract
The aim of this paper was to revisit and shed new light on the generally accepted view that the impact of German-Illyrian dictionary (Nĕmačko-ilirski slovar) by Ivan Mažuranić and Jakov Užarević of 1842 on Bogoslav Šulek’s German-Croatian dictionary (Nĕmačko-hrvatski rĕčnik) of 1860 was decisive and indispensable in many aspects, nothing if not a fundamental dictionary in Šulek’s work. This research was undertaken to put to the test this assertion by investigating more in depth the military subcorpora of both dictionaries, especially bearing in mind Šulek being the founding father of Croatian military terminology. The primary goal was to excerpt Croatian military terminology from both dictionaries in order for them to be mutually juxtaposed and made subject to a combination of quantitative and qualitative research. In terms of quantitative outcomes, we tried to detect and register German headwords and their corresponding Croatian equivalents to the most comprehensive extent possible, having produced two parallel subcorpora. The results of the correlational analysis prompted us to re-evaluate the proportions of Mažuranić and Užarević’s influence on Šulek. In terms of qualitative results, the research primarily outlined the spectrum of word-formation methods in both dictionaries and linguistic purism tendencies. In the final analysis, it can be reasonably assumed that Šulek did resort to the German-Illyrian dictionary as one of his valuable sources but in all likelihood as an auxiliary one, let alone a fundamental one.
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