Învățătură pentru ferirea și doftoria boalelor (1816). Notes on glosses

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is the minute analysis of glosses excerpted from Învățătură pentru ferirea și doftoria boalelor, a text translated by Petru Maior and printed in Buda, in 1816. The Enlightenment principle followed by the Transylvanian scholar, i.e. the principle of adapting the Western culture to the Romanian one, of facilitating the access of popular masses to science is materialised in the high frequency of glosses. For P. Maior, the gloss represents an excellent mechanism of inserting neologisms in his text, neologisms which are explained by old, popular terms, collocations or periphrases. The highest weight is held by terminological glosses of the lexical borrowing – old term type. The fact is relevant for the conception that guides the author in his activity of translating the text: the glosses are intentionally oriented towards the creating of a neologic lexical corpus, in accordance with that of other European languages of culture. A detailed analysis of the various types of glosses offers useful information as regards the phenomenon of integrating neologisms and reveals interesting aspects of the process of lexical renewal of the Romanian literary language.

Keywords

• glosses
• lexical borrowings integration
• modernization of Romanian literary language